Episode 179 - Susan L. Smith

Everything Band Podcast

Susan L. Smith has taught general, choral, and instrumental music at the elementary through collegiate level in Florida, Virginia and Alabama and has served as an author, clinician, conductor, and adjudicator across the United States

Topics:

• Susan’s early career and education, including the lessons she learned from her mother, who was a high school band director in Virginia.
• The importance of teaching the students who are in front of you, especially now when everything is so uncertain from the Coronavirus Pandemic.
• Servant leadership and putting others before yourself as a teacher.
• Setting goals, exercise challenges, and the importance of staying healthy so that you can be there for others.
• Susan’s work at Troy University with the music education program and the importance of moving past just checking the boxes and focusing on excellence.
• The importance of connecting with kids and finding ways to bring more kids under your influence by offering technology or guitar classes.
• Marketing your program.

Links:

• Susan Smith
• Grainger: Lincolnshire Posy

Biography:

Susan L. Smith, B.M.Ed, M.A.Ed., has taught general, choral, and instrumental music at the elementary through collegiate level in Florida, Virginia and Alabama and has served as an author, clinician, conductor, and adjudicator across the United States. She is currently Director of Bands at the Saint James School in Montgomery AL. Mrs. Smith is responsible for teaching the Beginning, Intermediate, and Advanced Bands as well as Guitar, Jazz Band, and Music Technology. The Saint James Band consistently receives Superior ratings in Concert, Jazz and Marching band events including the Alabama Music Performance Assessment, Smokey Mountain Music Festival and Bands of America Super Regionals and Grand National Championships. She is currently the President of the Alabama Music Educators Association.

She was a Coordinating Author for Warner Bros. Publications’ Expressions Music Curriculum, a vision for a vertical, conceptual approach to teaching music. She consulted on the Elementary Music Curriculum Music Expressions and served as an author for Band Expressions, a secondary component of the curriculum. Smith has presented clinics at many state conventions including AMEA, TMEA, FMEA, IMEA, VMEA, GMEA and National and Regional NAfME conferences. She is on the Middle School Clinician team for the Music for All Summer Symposium, presenting clinics each summer to directors and pre-service college students. In addition, Mrs. Smith serves as an educational consultant for Music for All. She is responsible for the Chamber Music portion of the Music for All National Concert Band Festival.