After an abrupt goodbye from the last music teacher, Lakeland High School is excited to welcome a new teacher to fill this position.
Dr. Michael Keepe is the newest addition to LHS staff, and will hopefully be a great addition to our school.
After teaching in Arizona for years, he and his family decided they needed a change in scenery and that change led them to Lakeland.
After visiting a local friend, Dr. Keepe and his wife fell in love with the area and decided this was where they wanted to be.
“I moved here about 7.5 years ago, and before I moved here, I was the professor of saxophone at the University of Arizona and Pima College,” Dr. Keepe said. “My family decided that we did not want to live in the desert anymore, so we came up here to visit a friend of mine who is a music director.”
Until he got the job here at LHS, he was a stay at home dad and he began to work at Blacksheep as a manager.
As soon as he saw that there was an open position to teach here, he jumped at the opportunity and applied. He was in close contact with Mark Sescilla (the former band director at Lakeland), and he thought he would be a great fit for the position.
“Mark Sescilla is a great guy and the band community here is really close knit, and a lot of people care about him, and I do too, and I really wanted to see that his band program continued on a positive footing,” Dr. Keppe said.
Dr. Keepe’s original goal in contacting Mr. Hoffman was to see if there was any way he could help around the school or teach the saxophonists here. He was met with a pleasant surprise when he was offered the position of Band Director at our school.
Being a new teacher is hard enough, but for him to become a part of our school halfway through the year can be extremely hard and stressful. For him, however, it was a breeze.
“I feel like I have adjusted pretty quickly, because the students are so welcoming and great, really friendly, and I really do not have many issues in general,” Dr. Keepe said. “For me, it is just getting to know what the program has been doing, and trying to get caught up, as well as learning names. Honestly, it has been a pretty smooth transition for me.”
All the students seem to really enjoy him, and his ways of teaching, which helped him get a good foothold here at LHS.
“I think Mr. Keepe is going to be a great addition to our school,” Edmonds said. “He gives off Mr. Sescilla vibes, so I think he is going to be a very good addition to our program. His teaching style is mostly the same as what I am used to, but it is different given that sometimes if we are really not good at a song he will cut it, whereas with Sescilla we just kept going.”
A new teaching style can be difficult for students to grasp, but with Dr. Keepe’s connections to Mr. Sescilla, students feel good about the program and trust his teaching style will help them improve.
“I really like his teaching style because, like I said before, a lot of it is what I am used to already,” Edmonds said.
For a teacher in a subject like music or band, teachers have to be good at connecting to students, and be extra attentive to everyone’s needs, whereas in a regular classroom the curriculum is taught, and it is not required for everyone to learn at the same pace.
For this reason, band teachers must have certain qualities that give students someone to look up to and respect, and Dr. Keepe is doing a wonderful job of this.
“He is funny, he knows when he makes mistakes, and he admits to it, and he is trying to establish a program of discipline and musical excellence, and I really like that part of him,” Edmonds said.
LHS is extremely lucky to have found Dr. Keepe, as he is someone that students are able to learn from, and look up to.
He is a strong leader, and a great musician, who will no doubt be a great fit for Lakeland students.
“I have heard such great things about this school,” Dr Keepe said. “Everybody I have talked to always says how it is such a great school, so I just feel immediately welcomed, which is a relief, so I am really honored to be here.”
