For 32 years, Janine Webster has encouraged her students to push themselves into the musical spotlight.
She’s been the support beam upon which many talented music students from Chilliwack have raised themselves.
She’s coached them through endless practices and fine-tuning, led them through rehearsals, and taken them everywhere from the Kiwanis Music Festival at Kwantlen, to Musicfest Canada, and countless local performances.
More often than not, Webster’s students bring home the hardware as a shiny reflection of their hard work and their achievements.
But now it’s time for her to take a final bow.
Yes, the much-beloved ‘Webby’ is retiring.
“I’ve had 50 Septembers,” she says, between her own schooling and her teaching career. But this September, she’ll break that refrain and strike out on her own accord.
“There is so much I want to do,” she says. “I want to play more.”
She and her husband, retired music teacher Matthew Webster, have a little place in Victoria close to the water. She plans on buying a small apartment-sized piano that will allow her to keep music alive in her new surroundings. But there’s oh-so-much-more.
She lists her ideas off in rapid succession: “I want to knit. I want to cross stitch. I want to read. I want to walk.”
They want to watch baseball games, and spend time with family.
And that means they’ll be travelling. The plan is for the Websters to hit the road this September. They’ll pack up the car and drive across the country to Ontario, far away from the band room, daily lesson plans, and report cards.
She’s certainly earned the break — teaching music is as tiring physically as it is mentally— but she’s not quite ready to say goodbye to teaching forever.
“I’ll be keeping my teaching certificate,” she says. “I don’t plan on going back anytime soon but it will be good to have if the right thing comes along.”
It’s hard to imagine a prolific musician like Webster slowing down for retirement, but she insists she plans to take it easy — for now. She’s already had a few offers that could keep her busy; there are supervisory roles, adjudicating and of course, conducting.
It’s also hard to imagine her doing anything but teaching and performing music. But as a young UVic graduate, she said that she never imagined she’d be where she is today.
“I didn’t dream I’d be able to survive more than 10 years in music,” she says.
But she thrived, and so did her students. Many of them have gone on to build solid music careers, including professional flautist Anh Phung (The Bombadils), drummer Dylan Weightman, and Grammy-winning Christian musician Bernie Herms.
Webster’s career spans over three local schools and music departments, starting at Chilliwack secondary in 1985.
“CSS performed at Expo 86 and that was my first year,” she says, grimacing at the memory. She quickly learned that she’s a “builder” when it comes to programming. She built up the music program at CSS, and soon there was room for more teachers there. At least, there were portables, until the new campus was built years later.
Then, she moved on to Sardis secondary, in 1998, where she built the string orchestra. It was there that Webster earned accolades of her own. In 2006, she was given the Keith Mann Award for Outstanding Band Director.
“It was at the National Arts Centre, and all my kids were there, and didn’t know it was coming,” she says. “And they all stood up and applauded.”
When G.W. Graham was in the planning stages, it was to be an arts-based school. She jumped on board to become the head of fine arts. While the plans to create a fine arts school there didn’t come to fruition, Webster still pushed ahead with building the music program up.
“We are so huge we don’t have enough space,” she says, looking through the window of a small music room at the school onto a young orchestra playing in the room below.
“We have 12 music blocks, but there are only eight blocks in the day,” she says.
She hopes that music programs will continue to flourish here, and is satisfied she’ll leave her students in good hands with her colleagues. But she has words of wisdom for new music teachers as they begin their own careers.
“I would tell them to offer opportunities to kids in music and share their passion for music with the kids,” she says. “It’s such a huge thing we can offer students. Just making them human. Allowing them to express themselves in a world where we often suppress them. Letting them know it’s okay to make mistakes.”