For eight years Laura Eilers has led a push to bring more musical and band opportunities to students and the wider community of Williams Lake.
Eilers is a passionate young teacher at Lake City Secondary School who is the band director of both the high school band and the Williams Lake Community Band. Since moving here for her first job out of university, Eilers has helped music flourish in the lakecity community.
She herself got into music in Grade 3 through the band program available at her elementary school in North Vancouver. Eilers started by playing the cello but after lugging it up a hill to get home every day, she quickly switched to the flute which she has stuck with as her primary instrument ever since.
Her love of music, however, started in a community youth band where she got the opportunity to mentor and help teach younger bandmates. As a result, when she went to university she chose to study music and education for her bachelor’s degree.
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“We have a tremendous amount of support, up here, from the community and from even the school board. They’re very supportive of our program which allows me to grow the program and to just take them on trips and do all that fun stuff,” Eilers said.
Out of school, Williams Lake was Eilers’ first job which she admits was a little intimidating as it required a move from the Lower Mainland to the Interior. However, a few friends who lived in the area encouraged her to take the job and so she took the plunge.
“I love the community and I love the job. The job is really good and it’s fantastic the support we get and the band parents are really awesome,” Eilers gushed. “The kids are also fantastic which makes my job really easy. I love the feel I get from having kids succeed and I love the challenges that come with having to push the kids and the work that goes into it.”
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Since Eilers has come to Williams Lake, she has run a full ever-expanding band program for Grades 7 to 12 and music program. This now includes separate bands for Grades 7 to 12, a Senior Tour Band, a Junior Tour Band, a Jazz Band and a new band forming this year for students who wish to go above and beyond by playing more challenging music.
She also loves her ability to take her band students on trips, both national and international, like the band’s upcoming trip to Germany, Poland and the Czech Republic this March. A two-year affair, any student from Grade 8 to 12 can be enrolled in the tour band program and get the opportunity to embark on the trip, like 26 lucky lakecity youth this year.
While there they’ll perform at three different venues and get the opportunity to attend a Bach concert and visit a salt mine in Poland all while enjoying the beautiful architecture and culture surrounding them.
“To play in a venue that’s not even in their own country is very exciting for them and the fact that we’re playing at this beautiful church in the Castle District (of Prague) is very exciting for them,” Eilers said. “It will be lots of fun for the kids to take that in.”
All this exponential growth, however, Eilers couldn’t have managed to achieve without her coworker Dena Baumann who teaches at Lake City Secondary Columneetza Campus. Baumann has supported Eilers for years and often will team-teach band classes with Eilers, due to the sheer numbers they now manage.
The two of them working together combined with support from across the community made the band program flourish naturally in Eilers’ eyes. Both she and Baumann want every student with a musical interest to be exposed to band and be involved in the program as much as they want to be.
Her involvement with the Williams Lake Community Band has led to a much closer relationship with her program and the venerable band.
Many of her students have already joined the community band which allows them to learn even more from veterans with decades of experience.
“Even now the community band has grown as well, it’s a lot of fun watching the connections,” Eilers said. “The community band really enjoys having the kids participate, they love hearing what the kids have been doing.”
Something Eilers has always loved about band and music is its universal ability to form connections and bring people together. No matter what language you speak or who you are, once you know how to read sheet music you’ll be able to do it anyplace, anytime.
“I just love the relationship building, I just love seeing how the kids in the band program draw on each other’s excitement and abilities. They’re all friends, doesn’t matter what the grade is,” Eilers said. “It’s fun watching them succeed and just take what I know and embellish it through their instruments.”
patrick.davies@wltribune.com
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