How your child’s music teacher could win an ARIA Award
ARIA Awards aren’t only reserved for big names in Australia’s music industry. Here’s how your child can nominate their favourite music mentor.
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When St Andrew’s College students return to classes, they will walk a red carpet to the music room past a Hall of Fame honouring successful music, drama and creative industry alumni.
The surprise upgrade is just one of the renovations music teacher Antonio Chiappetta has been working on in between online classes with his students and home-schooling his three boys during the COVID-19 shutdown.
“The kids are buzzing about coming back,” he said.
“Music is currently the biggest elective at our school; we have kids wanting to come to this school because everyone knows what we do now.”
Mr Chiappetta was recognised for his bold arts programs – which includes students staging an annual music festival – after winning the 2019 ARIA Music Teacher of the Year.
The competition has quickly landed on the radar of schools in the three years since ARIA partnered with The Song Room to “shine a light on the importance of music to education and student engagement”, with more than 300 entries in 2019.
Mr Chiappetta, a former St Andrew’s student who has taught music there for 15 years, said he had enjoyed spending time with his wife Bianca and their three boys Guiseppe, Valentino and Giacomo during the work-from-home period.
But he found teaching music online “extremely tough”.
“One of the best things to come out of this is teachers rethinking their resources to find a way to connect with students online,” Mr Chiappetta said.
“But that’s never going to be the same as being in a room with the creative ideas sparking as you are surrounded by instruments and technology.
“And there is a real therapeutic component to what you are doing with music education.”
Mr Chiappetta is also a session musician and usually plays live gigs a couple of times a week, so with venues and studios shut down, he has been missing connecting with audiences as well as his students.
“I am seeing a lot of my industry friends go hungry. I am lucky I have a job as an educator, but I’ve lost a significant income doing gigs and sessions,” he said.
“Doing gigs and writing songs and producing is more about being part of the method to my madness – without doing those things, my teaching would be different.”
Entries for the 2020 ARIA Music Teacher of the Year award can be lodged from this week here.
Originally published as How your child’s music teacher could win an ARIA Award