Retiring Thurber music teacher honoured by former students in emotional final concert

Mann said she didn’t want a party but had a fun idea to see more of her former students and learn about what they’ve accomplished since graduating high school.

The two students then contacted all of the students Mann had taught and saw graduate during her time at Lindsay Thurber to see if they’d be interested in performing.

Mann expected just a few to come, but an incredible 60 former students stepped on stage at the Arts Centre at Red Deer Polytechnic to honour their teacher.

She said there were students on stage from every year, except for two, whom she taught at Lindsay Thurber.

“When you do this job, you’re not there to prepare kids to become music teachers or anything like that. The whole point is to expose them to music and hope that they enjoy it enough to want to continue to keep it in their lives in some way,” she said. “When some of them do go on to pursue music beyond high school, that’s just the icing on the cake.”

(Image Credit: Supplied)

One of the former students who helped organize the performance, Mann said, is a full-time music teacher in Red Deer.

Several others have also gone on to music education, and some are full-time performing musicians.

The concert at RDP was actually the annual year-end performance with her current band students.

In front of a near sold-out crowd, her current Thurber students performed before her former students joined on stage to all perform together.

“I was just so humbled and so pleased that so many of them would take the time to come back and reconnect not only with me but with their classmates,” she said. “My message to any former students would be that if it’s been a while since they touched their instruments, maybe this reignited a spark that maybe they want to continue playing… It’s a real gift to be able to share that with students over the years. My goal for them is to take whatever they learned and share it with others. It meant a lot to me for them to be there.”

Mann spent 23 years as the music teacher at Lindsay Thurber High School.

Her teaching career began while covering for a teacher on maternity leave at Eastview Middle School, but after one semester, she accepted a teaching role at Westpark Middle School. She spent a few years at Westpark before teaching at Central Middle School in Red Deer for six years.

That ultimately led her to Lindsay Thurber High School.

“We don’t do this for any kind of recognition, but to be able to finish it off and see all of those people again one last time was amazing,” Mann said. “The music community is one big family.”

by Ian Gustafson

Retiring Thurber music teacher honoured by former students in emotional final concert

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