Working at a Title I school like Zion-Benton Township High School can be challenging, but Director of Bands Shan Kazmi only sees the positives. “Our students are great. I know people will say that kids are the same everywhere, but the choir director and I believe that our students at Zion-Benton are the best around,” he says with a smile. “Every single guest who has interacted with our band and choir students have commented on how polite and nice they are. Our performing arts students take so much pride in what they do.”
Kazmi goes on to say, “The other reward is just the joy of the grind. I have to work hard here, but it’s not really work when you love what you do. It does challenge me to do things differently than what I learned in college and student teaching, but as a result, I feel like I am a pretty versatile teacher and can adapt on the fly.”
His versatility and adaptability came in handy as he grew the Zion-Benton Township Band program. “We started with two bands, three choirs and a guitar class. Now, we offer four choirs, four bands, AP Music Theory, a music production course and two levels of class piano,” he says proudly. “I wrote the proposals and curriculum for our two additional band classes, our music production course and the AP Music Theory course. We also expanded our faculty to three full-time teachers.”
One of the bands Kazmi started is Beginning Band for high school students with no prior music experience. “When we looked at courses in our building, we realized there was an entry-level class for literally everything except band,” he said. “Post COVID, there were a lot of students who missed the opportunity to join band in middle school, and we weren’t doing them justice by placing them in a freshman-level band with students who had played for 3+ years.”
In Beginning Band, Kazmi starts from scratch with students and teaches them to play and read music. By the end of the course, they are prepared to continue on with Intermediate Band, the school’s entry-level ensemble for students with experience. “Beginning band has gained a lot of traction,” Kazmi exclaims. “Each week, I have at least one student ask me how they can join!”
In addition to extra ensembles and courses, enrollment has skyrocketed from 50 to more than 140 students “It takes a village,” Kazmi says humbly. “The first place I looked was the middle school programs who sent students to us. There was no shortage of students in middle school band — they just weren’t making it to high school. As a high school program, your middle school program is your lifeline.”
Kazmi immediately forged relationships with his middle school colleagues and attended nearly every event they had — 5th-grade recruitment, concerts, booster meetings, summer camps. He brought middle school students to the high school to perform alongside the marching band. “This alleviated some of the ‘scariness’ of high school band,” he explains.
Kazmi also focused on fundraising. “I have always operated with a ‘something-is-better-than-nothing’ philosophy when it comes to fundraising,” he says. “The little things add up over time, whether it’s a car wash here, a restaurant night or even running a concession stand for an event at school. Our most lucrative fundraiser is selling World’s Finest Chocolate Bars. They sell for a dollar and most people have a dollar to spend. Plus, it’s chocolate!”
Fun fact: In 1939, the Zion-Benton band program was the first program to have a commercial product fundraiser. It was with the World’s Finest Chocolate because the plant is located in Zion.
Most of the early fundraising efforts during Kazmi’s tenure went to purchasing instruments and equipment. “When I started teaching at Zion-Benton, most of our instrument inventory was 30+ years old,” he says. “Now, funds go toward student travel and working with guest artists and clinicians.”
