Beloved MMS Band Director Turns in Baton

When Patricia Kroth stepped onto the stage for the final MacDonald Middle School concert of the 2022-2023 school year, casual observers wouldn’t have known something was different. Kroth, known as Patti by her colleagues and Mrs. Kroth by her hundreds of students, went about the concert as she had any other.

But it wasn’t quite like any other concert. The May 25 event was her last as a middle school band director.

“I was really nervous. I’m not usually nervous for concerts,” Kroth said in an interview with ELi. “[Usually] I’m nervous about logistics like which kids are going to forget their instrument at the school or that kind of thing. But I was really apprehensive just because I really love my job.”

Kroth, whose career has spanned 37 years, including 15 at MacDonald as the band director, announced a week before the concert that she intended to retire.

Having taught thousands of children in East Lansing alone, many of whom had never previously played an instrument, Kroth spent time with numerous classes on their way to the high school. While she said she has the energy for more, it felt like the right time to leave, while she still loves teaching.

“Truthfully, I’m the third oldest teacher in the building, and everyone else is younger than me,” Kroth said in June. “I never wanted to be one of those teachers where people would say, ‘well, it’s about time they retired.’ I would rather leave with me liking kids and kids liking me and [still] feeling like there’s always more to do.”

Kroth’s music career has been spent all over the country.

Kroth’s music career has  taken her all over the country. She started out in a small town in upstate New York and went on to attend Ithaca College. She followed her undergrad work with a master’s degree from the Eastman School of Music at the University of Rochester.

Kroth’s teaching career has included public schools in New York and South Dakota, as well as the Fort Carson Army Base middle school, as she followed her husband around the country. She then took a 10-year break, during which she had a private clarinet studio, taught as an adjunct professor at two colleges, played in an orchestra and raised her children.

In 2002, she moved to East Lansing with her husband, who joined the Michigan State University College of Music’s faculty as a bassoon professor.

By 2008, Kroth had been working as a substitute teacher at East Lansing High School when the middle school band director job opened up. While she was unsure if she wanted to go back into teaching and felt unfamiliar with the environment, Kroth applied anyway and got the job.

This was also around the time when she was met her colleague David Rosin, who was hired the same year to teach orchestra grades six through 12. When first hired, she had the challenge of teaching in three schools at once, since Whitehills Elementary and Glencairn Elementary still hosted grades five and six. This meant she had to teach classes at both those schools and MacDonald.

“Each school had its own way of doing things,” she said. “But I had a really good support system. And Mr. Rosin and I started the same year, so we had each other to lean on.”

Being back teaching middle school brought challenges and joy. Many of Kroth’s students had little musical experience and she was tasked with teaching them foundational skills that would prepare them to perform in the high school band.

When she arrived at MMS, the eighth grade band only had 18 people signed up, but grew to 30 after schedule changes. The middle school music programs also had to contend with not having band class every day because of a now-retired “A and B” day system.

The eighth-grade band program enrollment now hovers around 70 to 80 students. The middle school jazz bands, which originally had six student members, now have about 30 each.

“I think in numbers, it really improved and grew. But also I think in quality,” she said. “We do a lot with MSU – there’s always the MSU class that comes to work with us. I think our programs are a lot more visible now, by going and giving presentations at [the Michigan Music Conference].”

After taking over at MMS, Kroth’s bands continued participating in the Michigan School Band and Orchestra Festival and also began to attend an additional festival. Her bands consistently won high ratings at both events.

The children in her programs are what have mattered the most.

For Kroth, the awards, plaques and recognitions aren’t why she continued to teach for so long.

“I mean, I’ve won things. But honestly, it’s the people,” Kroth said while shedding a tear. “When I go somewhere and I run into a former student and they just give me a huge hug. Even if it’s a kid who didn’t continue with band, maybe sometimes especially because it’s a kid who didn’t continue.

“I could say what awards I’ve won and bands did this or won that but it’s actually knowing you made a difference, you know? The notes, the emails,” she said.

Kroth’s impact has been felt by a generation of East Lansing students.

Nina Largey, who graduated from ELHS in 2021 and is now pursuing a degree in Music Engineering Technology at the University of Miami, was influenced by Kroth.

“Mrs. Kroth was one of my biggest supporters in my growth as a musician,” Largey said. “Not only did she always encourage me to further myself as a musician, she always emphasized how important being a good person was. She was a big reason why I continued with music and I will forever be grateful for that.”

More recent students found Kroth to be an important part of their middle school music experience during a challenging time. Kroth’s virtual band classes during the pandemic kept many students interested in music.

