"I always knew I wanted to be a teacher," says Junice Headley who has recently retired from a 60-year career as a music teacher.
"I was a teacher from this big," she laughs, holding her hand out to a child's height.
She says she would probably have been a school teacher if she hadn't become a music teacher. However, she says, she's glad she was able to pursue a career as a music teacher because she enjoys working with students in a one-on-one relationship.
"I grew up in a musical family," she says, producing a photograph of the box grand piano her father brought from Ontario. It was her study piano.
"Dad had a really nice bass voice," she says. "He sang in church choirs when he was young."
He didn't sing as much after he came to the prairies. In the "Dirty Thirties" people were too busy working, "but everybody in the family played the piano, violin, recorder or some instrument."
Headley, then Marguerite Junice Hoover of the Glenrose district, began her teaching career in 1953, when her own teacher, Ada Treleaven, moved to British Columbia, assigning her current class of early graduate students to Headley.
She married Robert (Bert) Headley in 1956 and together they raised four children, Laura, Linda, Barry and Timothy.
The last 58 years of her career have been spent living at her current home, the one she shared with her Bert, who passed away in 2000, a few miles north of North Battleford. Today, she shares it with one of her two daughters and her granddaughter. It's a place where the Blue Jays and the Roughriders rule the airwaves and the Rider gear even extends to the shower curtain in the bathroom.
The farm home is also the location of Headley's studio, a room that has seen hundreds of junior and adult students pass through in thousands of hours of lessons.
"Teaching is satisfying," she says.
Of her junior students, she says, "It's always nice to see their personalities blossom."
For the last six years she has been in "pre-retirement," having passed her junior students on to piano teacher Dianne Gryba, while continuing to teach adults one day a week.
"I always felt I didn't really want to give up teaching because there was still something I could show people how to do, and so I went just with the adults. They were charming." She adds, with a smile, "I didn't work them as hard as the other students."
During Headley's years of full-time teaching, she taught adults in the mornings and afternoons and students after school, sometimes until 10 or 11 o'clock at night. She taught Monday through Saturday during the school term.
"I had a waiting list for years. I'm not bragging, it just happened," says Headley.
A busy schedule as a teacher combined with farm and dairy life mean being well organized. She says she often had casseroles in the oven, or salads or cold plates in the fridge.
"You have to be a smart cook when you're teaching," she says. "You have to be able to organize that meal so it's ready for the family and for when your husband comes in from the field."
Still, organization aside, there were many times the family dined to the sound of live entertainment from the studio.
Many of her students have gone on to become school teachers, music teachers, accompanists, organists and choir leaders. Some have gone on to pursue careers in fields such as law, medicine and other professions requiring good study habits as students and discipline in achieving their goals.
Headley likes to think their work ethic was influenced by their years as piano students.
She admits she has been complimented on her abilities as a teacher, but tends to give her students most of the credit.
"I've been told by festival judicators that I 'teach,' they see it in my students," she says. "I didn't quite know what that meant."
Headley may not be the kind of person who expounds on the means of her success, but one former student had this to say in a thank you note:
"I have learned a great deal more from you than at school. Not only have you taught me to love and respect music, you have taught me to love and respect myself and others."
It goes on to say, "You may not have realized how much you helped me be my unique self."
Words like these just bring a smile to Headley's face. For her, it really is all about the student.
For that reason, she tried to teach each student according to their individuality.
Averaging 40 to 50 students a year, most of them wanted to enter the local music festival. She encouraged them.
"I certainly thought festival was a good training ground," she says. Having that opportunity for critique from the adjudicators was also good for her, she says, as it gave her insight into ways to help her students improve. She adds - with a chuckle - it was also good for her if the student heard something she'd been telling them all along.
While she encouraged students to enter the music festival, she didn't insist on it, nor did she insist all her students take music exams. If they weren't interested in the exam process, she didn't force them.
"I never forced a student to do an exam, but a lot of them wanted to because it gave them that certificate that says 'I accomplished this.'"
Of course, she points out, to pursue post secondary education in music one had to take exams.
She points to well-known local accompanist and musician Gary Gansauge, who was her student, as were his siblings and all his children. Gansauge was of the sort who didn't feel the need for exams to fulfill his musical goals.
"He did not want to take exams, but he's a beautiful piano player."
Neither did she insist on the same repertoire for all her students.
"I do know that if a student was having a problem ... I would usually think it was my fault, that I'd not explained it correctly."
The next week, she'd try a different approach. If that didn't work, she'd try another one the next week."
"And if that didn't work, we'd change the piece," she laughs.
Headley says, "Everybody has a different way of learning."
She always tried to determine how they learned and what their interests were.
She used two pianos in her studio.
"One where I sit, one is where the student sits," she says. She didn't want to crowd her students.
"I didn't like to do that. I liked to demonstrate, play along with them, keep the time."
She also taught duos and enjoyed dueting with other teachers and, in 1992, she set up the Headley Family Duo-Piano Scholarship at the music festival.
The year 2009 marked Headley's 55th year of active participation in the local music festival, and that year's Battlefords Kiwanis Music Festival was dedicated to her as a long-time resident, performer, music teacher and devoted supporter of the arts.
