MONONA — “Music education is a central part of growing the whole child,” said music teacher Daniella Binzak from Immaculate Heart of Mary School in Monona. “I try to make sure by the time my students leave that they can read about music, write about music, think about music, and participate in music however they might want to in the future.”
Binzak has been teaching music full time at IHM for the past nine years. She teaches 3K all the way up to eighth grade. Students in middle school are able to sign up for electives, which in practice allows Binzak to offer three different mixed-age music classes.
“I’m teaching ukulele, theater, and piano,” said Binzak. “I’ve learned over the years that general music in middle school can be really hard [in terms of] their engagement and their interest, so doing it this way is really good for everyone.”
In addition to that, she leads the IHM youth choir, which she said has grown substantially over the years. The choir is composed of children from both the school and the parish. They sing at Sunday Mass once a month.
“We actually have 55 members here in the choir, which is fantastic,” she said.
New tradition
In May of 2021, Binzak organized the school’s first outdoor concert.
“We were able to put up risers right behind my classroom,” she said. “There’s a concert slab that looks kind of down a hill to our big field, and the parents and families were able to sit socially distanced in the field. The students performed one grade level at a time, and it was like a natural stage which was really cool.”
While the idea for the outdoor concert came about due to the pandemic, the event was so popular that they decided to do it again last year and will likely have another performance in 2023.
“It’s kind of been a beautiful silver lining of all that pandemic craziness,” Binzak said. “We have this nice new tradition. I think we’ll keep doing [it] because it’s really fun.”
Musical background
Binzak’s love for music began when she was a child.
“I grew up singing in church choirs, participating in music in school, but I didn’t really think of it as a career option until I was in high school,” she said. “I participated in the National Catholic Youth Choir (NCYC).”
The National Catholic Youth Choir is a summer program offered by the St. John’s University in Collegeville, Minn.
“I got to interact with amazing professors and educators who were musicians, as well as student singers from around the country,” she said. “We stayed on campus and rehearsed, and then took a bus tour around the Midwest.”
It was through that program that got her thinking about majoring in music in college.
She ended up pursuing a music degree from the University of North Carolina and volunteered as a student conductor at the Newman Center there.
“That just further solidified my goals of working in music education,” she said. “I got my undergraduate in vocal performance and then my master’s in education and was able to start working in Catholic schools right away.”
She appreciates the opportunity IHM has given her to teach music full time and overall loves the supportive environment at IHM.
In terms of how her job inspires her faith, she said, “I think working with kids, seeing the world through their eyes, is a huge experience of faith for me. I think being with them, praying with them, incorporating prayer into their lives in the role of an educator certainly keeps me focused on my prayer life as well as introducing them to music I love from the Church.”