BillLindau

Manya Dunn

W. Middle instructor:
Nothing in the world like teaching and singing
From The Post, Troy, N.C., August 2005
By Bill Lindau
When she was in school, Manya Dunn thought for awhile of singing professionally.
“My teachers wanted me to follow it, to go to New York,“ she said.
Instead, she let them down -- by deciding to go into teaching. She figured her calling was to show others the way to the footlights.
And so here she is, beginning her latest year as West Middle School’s one and only music teacher. Dunn graduated from Wingate College and has been in the Montgomery County Schools for the past 25 years.
As far as she is concerned, that is where she wants to be.
Teaching and singing have been Dunn’s two main ambitions since she was a young girl. And she has turned those dreams into reality.
At West Middle School, Dunn teaches general music and chorus. She has at least two other jobs: Teaching at Trinity Music Academy, and serving for the past two years as choir director of the First Baptist Church in Troy.
Dunn is also involved in Trinity’s big productions, such as the Messiah. She is also a member of the Order of the Confederate Rose. Her Southern heritage is something else dear to her heart; all eight of her great-great-grandfathers fought in the Civil War. She once sang in Raleigh on Flag Day (Confederate, that is). She has sung at Memorials and dedications.
Dunn has loved to sing all her life, and she has made a livelihood turning youngsters on to the joys of music, how it really beats smoking dope any day of the week.
“Singing was an escape for me,” Dunn says of her childhood. “I’d sing a song about a faraway place and imagine I was in that place.”
She added that teaching was another of her ambitions as a little girl.
Instead, she decided teachers wanted her to go to New York to pursue a career as a professional musician.
She had the distinction of attending Wingate when that school had its first-year music program.
“We were the guinea pigs, so to speak, getting into a new curriculum there.”
She has also worn two hats at West Middle School alone, teaching dramatics; her classes have put on some musicals. This year, however, the music program will work on competitive performing. She says the school’s principal, Mike Penninger, wants her to enter her students in competition.
She says this is the first time she has been able to groom students for performing competitively.
In the past years, her classes have performed “The Sound of Music,” “Oliver,” “Cinderella” and “A Christmas Carol.”
Last year, they did “The King and I” by cutting the work down to one hour for the middle schools.
“We had some fun,” Dunn said. “I hope to do it again in the future.”
Dunn hopes this year she and Bernadette Montes at East Middle School can get their classes together and put together a countywide performance.
“We did that once or twice at Trinity, with all the elementary and middle schools,” she said. “Bring the county together and do some performances.”
This academic year, her schedule consists of nine groups of students, including a home base and eight classes, averaging 30 students per class in the schedule. The sixth-graders meet for nine weeks, and some seventh- and eighth-graders will meet for nine weeks as well. All the students have the option of going another nine weeks, and she has an “honors chorus” that meets year-round.
Dunn mentioned a few former students that have become successful in the field of music. John Willoughby is one. He now sings with the Charlotte Opera Company, Dunn says. He went to Trinity Music Academy and even taught some students as an alumnus. Stacy Johnson of Troy has competed in the “Gimme the Mike--Charlotte.”

posted by Bill Lindau @ 8:49 PM