The reason we have been in Ankara is to help a young high school band/orchestra teacher transition into her requirement to teach Choir, General Music, and Pre-K on top of her high school work. I guess life in foreign schools is no different than the music education world in the United States! The school is a bit unique in that it services both U.S. military families as well as the families of diplomats from all over the world (Ankara is, after all, the capitol and an embassy town). This means that although technically a U.S. Department of Defense School, it is located within a Turkish military installation, and the students don’t necessarily speak English. In fact, Russian is the second most popular language in the school.
After a very short period of time Sarah, Tommy, and I fell in love with the school, the students, and especially Elia, the music teacher. In some ways the program felt a lot like a bigger version of Rising Tide and we felt right at home. Sarah, with the help of Tommy, demonstrated a lot of ideas and by the end of the week was a favorite of the students. I taught voice lessons and worked with the choir. We all left feeling that “kids are kids” all around the world!
In addition to teaching, I was asked to review and organize the choral library. Given that I did this at UMaine, I was in heaven. It was a bizarre library made up of works from bases all over Europe and Asia Minor and most of it was 25 – 50 years old and I found several pieces of music with lyrics that were at least questionable in 2025! There were many times I missed Jason Anderson and wanted to text him images of lyrics that would probably find a teacher in court if they let middle school kids sing them! I will confess that I “borrowed” single copies of a couple of the pieces just to show to my UMaine friends when we finally return home to the U.S.
When our time in this school ended, I was really sad. The students and teachers were so grateful, and they were not shy about showing it. What was really heartwarming was how they embraced Tommy and were equally sad to see him go. He was not there on the last Friday and all the kids asked where he was!
This is a school that wants us back, and we want to return. We had a final Turkish dinner with Elia in a part of town we had not seen before, and while we ate, we made tentative plans to return in a year or so and spend one week teaching and then one week traveling out into the Turkish countryside.