In addition to preparing her piano students for the festival, she also accompanied singers. She remembers accompanying now famed mezzo soprano Lisa Hornung, who was also her piano student, and giving her an encouraging wink back stage.
"She said she's never forgotten that, and she came out and she just ripped through that song."
In 2009 Headley was inducted as a member of the Wall of Fame sponsored by the Frontier Mall in North Battleford.
In 2010, a Music Week recital aptly entitled Music Keeps You Young At Heart, Headley was honoured and the Meota Hobby Band, of which Headley is a member, were special guests.
At the event, Headley's four children, Linda, Laura, Barry and Tim accompanied their mother to announce the M. Junice Headley Music Education Fund, which had been set up with the Battlefords Community Foundation.
Another special guest at the event was a surprise to Headley. Her own former teacher, then 95-year-old Ada Treleaven, had travelled from British Columbia be there for the recital and the tribute to Headley.
Treleaven said the famed piano teacher, Dr. Lyell Gustin of Saskatoon, with whom both Treleaven and Headley trained, always maintained being a musician is two per cent inspiration and 98 per cent perspiration.
"Junice's career reflects that comment very well," said Treleaven.
Treleaven is now 98, and Headley called her just recently for her 98th birthday.
"She was charming and feeling very good," she says.
Headley looks back at her training with Dr. Gustin as a busy and exciting time in her life.
"He was the teacher to go to," she says. "His style and his knowledge was something to aspire to."
To attend lessons with Gustin, she would catch the bus into Saskatoon in the morning, then catch a bus across the river to Gustin's studio. There would be another walk to a theory lesson, then back across the river to a church for organ lessons before returning to the bus depot and home.
The day was "filled in nicely with music," she laughs.
Headley obtained the Associate of the Royal Conservatory of Music, Toronto teacher's diploma in 1956. She has also attended summer classes at Banff School of Fine Arts and Brandon College of Music and master classes and workshops conducted by well known pedagogues.
In 1980, Headley attended the International Society of Music Educators Conference in Warsaw, Poland. Afterwards, she spent another five years of intensive training with Dr. Gustin, resulting in a master's level Licentiate of Trinity College of Music, London, England (LTCL) teacher's diploma.
While she is more comfortable at the piano, she plays the organ for church services, and she plays the piano when she directs the St. Paul Anglican Choir, something she continues to do despite being "retired."
"As long as I can do that I'll be happy," she says, "and I have the [Meota] Hobby Band. We practise every week and play once or twice a month."
Throughout her career she has played at countless weddings and entertained at numerous events. Several times she played the Vice Regal Salute when Saskatchewan's lieutenant governors visited the community.
She has also played at more funerals than she can count.
"I just hope whatever I've done has helped them to get through their difficulties of the time."
She has a treasure trove of mementos, including cards from all those funerals, that she hopes to put into scrapbooks now that she has retired. At one time she had thought of quilting as a nice retirement hobby, but she sees the scrapbooking as something that could take a while.
Quilting, she thought, would be something she could see when she was done, unlike music that, once played, is just a memory.
"Music is very ethereal. It happens and it's gone."
Her mementos also speak to her other interests. She was an active member of the Women's Institute for many years.
"It was very educational," she says.
She joined in 1950, served as president and treasurer twice had held six of seven convenorships. She attended numerous provincial, national and international conferences and received a life membership in 1985. The local WI is no longer active, but Headley continues to be a WI member at large.
She has also been involved with the Sons of Norway, especially enjoying preparing traditional Norwegian dishes. Her mother was born in Norway.
Of course she was also involved in the Battlefords Registered Music Teachers Association. She remembers organizing an event recognizing the 35th anniversary of the branch as well honouring local teacher Ethel Weare. An invitation was spent out to one of Weare's close friends, Joyce Johnson of Regina.
The reply came back "we" would be happy to attend. The "we" meant her husband the lieutenant governor was also attending.
Headley says they were happy to have the queen's representative coming, but some quick changes had to be made.
"We were having a laid back early supper of not-difficult things, with paper plates," she says. "That got changed to china and silverware!"
They had about a week's notice.
"It was exciting, nerve-wracking, too, but we pulled it off," she says.
After 60 years as a music teacher, Headley placed an advertisement in the paper thanking her students and announcing her retirement. It caught the attention of Gustin House in Saskatoon, a legacy of Dr. Gustin's impact on Saskatchewan's music scene. She had a call, asking her for some memories of her times as a student to be included in an upcoming newsletter.
She remembers him telling his students during pedagogy classes, if you became aggravated by a student, always walk out of the room, calm yourself down and then come back.
"He never walked out of the room on me," she laughs. "So that was nice."
She adds, "I only did it once."
She had a student with a great deal of promise who decided not to take lessons any more.
"I remember just feeling really upset because she had made this terrible decision."
Headley went to the bathroom where she cried, then washed her face, returned to the studio and dealt with it.
"I played for her wedding afterward so maybe she didn't feel as bad as I did," she laughs.
