MONAHANS Having started his career in small schools, John Carroll decided to return to his roots recently taking an assistant band director position in Monahans.
Carroll’s name is probably familiar to fans of the Permian High School Band where he was an associate band director. He served there for 27 years.
He started his career at Dumas and Dalhart and is now in his 46th year in music education.
Carroll also is the immediate past president of the Texas Music Educators Association. Carroll will be on the executive board through the TMEA convention which occurs around the second week of February.
There are about 16,000 members in TMEA and it has eight officers statewide and they come from band, orchestra, vocal, elementary and college division.
So far, Carroll said he loves being in Monahans. There are about 150 members each in the high school and middle school bands; the beginning band has close to 100 students.
Carroll said the Monahans band is “working hard, doing well.”
“We started band on Aug. 25. I honestly think this morning’s rehearsal (Sept. 15) was the best one we’ve had,” Carroll said.
Being TMEA president was very satisfying. Being band chair was very time intensive and detail oriented.
In 2021, when he was president elect, TMEA had a virtual convention, which took a lot of planning and debate.
“I was state band chair for two years, which … was real time intensive. I was president-elect for one year and that was president for one year. … When I got on the TMEA executive board in 2018 it opened up my eyes to a lot of things — how important music education is, for all ages all the way from pre-k that have elementary music in their schools, to college kids and college teachers and college students who are wanting to get into the music education profession. It just opened up my eyes. It really changed my life and it just made me aware of how important music education was,” Carroll said.
When the pandemic came along, he became more conscious of social-emotional learning and how much music provides.
He added that a lot of people think TMEA’s main reasons for being are all-region band and all-state.
“… We serve all students, even the ones who are not necessarily overly gifted as far as getting into all-state, but still to whom music means a whole lot; to whom belonging to an ensemble means a whole lot; the team spirit and the team feeling you get; the family feeling you get by belonging to a musical group” at all levels, Carroll said.
He added that being TMEA president has helped him become more patient.
“I feel like it’s helped me realize, again, that all students have different levels of ability, and even those with slightly more limited abilities still can gain and garner a lot from music. So yes, I feel like it has made me a better teacher; more well rounded,” Carroll said.
He added that he’s proud that he’s been in music education for as long as he has.
An El Paso native, Carroll earned a bachelor’s degree in music education from Abilene Christian University and a master’s of arts in music education from West Texas A&M University.
He was recently invited to conduct the ACU band on the National Anthem at their football game.
Initially, Carroll planned to be a minister.
“I went to ACU and my college band director was somebody I greatly, greatly admired. I still talk to him every week or so. I just kind of started emulating him. He provided a very enjoyable college experience, and after a year, I changed my major to music education,” he added.
Percussion is his main instrument, but he can play them all and teach them all.
Carroll added that it has been such an honor to serve on the executive board of TMEA and to serve as the president. I’m in awe of my TMEA colleagues throughout Texas. I certainly don’t know all of them personally, but I’m in awe of what they do on a daily basis down in the trenches, just blue-collar teaching from one day to the next day; from morning to afternoon and evening. It’s a good feeling for me to know that there’s many college students who are majoring in music and going to fill in as they evolve into later years,” Carroll said.
Band Director Joe Barrow and Carroll have known each other professionally for many years and they both went to ACU.
“We were really excited to receive somebody interested in the position, of his caliber. He’s well known throughout the state as being not just one of the finest percussion teachers in the state of Texas, but also a very fine, well-rounded band director. To get both in one package is just a huge asset to your program. On top of that, he’s just a really nice person. So you have all of that together and the fact that he is here to serve the needs of the students and the fact that he puts the students first, it’s just a huge asset to our program. We were very, very excited that he expressed an interest and, of course, we pursued it immediately,” Barrow said.
Barrow added that Carroll has conducted clinics for students in Monahans in previous years.
“One year when we had a percussion ensemble advance to the state solo and ensemble contest, we had him do a clinic with them at Permian when he was still the percussion director there, and of course, they made a first division at state. I think he had a lot to do with that,” Barrow said.
