Sean C. Morgan
Music has always been a part of Alison Hay’s life, and her goal is to continue providing a strong education component to Sweet Home’s music students.
Hay went to work last week as Sweet Home High School’s new choir teacher, following the departure of Duncan Tuomi to graduate school. She also teaches junior high students, and beginning this year, her program has been expanded to include sixth-grade students.
Hay, 23, grew up in and graduated from high school in San Diego, Calif. She immediately attended the University of Puget Sound in Tacoma, Wash., where she earned her bachelor of music degree in 2018 and master of arts degree in teaching in 2019.
Sweet Home is her first professional post.
“I was in show choir in high school,” Hay said. “My parents have been singing forever. I grew up going to church choir rehearsal with them.”
They both play guitar, Hay said, and her mom “forced” her to harmonize.
Her middle school music program was instrumental only, Hay said, but it had a drama department.
“I was in all the musicals,” Hay said.
In high school, she was part of the show choir, but that program was vastly different from Sweet Home’s.
The choir was highly competitive and completely focused on performance, traveling to Los Angeles in the spring and touring the country for competitions.
Music theory had little to do with her high school music education, Hay said.
“They would give us the sheet music.”
But the program didn’t teach the students to read or understand it, Hay said. She mainly used the notation to follow notes going up or down. Mostly, the students learned their parts by following the piano.
The students would learn huge 8- to 12-part pieces, Hay said, but “I had to teach myself the basics.”
Hay’s high school music program was 30 years old by that point, so it was unlikely to ever develop a strong educational component, Hay said.
When she reached college, she didn’t know enough to even take music theory 101, Hay said, but she was intent on learning music thanks to the choir director her senior year of high school.
That director, Gaily Kennedy, gave Hay a music theory book and was instrumental in convincing Hay to pursue higher education.
“I wasn’t going to go to college,” Hay said.
After a year with Kennedy, she decided, “I want to do this. She’s just an incredible teacher. She was so musically literate and so knowledgeable about music in general.”
Hay also loved books, reading and writing, Hay said, and she decided to double major in English and music education.
Hay pursued her music education in college and continued performing, joining a treble choir her first year, she said. “I started understanding a little bit of theory.”
She enrolled in music lessons her freshman year and trained her voice out of “yelling,” Hay said. Her high school choir was always asked to sing louder, to project, but the instructors never told the students how. They essentially learned to “yell” their parts.
Hay enrolled in a theory class, but she looked at everything in front of her and decided to stick to English. She changed her mind about that quickly too. Taking all of the English courses, she thought about how she would spend the next four years doing that.
The work is too “static,” Hay said. Something was missing, and she found it back in the music program. She had to “overload” her schedule her senior year in order to finish her music degree.
She had hoped to join the university’s mixed choir, and after a year of music theory and voice lessons, she was accepted into the choir. She spent five years with her a cappella group.
“I love performing in small groups and as a soloist,” Hay said. She enjoys classical and pop music, and she often plays guitar and ukulele. “I still routinely go to open mic nights.”
Hay completed her student teaching at Lister Elementary in Tacoma.
She looked at Sweet Home because her girlfriend wanted to finish her bachelor’s degree in kinesiology and master’s in athletic training at Oregon State University. Hay was looking for something within an hour of OSU.
“At a bare minimum, I’m going to be here four years,” Hay said.
She attended the Oregon education work fair in April and stopped by the Sweet Home booth, where she met a Sweet Home School District representative. It was the last booth where she stopped on her way out.
As she reached the foyer, she received a phone call to come back because Assistant Principal Chris Hiaasen wanted to meet her. She learned the district was beginning to build an elementary program. District staff followed up to make sure she had applied, and when she did, they invited her for an interview.
While she wasn’t confident her interview went well, she did get the interview committee up and dancing to a Polynesian folk song, including Mark Looney, who was assistant principal last year.
She received a phone call and job offer after stopping to visit a friend in Portland on her way home, Hay said.
“I’m already blown away by the community support,” Hay said of Sweet Home, the renovations at the junior high and the Husky Field project, for example, how much can be done through a community like this.
She had previously imagined returning to her own high school and creating a program that was more educational, Hay said. She enjoyed “walking into this place, which was so educationally rich,”with posters and art covering the science and theory behind music and vocal performance.
She said her predecessor, Tuomi, oriented the program around music education – in contrast to her high school experience.
The students in Sweet Home have grown in terms of theory, Hay said, and she wants to nurture and grow it. She also loves cross-disciplinary education, noting that history, the events and context of the events and culture are part of music. She intends to continue incorporating it.
“Filling his shoes is a tough job so far,” Hay said, noting that “some of the best choirs come out of small towns because the community support can be overwhelming.”
Hay said the choir would perform four times this year, twice each semester. The fall concert will be held at 7 p.m. on Oct. 29 in the SHHS auditorium.
She also plans to continue planning trips out of state for workshops and competitions, like one organized by Tuomi last year.
“I want to give students the opportunity to travel and get feedback from more than just a choir director,” Hay said.