Mooseheart band director earns national honor

Twenty-three years of getting kids to try the tuba.

Of telling them the audience will tire of “Ghost Fleet” if the band plays it every year.

And teaching about life, not just music.

Mooseheart band director Steve Schmidt has worked with thousands of students the last 22 years. For his dedication, he has been named a 2011 Mr. Holland's Opus Foundation winner, one of five in the nation.

“My job is easy because I get to work with some of the best kids in the world,” the Batavia resident told the audience upon learning of the award.

The 98-year-old residential school is run by Moose International fraternity on a campus between Batavia and North Aurora. Students attend from kindergarten through high school.

Mooseheart students are there because, for a variety of reasons, their home lives are unstable and their families aren't able to care for them as well as they deserve.

Their needs can tax a teacher.

“I was just saying to somebody, ‘At Mooseheart, either you're like ‘one-and-done' and you're out of here, or you're a lifer,” Schmidt told the audience.

“I said, ‘I'm a lifer.' This becomes part of your soul and part of your life.”

Schmidt, a trumpet player, said Thursday his goal is to make sure the kids receive the same advantages as those who go home to a supportive family every night. “At Mooseheart, we are the home,” he said. “I know these kids' lives have dealt them kind of an unfair hand at times.”

He believes Mooseheart can be a bridge to a brighter future. Helping a kid who is struggling — be it with music, emotions or schoolwork — to transform is his great joy. “We're really changing lives.”

Sidney Whorton, a senior, has studied with Schmidt for eight years. “He's definitely taught me a lot about respect. In the beginning I just took music to burn time. Now I totally respect music and it's opened me up to a lot things around me,” she said. “He definitely deserved it. He's an amazing teacher and person.”

Senior Akeem Edmonds said he battled at first with Schmidt. “I wanted to do things my way and he wanted me to learn the proper way to do things. Once I stopped talking and just listened to what he says and practice what he does it's been great between us,” the trumpeter said of Schmidt, who is also his assigned mentor. “... He takes time to talk to me about life outside of music. He always urges me to push myself in things like track and school. Not to settle for what everyone else is doing.

“He's a person I'd like to keep as a mentor for life.”

The foundation is named after “Mr. Holland's Opus,” a 1995 film about a composer who takes a job as a high school music teacher to pay the bills, but grows to love teaching.

This is the ninth year the foundation has presented the award. Schmidt will receive $10,000 and be honored by jazz trumpeter Wynton Marsalis at a ceremony in March in New York City.

The foundation, created by film composer Michael Kamen in 1996, has donated instruments to 1,124 school and community music programs. Mooseheart received $27,000 from it in 2010.