MOUNT VERNON – Sometimes special effort is a requirement; other times, it is the product of love. For Dr. Timm Mackley, superintendent of the Knox Educational Service Center (ESC), it is the latter, the blending of his love of music and his commitment to the students he serves.
Each morning shortly before the start of school, Mackley waits in the first-floor commons area of the ESC-operated Knox Learning Center. He waits for the middle and high school students who will arrive for the music class he is about to teach. There is nothing in his contract that requires him to teach the class; he does it to enrich the lives of youngsters by sharing the passion for music that has shaped his life since he was handed a trombone at age 10.
The Learning Center is a K-12 alternative school. Mackley describes it as a new opportunity for the kids there.
“Many of our students have been formally identified with emotional disabilities,” Mackley said. “They can’t navigate their home-school environments. They need a quieter setting and flexibility with their time not found in a traditional school.”
On any given day, he will introduce his young audience to music icons most of them have never heard of – the Supremes, the Bee Gees, the Eagles, Pink Floyd, Queen, Chuck Berry – as their performances are projected onto a video screen. He shares the stories of Dean Martin and Sammy Davis Jr. Before Christmas, he traced the history of Handel’s “Messiah.”
“My goal always is to give the kids the best we can give them,” Mackley said. “Like all the fine arts, music speaks to the heart. Music reflects universal human experiences, thoughts and feelings.”
The music class is a small part of Mackley’s day. As superintendent of the ESC, 380 Martinsburg Road, for nearly 12 years, he manages the daily administrative responsibilities that come with supporting seven client districts – Centerburg, Clear Fork Valley, Danville, East Knox, Fredericktown, Mount Vernon and the Knox County Career Center. He also directly supervises the ESC’s two programs, the Knox Learning Center and the Knox Preschool at Mount Vernon’s New Hope Early Education Center.
But music has been Mackley’s lifelong passion since high school. Through the years, he was a trombonist in the Ohio State University Marching Band and then a band director at Northridge, Cloverleaf and Hamilton high schools. After earning a master’s degree in education administration from Miami University and a doctorate from Ohio State University, he went on to a number of administrative roles, including serving as superintendent in several school districts.
When the workweek approaches, Mackley turns serious attention to his preparations for the morning music class in an unwavering attempt to connect with the thoughts and feelings of kids who have a variety of special needs.
“I create an entire unit that has several sections, including videos built into a PowerPoint,” he said. “Each day is timed for half an hour.”
The music class began four years ago with a few students in one high school classroom. Bob Wihl, an aide in that room, recalls that Mackley was unsure about the class at first, believing that the kids might not appreciate a daily dose of music.
“I encouraged him to stick to it,” Wihl said. “Most of these kids had never heard anything but rap. I believed the kids would start to understand what this is all about. This is about the evolution of music.”
Wihl was right.
Mackley eventually moved the daily music class to the commons area in the Learning Center, the former Mount Vernon West Elementary School, where students and staff fill the room from 8:30 to 9 a.m.
“It’s a great way to start the day,” Mackley said. “We occasionally sample the great composers like Mozart, Beethoven or Tchaikovsky, but the focus of the class is on the American popular music industry.
“The lessons are built around the biggest names in the business. For example, we spent several days on the Beatles, who were unfamiliar to most of our students, and on Michael Jackson, who was somewhat familiar. But Elvis Presley – bingo! Everyone knows Elvis.”
His teenage audience had no idea who Bing Crosby was. The same fate awaited Frank Sinatra.
Mackley sometimes links music to periods of American history. He spent a week on Motown superstars Smokey Robinson, the Four Tops, the Supremes and others, relating their impact to the civil rights movement.
“The students have a standing invitation to share their own favorite music choices with the class,” Mackley said. “When they do, I often enjoy listening to their selections and learning about the current trends in the music world.
“But the contemporary music world is one that I don’t always embrace. I preview all of the students’ suggestions because so much of what they listen to and watch on social media is laced with obscenities, and fixated on violence and despair. If that is the total extent of our students’ music experience, then I want to introduce them to a brighter world.”
There are visible indications that Mackley’s efforts are having a positive impact. Students who used to frown with their arms folded have begun paying attention. Some lean forward in their seats as they did during a session that featured John Denver belting out “Rocky Mountain High” and “Thank God I’m a Country Boy.”
Live music also has been part of the class. Mackley and other members of the OSU Alumni Band have performed during Michigan Spirit Week in November. School nurse John Campbell, an accomplished musician, has demonstrated his skills on the guitar.
High school classroom aide Adrianna Trace, whose father also played guitar for the class, said she has seen the positive growth of students.
“Our kids had been listening to nothing but rap," she said, smiling. "We decided that we wanted them to experience something else – like it or not.
“I play (background) music in my room. Occasionally, a student will look up from their work and say, ‘Hey, we heard that song in music class.’ We also connect some of the music to our study of history and pop culture.”
Mackley credits much of his love for music to Charles Temple, band director at Massillon Jackson High School, when Mackley was a student there from 1965 to 1969. It was Temple who encouraged his young trombonist to pursue a degree in education at OSU.
Mackley looks back fondly on that year in elementary school when he was introduced to the trombone.
“The music teacher wanted me to play a trumpet but I couldn’t press my lips enough to blow on it, so he handed me a trombone,” Mackley said. “It turned out to be a life-changing moment, although I didn’t know it then of course. It shaped my career and was the reason I met my wife (she played a cornet).”
Mackley and his wife, Beth, have three sons and four grandchildren.
“My life has been enriched by music and I look back with gratitude to music teachers who taught me to appreciate its value and its beauty,” he said. “Music class at the Learning Center fulfills a required credit for graduation, but I hope it means much more than that to our students. Music has power. I want our students to know its power.”
