Renee Shane-Boyd is the immediate past president of the Arizona Music Educators Association. She has a long history of service in leadership positions at the school, community, regional, and state level in Arizona. She has served as Southeast Regional Band Chair, secretary and treasurer for the Arizona Band and Orchestra Directors Association, Vice President of High School Activities for the Arizona Music Educators Association, and from 2013 – 2015 she served as President for the AMEA during which time she oversaw the 75th Anniversary celebration of AMEA. She is the Fine Arts Chair for the Catalina Foothills School District where she has served on numerous curriculum and architectural committees during her tenure. She currently serves on the Board of Directors for the Tucson Arizona Boys Chorus and is president of the Parents’ Executive Committee.
In her career as a music educator, she has served as Director of Bands in the Catalina Foothills School District for 33 years where she has taught elementary, middle school, and high school concert band, jazz band and marching band in addition to numerous small ensembles. She is currently Director of Bands at Catalina Foothills High School. The program is known for its diversity and excellence in all performance areas, concert, marching, and jazz, and the marching band has consistently been the largest high school marching band in the state of Arizona for over 15 years. Her concert and jazz ensembles have performed numerous times at the Arizona Music Educators In-Service Conference, and the bands have performed nationally and internationally at venues including the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade, Hawaii, Australia, and the 2008 Pre-Olympic ceremonies in Beijing China.
Her work as a clinician and conductor includes the Southern Arizona Band Orchestra Directors Honor Band, the Arizona Elementary All-state Band, the TUSD Honor Band, NAU Summer Music Camp, and she is regularly a guest conductor with the Arizona Symphonic Winds in Tucson, Arizona.
Awards and honors include the OM Hartsell Excellence in Music Education Award, University of Arizona Honored Educator, 2009 Teacher of the Year Award in the Catalina Foothills School District, AMEA Longevity in Teaching Award, and in 2015 the Rotary International named her a Paul Harris Fellow for outstanding contributions to the community.
“The major challenges that music education will face include supporting the significant tasks of attracting, training, and preparing new teachers to be qualified to face the challenges of teaching music to this generation of learners in schools where music instruction may or may not be a highly valued part of the school curriculum.
Music teachers must not only be specialists in one musical area but teachers who can be a specialist in many areas of music in order to insure that quality instruction is given regardless of the ensemble or class type. Today’s music teachers must possess enough expertise to help their students achieve music literacy regardless of the medium so that students can experience musical success.
Music teachers must also be able to advocate for the importance of inclusion of music and the arts as core subjects for every child. While progress has been made at the national level in this area, the reality in schools is that there is a broad discrepancy of what is offered and how it is offered. Teachers must be prepared to continually work to achieve the goal of music as a core subject for all students.
NAfME faces the continual challenge of helping music teachers across the nation understand the role that the national organization plays in the continued success of music education across the country. Unless music teachers are involved in leadership in their state or at the national level they often are not aware of the ways that NAfME serves music education and music educators.
NAfME should continue the online and social media communication that has been developed over the past few years. NAfME should work with its divisional officers to help train the state MEA officers to organize and offer training to their leadership about the interconnectedness of the national and state organizations. Messages about the role of NAfME should be interwoven into all other of target goals of the association. Videos and webinars should be easily accessible to the state associations so that they can readily be used to explain this important relationship to their members.”
