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Students mobilized into vibrant music program

Surrattsville teacher spearheads marching band formation

Thursday, Oct. 27, 2005

Click here to enlarge this photo Lawrence Jackson Jr.⁄The Gazette Valerie Dent, Surrattsville High School’s band director and music department head, conducts the school band preparing for their next performance. Dent is the recipient of an $11,000 grant from Councilwoman Marilyn Bland for her work with the music program at the school in Clinton.

‘‘My kids become my family as you see,” she said. ‘‘They have all called me mom at one point or another.”

Nine years after coming to Surrattsville High School, Dent has single-handedly expanded the school’s music department from a dwindling program with a 12-person band and a chorus of 30, to one that boasts an award-winning marching band of 125 and an instrumental music department of 150.

‘‘When I got here nine years ago ... we had no uniforms (and) instruments were missing,” she says. ‘‘We needed to upgrade the room and to get students excited to be here.”

Myra Johnson, a parent who helps with the band’s booster club, says that her 11th-grade son Mickey switched schools so that he could participate in Dent’s music department. Johnson said Mickey was even anxious to come back from his family’s summer cruise in order to practice his snare drums.

‘‘He didn’t want to miss band camp,” she said.

Dent, who has 19 years of experience teaching music, says that when she first moved to Clinton she dreamed of working at Surrattsville.

‘‘I walked around the track and I prayed for this job ... and then I was recruited and (the position) wasn’t even open,” she said.

She was hired specifically to build up the school’s music department. From the start, Dent says she tried everything from speaking to students about music on Back to School Night, to bringing Surrattsville’s marching and concert band to perform at middle schools in order to ‘‘basically entice students to play instruments,” she said.

Her basic band program, which she started three years ago, is another method to hook kids on music. Through the program, students are given the opportunity to try any instrument, which they can borrow for the entire school year.

‘‘(The key) is letting them play the instrument they want to play and always pushing them 100% and never letting them talk negative,” she said. Dent also says her way of broadening students’ musical knowledge is to ‘‘bait them” with the music they listen to on the radio and gradually expose them to other genres, like classical. Throughout the school year, she takes her students on musical outings to the Kennedy Center and the Peabody Institute and to the music departments at universities. She says the exposure to the cultural arts and higher education through music allows children to not only achieve more as musicians, but also to strive to accomplish more in their education as a whole.

‘‘It tells them to use their musical knowledge to help them do what they want to do,” she said. ‘‘Even if that’s not necessarily music.”

She’s also built up the resources of her department through years of fundraising. Her first year at Surrattsville, she raised $33,000 for the uniforms the department was lacking. And since then her efforts haven’t stopped. Dent, along with students and parents collaborate regularly to sell everything from pizza to cookies to raise money. Dent also applies for countless grants, she says, and in September, she was awarded a grant for more than $11,000 – her largest ever – from District 9 County Councilwoman Marilynn Bland.

‘‘I was ecstatic. Words can’t express,” she said. ‘‘I want my kids to have a positive opportunity to have better things in life, starting with their education in music here at Surrattsville High School.”

With the new money, Dent will purchase new chairs and uniforms and will replace the worn, brown carpet on the band room floor.

‘‘My goal is to have a full orchestra here in two more years,” she said. Currently, she has a small string ensemble of six. And her ultimate goal is to build a new music suite.

‘‘We’ve outgrown this one,” she said.

In addition to teaching, Dent is working towards her master’s degree in musical education. She also plans to earn her doctorate.

‘‘My dream is to eventually work at the college level. There’s not too many female band directors,” she said.

Her secrets for making it work? Wonderful parents for starters, she says.

‘‘She’s the best band director in all of Prince George’s County,” said Surrattsville Parent Leon Carey.

‘‘She is the music department,” said PTSA President Patricia Smith Brim. Both Carey and Brim volunteer a great deal of their time to help Dent run her music department and with the band’s booster club.

The rest of the help, Dent says, comes from having good kids and a good community.

‘‘I keep dreaming to get that perfect band,” she laughs. ‘‘So you just keep striving and pushing for it and each year you envision the perfect year.”

E-mail Erin Henk at ehenk@gazette.net.