Band Director Selected To Attend Academy

Jackson County Schools Band Director Carroll Gotcher has been selected to attend this year’s Tennessee Arts Academy Summer Institute.

The academy selects 350 educators from various forms of arts each year to attend the academy to meet and learn new teaching techniques. Gotcher said he is honored to attend the academy.

“We get to have conversations about ways that we can empower our students,” Gotcher said. “Maybe inspire them and advocate for them in all of their other classes and all of their other aspects of life.”

Gotcher has been the school’s band director since 1994. Gotcher said he hopes to take home everything he has learned to better his students.

“There are kids that can’t express themselves well in any other way than through the arts,” Gotcher said. “And so if we can give them the tools that they need and the space that they need to express themselves and to really grow into who they are. I think that’s important and anything that I can do to enhance experience, I’m willing to do.”

Gotcher said the academy has speakers who are some of the top dancers, musicians, and directors of broadway plays.

“It’s been really interesting to hear their path and how similar their paths are,” Gotcher said. “There was always that one teacher that allowed them this or that one teacher that pushed them towards something and it makes us want to be that teacher for some kid in the future.”

The academy is a week-long event held at Bellmont University.