Two long-time teachers in Coventry – a music teacher and a history teacher at Nathan Hale Middle School – were recently honored for their teaching excellence.

Band director to lead regional honors band

For the ninth time in his teaching career, Toni Susi has been selected to lead an honors band that brings together students from 30 Connecticut middle schools.

“The opportunity to work with exceptionally talented young people who are passionate about music is a thrill for any director. It is a challenge and a reward to bring them to a level of performance beyond their previous experience and the expectations for their age,” says Susi.

The middle school’s band director, a Connecticut public school teacher since 1985, will conduct an honors band at the 2009 Northern Regional Middle School Concert Festival in March. The concert is sponsored by the Connecticut Music Educators Association (CMEA). Students who will perform at the regional festival, which will take place at the Har-Bur Middle School in Burlington, have been selected via a competitive, individual audition. “Each instrumentalist has two selections to choose from for their audition—one is weighted more than the other due to the level of difficulty,” says Susi, adding that an impartial, professional musician judges each student audition.

Having served as honors band conductor for so many years, Susi says he appreciates the opportunities he has had, “It’s a great privilege, and quite motivating, to encounter former students and hear that their experience at the regional band festivals were so memorable.”

Susi’s expectations of honors band members are simple yet firm, “I expect each instrumentalist to prepare her or his music and give 100 percent effort in rehearsals. I can promise them that I will do the same so we can give a performance that will make all of us proud,” says the Education Association of Coventry member.

History teacher honored by university

Eighth-grade American History teacher Aldorigo Scopino, who also is an adjunct professor at Central Connecticut State University (CCSU), recently received the university’s 2008-09 Excellence in Teaching Award. CCSU annually bestows the award for inspired teaching that promotes pro-active learning. 

History comes to life in Scopino’s classes through his passion and by way of teaching methods that he says “inspire students to understand how art, literature, religion, music, and architecture also help define who we are as a people and nation.” The result is students who enjoy learning and who receive a richer, more complex picture of their nation’s history.

Scopino, a teacher at the Coventry middle school for the past 30 years, says the most interesting aspect of teaching history is the opportunity to go beyond book knowledge to tell anecdotal stories that illuminate the people, places and lessons to be learned from history:

“The teacher is a storyteller,” says the Education Association of Coventry member. He says the novel Wizard of Oz (1900) was not intended to be a children’s story but an economic treatise on the hard times that the farm community was experiencing during the Gilded Age. Each of the characters represents some person or entity from that period in time.

“Dorothy stands for the average American -- hard working, honest and hard pressed by predatory capitalists. The cowardly lion represents reluctant politicians unwilling to stand up to Big Business. The wicked witch represents everything evil with the nation’s financial system. The wizard is big business or banking, both of which exploited the average American…and so on. It is stories like this, activities, films, and readings that capture student attention,” adds Scopino.