Emily Heisterkamp is the daughter of a retired elementary school music teacher and, she recalls “we were drug all over the place, to symphony concerts, ballets, and any cultural activity that was offered in our area.” As a very young child, she attended a performance that would help determine her fate. “They played Rhapsody in Blue and I remember listening to the opening solo. I was so fascinated.” Unfamiliar with the instrument, she asked her mother what kind it was. The answer was clarinet and, right then, she chose to make a study of it. “That was the start of it all. Now, can I play that solo? Absolutely not. I’ve tried for years to get that slide down.”
Heisterkamp may not have mastered that piece but she is adept at passing on her passion for music in her own classroom at Astoria Park Elementary School. Just as the clarinet was a revelation, she had a similar epiphany when it came to teaching. She recounts an experience when she was a sophomore in high school.
Her band director broke the students into rehearsal groups. “Two senior girls were leading our clarinet sectional very poorly. They just didn’t know what to do and we were playing the same section badly, over and over, instead of fixing it. I finally raised my hand and said ‘do you guys want some help?’ I led the rest of the sectional.” It would be her first music teaching experience but certainly not her last.
After studying music education in college and graduate school, Heisterkamp spent five years teaching band primarily at the middle and high school levels, outside of the Tallahassee area. She came to Astoria Park three years ago and has been methodically refining her elementary music curriculum ever since.
Comparing her teaching experiences across grade levels, she finds her current work especially fulfilling. Heisterkamp enjoys focusing on foundational skills, preparing her elementary students for musical study in middle school and beyond, should they choose to pursue it.
“I ask myself, what do I want them to be capable of doing when I give them off to this other person, what do I think are really important concepts for them to understand and to build on later? When they go off to middle school, they may not know standard notation but it’s going to feel familiar and sound familiar. They’re going to know their instrument families, they will have had musical ensemble experience and understand that they are one part of a big group.”
A lover of lifelong learning, Heisterkamp is constantly seeking out ways to continue her own education as a specialist. She attends an average of 12 state and local professional development opportunities, workshops and conferences each year.
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