For his commitment to education and his impact on Eudora students, Johnson was recently awarded the 2021 Wolfe Teaching Excellence Award from the University of Kansas.
Between early morning band practices, after-school activities, weekend events and summer band camp, being a band director is a busy job.
Each day, Damian Johnson arrives in the classroom by 7 a.m. to prepare to spread the joy of music to Eudora high school and middle school students.
That passion has made a difference, with the band program growing from 30 students when he started in Eudora in 2014, to the 62 high schoolers in the program this year. Johnson said enrollment in the program is projected at 70 students next year.
For his commitment to education and his impact on Eudora students, Johnson was recently awarded the 2021 Wolfe Teaching Excellence Award from the University of Kansas.
The honor is awarded annually to a high school educator nominated by university seniors. The award recognizes teachers who encouraged and positively influenced students to dream, aspire and persevere.
Johnson was nominated by not just one, but two EHS graduates: Emma Schmidt and Jesse Dennison.
Johnson said an educator never really knows the impact they have on a student, so receiving this award tangibly expresses that his students remember him.
“When an award like this comes across your desk, you’re just kind of taken aback,” Johnson said. “It’s one of those moments where you can see, OK, I actually had an impact, or I actually made a difference in this child’s life. That’s what we like to do as teachers.”
As a band director, Johnson said he has the unique opportunity of teaching a group of students from when they begin band in middle school through when they graduate high school. This year, Johnson will graduate the first class he started as middle schoolers, which he said is a unique experience.
“Whatever they struggle in with music is my fault,” Johnson said. “Whatever they succeed in with music is partly attributed to me, but mostly my students and the drive that they have.”
Schmidt and Dennison both graduated in 2017, meaning they only had Johnson as a director for the last three years of their band experience.
Dennison said when he saw the email inviting students to nominate a high school educator, it was a “no brainer” who he’d pick.
“Music was a big part of a lot of our lives,” Dennison said. “He made it something that was worth pursuing. He made it something to look forward to each day.”
At his previous school in Hiawatha, Kansas, Johnson was able to greatly expand and improve the program. Dennison said he remembers being excited to work with Johnson knowing he would similarly be able to grow Eudora’s program.
“It was exciting to think about and to be a part of the first era of Eudora band to be led by him,” Dennison said.
Johnson spends his mornings at the high school teaching concert band, an applied music course and jazz ensemble, before he heads over to the middle school for his afternoon classes where he gets to see sixth, seventh and eighth grades in separate classes.
“So I get to see all of my kids every day, which is kind of my dream schedule,” Johnson said.
As a junior in high school, Johnson said he gave up playing sports in favor of marching band. He said from that moment on, he knew he wanted to work in music education. For Johnson, it’s all about the time he can spend with his students.
“I’m very specific about why I choose where I get to work,” Johnson said. “[At Eudora] I’m able to have access to the kids from when they’re in fifth or sixth grade all the way through their senior year. They have me as their band director the whole time.”
It’s not just the students he gets to interact with, Johnson said the Eudora community has always been supportive of the band program. Because of the pandemic, the band has not hosted its usual events like dinners before games and competitions.
Without these events, he said the parents he would normally see several times a week, he hadn’t seen at all until the first band concert of the year a couple of weeks ago.
“We’ve had support from the community for years,” Johnson said. “We have never lacked support in our community for music, which is great.”
As the Wolfe Teaching Excellence recipient, Johnson received $3,000 from the university and Eudora High School received $1,000.
Reach reporter Cami Koons at [email protected].
To donate to support our community journalism, please go to this link: tinyurl.com/y4u7stxj