A Yellowknife Music Teacher has been recognized for his unique teaching methods with a national award.
From Ecole St Joseph School in Yellowknife, Stephen Richardson was selected as the 2024 MusiCounts Teacher of the Year award. This award is designed to recognize music teachers who display an incredible level of creativity and ingenuity in teaching their students.
Kristy Fletcher, the President of MusiCounts, shared some of the qualities that they look for in selecting the recipient of this award.
“When we are looking at the teacher nominees, they provide us with a significant amount of information. We receive packages from each of the nominees, and what we’re trying to pull out of it is a teacher who goes above and beyond what their standard curriculum might look like. Any music teacher in this country is pretty amazing in what they’re able to do with the amount of limited resources that so many of them have.
“In Stephen’s case he’s taking a lot of his own personal experiences as a touring musician, as someone who is involved really in every aspect of touring. He takes all of this information and he packages it and then presents it to his students in a way that makes it interesting and makes them understand that they can get involved in the music industry, not just as an artist, but really as a career path.”
The event was kicked off by a quick performance by the Yellowknives Dene Drummers, and introductions by the school principal, Mayor Rebecca Alty, and Ms. Fletcher. A quick video presentation was shown talking about some of Richardson’s work and background. Representatives from MusiCounts, and its partner Anthem Entertainment, then gathered together to share with the kids all of the multiple ways that they can take part in the music industry, whether that be as a performer, or as a producer.
(Photo by Connor Pitre/True North FM Staff)
The announcement that Richardson would be receiving this award was made several months ago, and when asked about how it felt to finally receive the award, he said it felt “surreal.”
He also shared what had first inspired him to pursue music as a career.
“Well I was always into listening to music, and I just loved it. I grew up in a very small town, Grand River, Nova Scotia, population might have been seventy five people, so it was a pretty small place. My mother was a fantastic singer, my father was a good singer as well, so I would always be listening to music and then I kind of came off tapes into CDs around Grade 10.
“I was heavy into writing. My first degree is in English and Creative Writing, so I was going around to barbecues and parties with lyric books I’d make, see a guitar player, and say ‘can you put these words to music?’ That didn’t go very well. Then I had a friend that just said why don’t you just try and pick up the guitar yourself?”
Richardson takes a very unique approach to teaching music in his class. Not only does he allow and encourage his students to write their own songs, but he will also take images from film and video games, and have his students create their own score to replace the existing music.
The positive attitude of Stephenson’s classroom is evident in how enthusiastic the children in attendance were for their beloved music teacher.
MusiCounts is already taking applications for next year’s award.
