August 25, 2005

As the new band director of the Yellow Springs schools, Dennis Farmer will teach students at Mills Lawn, McKinney and YSHS.

BACK TO SCHOOL

New staff members are working in all three Yellow Springs school buildings this year. This article features four new staffers, and others will be profiled next week.

Band director Dennis Farmer (pictured above)
As the new band director for the Yellow Springs schools, Dennis Farmer hopes to generate pride in the music program and introduce students to the life-long joy music can provide. He will work with orchestra director Yvonne Wingard to get the students, the school community, parents and the village involved and excited about supporting music in the schools, he said.

“The goal is to get the music program, especially the band program, where everybody is proud of what they’re doing,” he said.

The large support the small Yellow Springs community shows for the fine arts is what drew Farmer to Yellow Springs, he said. He hopes to get students involved in concerts, music contests, festivals and music clinics. He also plans to introduce not only the more traditional music, such as the “Holst Suites” and “Lincolnshire Posie,” but also less common world and pop music scored for band and some of his own arrangements by Green Day and the Gypsy Kings that are familiar to most youth.

“I like music that they’ll have fun playing, and that they’ll be proud to play,” he said. “We’ll still throw an occasional march in.”

Farmer replaces Michael Ruddell, who resigned last school year. He will teach general music, A.P. music theory and band to students in grades 5 through 12, and is looking forward to teaching many students for eight consecutive years and watching them grow, he said.

Farmer began his career as a jazz musician after studying trombone performance at the Cincinnati Conservatory of Music in the late 1980s. After several years of performing with jazz bands in the Dayton area, Farmer took a break from music to work as a restaurant manager in Cincinnati, always hoping to find more time for music. Then in 1998, he met an 80-year-old man in an airport who talked to him for five hours about how his love for music led to a satisfying 35-year teaching career. Convinced it was time to return to music, Farmer earned a bachelor of music in education degree from Northern Kentucky University and has spent the last five years teaching general music in schools in southwest Ohio.

While Farmer liked working with younger people in the restaurant business, he said that teaching music is “a lot more rewarding than teaching someone to sauté vegetables.”

“I love the feeling you get when you’re learning something, and I love watching that same thing happening to my students,” he said.

Linda Clevenger is the new administrative assistant at McKinney and YSHS.

Secretary Linda Clevenger
When Linda Clevenger left her 19-year career as a school treasurer in northeast Ohio to become a truck driver in 1994, she had no idea how much she would love it. The stress and year-round schedule of her job in education was relieved by the freedom she felt on the road.

But the one thing a trucker always misses is home, and after 10 years of driving, Clevenger has returned to education, which will allow her to spend time with her family and her new grandchildren.

She begins this year as the assistant to Yellow Springs High School and McKinney School Principal John Gudgel. For the first time in her education career, she will get the same vacation schedule that a teacher receives, which she will spend with her two sons in Cincinnati and Fairborn.

In her former administrative position, Clevenger said, she never spent time with students, so now she is looking forward to being in the same building as the kids. Used to small districts, she will handle the budget and accounting for YSHS and McKinney.

In Clevenger’s view, she has been spoiled with a carefree life driving semi-trucks all over the country. Working for U.S. Express of Medway for the last six years, she went to work not knowing where she was going or when she would be back, she said. She loved traveling, but never had free weekends or any regular time off to live in the house she’s owned in Dayton for eight years, she said.

“I came back to the schools out of convenience more than anything. But once you do it for 20 years, that’s what you know and that’s what you want to stay in,” she said.

Clevenger said she hopes to stay in the Yellow Springs school system until she retires. But until then, she plans on renewing her real estate license for summer work and enjoying the breaks the school year provides.

Jane Gicale is teaching independent living at the McKinney School.

Independent living teacher Jane Gicale
Jane Gicale, the new independent living, consumer studies and work and family teacher at McKinney, believes that everyone could use a little help learning how to succeed in life. Her semester-long courses that seventh- and eighth-grade students are required to take touch upon everything from entrepreneurial skills and finance management to the basics of a nutritious diet and exercise routine. Her classes teach students to lead healthy and happy lives, which, she said, could benefit people of all ages.

Gicale hopes that her classes empower students to create the lives they want for themselves. Her theme for this year is, “If it is to be, it’s up to me.”

Traditionally known as home economics, independent living now encompasses a much broader range of practical skills that help students make conscious choices as they transition to being on their own. The courses will prepare students to choose heart-healthy foods and incorporate exercise into their daily routines. Gicale said she intends to cover insurance issues and credit card debt in her finance education lessons, and how to use the Internet to serve realistic career goals or turn a caretaking skill into a successful babysitting business.

She also hopes to spend time talking about developing healthy relationships and guiding students to hone their time-management skills in order to balance work and family tasks. The courses still include more traditional skills of sewing, cooking and housing and home repair.

“It’s life management, really,” she said. “Everybody needs life skills to function in today’s world.”

Gicale said that high school students would benefit from the material and hopes to establish a sports nutrition course or a living-on-your-own course for older students.

Gicale, who comes from a family of teachers, said she has always known she wanted to teach students how to lead healthy lives. Growing up in Springfield with a mother who taught home economics for 30 years and a father who was a teacher for 38 years, Gicale has taught home economics for 22 years, the last 19 at Springfield City North before that school discontinued the program due to lack of funding.

“I love teaching. It’s different every day, and I hope that if I’m excited about it that the students will be too,” she said.

Terry Graves-Strieter is the special education coordinator at YSHS and McKinney.

Special education coordinator
Terry Graves-Strieter
Terry Graves-Strieter subscribes to the special education philosophy that encourages integrating students with individual needs into the regular classroom while supporting them with the resources they need to be successful. As the new special education coordinator at YSHS and McKinney, Graves-Strieter will spend two days a week working with teachers to make sure they receive the resources they need to create the individualized education programs that work for each student.

“I like to keep the kids with their peers as much as possible,” she said.

Graves-Strieter will work with intervention specialists Pam Conine, David Johnston and Carlos Norman as well as instructional aides Neelam Kapoor and Sandy Morris to serve the 65 Yellow Springs and local Greene County Career Center students in the Individualized Education Program. She will help make sure that the program continues to meet state requirements, that the schools receive the state funding they need and that the newest educational resources are made available to teachers.

For the first eight years of her education career, Graves-Strieter taught special education in Darke and Greene Counties as well as in Kentucky and then served as the special education coordinator for the Sugarcreek School District for nine years. Graves-Strieter, who gave birth to her daughter, Ellia, two years ago, said that the part-time position in Yellow Springs will give her more time to spend with her family at their home in downtown Dayton.

Nine years ago, Graves-Strieter worked at YSHS one day a week as the work-study coordinator. Though she serves the local school district, she is employed through the Greene County Educational Services Center, where she is also involved with approving the county’s home education applications for special education students.