“Mrs. Kroth was the only reason I stayed in band after sixth grade,” Ele Salvador, a rising sophomore at ELHS, said. “She adapted really quickly while we were online and did an amazing job keeping me engaged through a computer screen and she managed to pull us together when we came back in eighth grade,”

And for others, Kroth was a person they could trust. Nyx Zoll, another rising sophomore at ELHS, said Kroth was the first person they came out to as non-binary.

“Mrs. Kroth was really supportive and made sure she had the correct pronunciation of my name and that I felt comfortable,” Zoll said. “I really appreciated that from her, she will definitely be my absolute favorite teacher.”

A tight team of educators has helped grow the music program.

Throughout her years at MMS, Kroth and her colleagues worked to make the district’s music programs grow and thrive. The team had remained relatively unchanged since the hiring of high school band director David Larzelere in 2010. He will be joined this fall by the recently hired Holly Thornton as the MMS band director.

Rosin, who taught alongside Kroth since they were both hired, now teaches mainly high school orchestra. He spoke at Kroth’s final concert as MMS band director, along with other faculty from the MMS and ELHS bands and orchestras.

“Patti has a lot of energy, whether it’s the staff meetings, department meetings, at a conference… She just has all this energy and where it comes up, the most important spot is in her day-to-day rehearsals with students, when she’s teaching and being heard daily, or her performances,” Rosin said to the audience. “That energy is what I’m going to miss the most.”

Larzelere, Kroth and Rosin worked as a team for over a decade. This team proved to be an integral aspect of Kroth’s time at MMS.

“I can’t even describe how wonderful it is to work with like our team,” Kroth said. “It is the best collaborative team I’ve ever worked with… the things that we are able to do together, the decisions we make and the cooperation, it’s one of the reasons why I had a really hard time deciding to retire… I felt like I was breaking up the team.”

Larzelere has learned many life lessons from Kroth.

“I’ve learned how to have fun at work, not to take myself too seriously and how to balance work with still prioritizing time with my family,” Larzelere said.

According to Larzelere, when he was hired the high school bands only had 60 students between two concert ensembles. During his tenure at ELHS, the program grew to a peak of over 160 students and added another full concert ensemble.

He credits Kroth for a large part of this growth, saying in his speech at the MMS concert the growth would “not have happened without her leadership.”

“We realized that the ELHS program and the MMS program weren’t connected very well. This became our top priority,” Larzelere said. “She emphasized the joy in learning and music making. She prioritized making music with friends and making band fun while still performing at a high level.”

In his speech at Kroth’s final concert, Larzelere listed several statistics from her teaching career: She had prepared and presented over 100 concerts, mentored 10 college student teachers from schools around the state, and taken the middle school bands on seven trips to Chicago – a biannual tradition.

The last number Larzelere listed was one that Kroth didn’t expect: $2,500. That’s how much money he was able to raise by May 24 – after only three days – in order to commission a new piece of music in her honor.

Larzelere explained that commissioning works is a way to honor people who are special to certain performing groups and programs.

“Patti’s work in EL is deserving of significant recognition and having a piece written in her honor celebrates her time and legacy at EL,” Larzelere said.

Kroth reacted with surprise, and expressed excitement in her interview with ELi about seeing what would be written.

“I was so surprised and touched and honored,” Kroth said.

During the concert, several students, representing the high school, seventh grade and eighth grade bands, also came up and gave brief speeches, flower bouquets and other gifts to Kroth, along with bouquets of flowers.

Retiring from teaching does not mean Kroth is retiring.

Retirement doesn’t mean an end to music making for Kroth. She hopes to continue playing her clarinet, teaching her adult New Horizons band and being involved at the MSU Community Music School.

“It’s nice to know my music making isn’t over,” Kroth said. “It felt great to share that [last concert] with so many people.”

She will also continue to help people in non-musical ways. During the pandemic, Kroth got a degree to become a paralegal since she had briefly considered going into law when she was younger. Now, she volunteers for Immigration Legal Services, helping refugees, especially those who have fled from Afghanistan following the U.S. withdrawal, get citizenship.

“It’s been really meaningful for me and that’s something that I enjoy doing outside of school,” Kroth said. “Volunteering has been really meaningful. And I love it. I just love all the different people, getting to help them out. I’ve learned a lot.”

This work is another way Kroth is able to build relationships, something that was important to her as a teacher. Kroth would often tell students, “You’re too awesome to not be awesome,” and encourage kindness.

This is something she is able to practice herself through her volunteering.

“I just think that it helps me in a way,” Kroth said. “People are people, we just all need to be human and get to know people from other parts of the world. Everybody has a story. And everybody deserves a chance.”

Kroth’s footprint at MMS is large. She  hopes the newly band director – Thornton – can continue to take the program to new levels. She also hopes they’re able to appreciate the job as much as she has.

“I feel like I kind of loaded the bases up,” Kroth said. “Now someone just has to come after me and hit that home run.”