With a $3,599 grant from the Education Foundation, Bowie Middle School Choir Director Jimena Wolfle is poised to receive an electronic piano with a memory drive that should help streamline choir operations at Bowie Middle School.
The grant titled “A Collection of Keys” was the first for Wolfle.
“… As you can tell, we share one accompanist with the entire district from those schools. … What we do is we sometimes record his accompanying tracks. The cool part about these pianos that we are receiving (through) the Education Foundation is that you can record on here, transpose music, and you can stop, pause, rewind, which is a really, really cool resource to have when you can’t always have your piano player here in person … It is a great tool and resource that we can use whenever our accompanist is not here,” Wolfle said.
They were able to order one piano, which she noted will never need tuning. They also just received a Promethian Board that can be used with the piano and to display sheet music.
“We’re still hoping that we can also get this other software with the money that we were blessed with. It’s a software where you can transpose music instead of inputting it note by note. You can take a picture of it and upload it and it’ll change it to whatever key you need which is extremely necessary for middle school voices,” Wolfle said.
Sometimes the keys composers write in is not necessarily what best fits their voices.
“Some years we’ll get sixth graders where they’ll already have changed voices. And sometimes we get years where they have unchanged voices, or half and half,” she said.
They have to arrange the music to help fit students’ ranges and help them be successful.
Wolfle said the grant will not only help students this year, but in years to come.
“We are lucky to have one of the pianos, but we have two directors here and we split up a lot. So it’s helpful to have. In one room we have one that does transpose to all the keys but then the other one we’re like oh no, we kind of have to transpose in our head, which we can do that, but it takes a while sometimes,” she added.
There are about 180 students in the program and the choir directors see them for about 45 minutes. Some 25 to 30 minutes of that is rehearsal time.
“We are thankful that we get them five times a week. Definitely with our rehearsal schedules for our concerts … we have a month and a half to prepare for our next concert. It gets tricky sometimes,” Wolfle said.
This was the first time she had written a grant to the Education Foundation.
“They are such a great foundation and we are so blessed that they partner up with ECISD. We are definitely lucky. We are indebted to them. They are fantastic. We see all of the work that they do for this community, and like I said, they are also inputting that legacy of they’re not just helping current students but they are helping next year’s and the year after that,” she said.
Alexa Duron is the assistant choir director.
“I think it’s so awesome,” Duron said of the grant. “Sharing this one when we split up into sections like it’s nice when we’re in here and then when we go to another room, we kind of have to transpose in our head or in our fingers. So now having a second one that’ll give us the opportunity to do that; change tempos. Our pianist doesn’t have to come as often because we can record and we can play in both rooms. So it’s really awesome; very excited,” Duron said.
This is Wolfle’s fifth year at Bowie. She was at Crockett for three years before that.
She is from Del Rio and earned her bachelor’s degree in music and her master’s in curriculum and instruction, both from Angelo State University.
She met her husband, who is from Amarillo, in San Angelo.
Wolfle said she didn’t always want to be a teacher.
“When I went to Angelo State University, I wanted to do the performance route — do the bachelor’s in music, but not in education,” she recalled.
Her advisor told her they were almost the exact same courses and she should have the education degree as a backup. She didn’t want that, but her advisor told her to think about it.
“I did some observations because you have to do some with education courses. I started doing those and I was like, okay, all right. Then I student taught and I absolutely fell in love. I was like, oh my gosh, I can do this and get paid. Yes, please,” Wolfle said.
She was immediately thankful to her advisor.
She student taught at Angelo State at Glenn Middle School.
“Then after that I was a permanent substitute for the choir there because the teacher that I did my student teaching for had surgery … I absolutely fell in love with that middle school music and just those kiddos. At that age, I feel like they’re right smack in the middle. Many people are like eww middle schoolers, but I was like, they’re amazing. They’re just funny, and they definitely need people in their life; cheerleaders,” Wolfle said.
She thought she could provide that for those kids.
“I’ve loved … that middle school age. I don’t think I’ll ever leave middle school,” Wolfle said.
