COMPOSING A
SUSTAINABLE NOTE By Jeannie Howard | Photo Credit: Michael Melnyk
Wilke knows all too well that many of his students deal with some serious life situations on a regular basis, therefore, he has made
UUpon accepting the part-time after school teaching
it a priority to keep his room as a safe place for all of his students; a place where they are encouraged and are believed in.
position at Richmond High School Andrew Wilke,
band teacher, realized he had quite a bit of work
ahead of him. “From the first day I walked into
the office everyone was speaking Spanish and I
thought that maybe it wasn’t gonna work cause I
didn’t know what anyone was saying,” explained
Wilke. “And the building was a mess with clutter
everywhere, so I knew there would be a lot of
cleaning.”
Since that first day nearly five years ago, Wilke
has not only learned more Spanish, cleaned up
and organized the band room, but has also became
the full-time band instructor and completely
transformed the Richmond High School Band. It
62 MARKETPLACECONTRACOSTA.COM JUNE 2019
had been decades since the school had a real high
school level band program, so Wilke was essentially
working from scratch. “In decades prior there had
been little spurts of programs that existed but sort
of fizzled out and were never really full programs,
so no one knew what a music program looked like
or what to expect,” he shared. “The bar was set
pretty low and I knew that I could do better than
nothing.”
With the handful of students enrolled in band
at the beginning—those that had been begging
the school for a real band program—and almost
no instruments, Wilke set to work on building the
program he wanted. “There is no standard formula
for a school music program and it is tricky to find