*This article was first published in 2020. Mahomet-Seymour Hall of Fame Inductees will be honored at the Homecoming game on Sept. 17.
By FRED KRONER
Janet Watkins’ hobby is gardening.
She enjoys the process from starting with a seed to nurturing it to life to waiting for the bloom and then enjoying the fragrance.
Her pastime emulated much of her working career.
She was a vocal music teacher – for 23 years in the Mahomet-Seymour school district – and enjoyed seeing students as young as fifth-grade being introduced to music and then following them through high school, often as they participated in a chorus, the Madrigals or a musical.
“The joy of teaching,” Watkins said, “is meeting students where they are and moving forward and growing with them. Here they are. There’s work to do here, but let’s see where we can go.
“You’re not only investing in the growth of students, you are also growing yourself. It’s hard work, but it’s great to see those humble beginnings.”
Where Watkins and her students were able to go speaks volumes about why she is one of the distinguished persons chosen for inclusion in the fourth class of the Mahomet-Seymour Education Foundation Hall of Fame.
The entire group will be inducted in September in conjunction with the high school football homecoming game.
Watkins took choral students overseas to perform and sightsee in 1997 and 2001 in Austria and Germany. There likely would have been more trips, but she noted, “then 9/11 happened, so no more.”
Her M-S choirs were selected in 1993 by Delta Records as one of 12 choirs from the Midwest to make a Christmas recording. In 1994, she accompanied a group of M-S singers who represented the state of Illinois in the D-Day 50-year Normandy Liberation Bicentennial Celebration in Washington, D.C.
Watkins spearheaded the annual Madrigal dinners and still remains active in the selection process.
Before any of this was possible, however, she had to plant the seed of interest, and hope for the best, just like she does in her garden plots.
***
After graduating from Illinois State University in three years, Watkins’ first teaching assignment was in LeRoy. She stayed three years, then took a break from the classroom for more than a decade to be a stay-at-home mother.
When she was ready to return to teaching, the M-S district had a vacancy working with students from fifth- through eighth-grade. Watkins was with that level for two years.
“My least favorite choice was fifth- through eighth-grade,” Watkins acknowledged, “but that’s where the job was.”
In hindsight, getting her foot in the door with that group was a blessing.
“They became seventh- and eighth-graders and then they became the core of the high school choir program,” Watkins said. “They laid the foundation.”
By the time she retired in 2004 as the department head for music, art and physical education, everything within the music program was working like clockwork.
Not so much in her early years.
“Every child in fifth-grade had to be in chorus,” Watkins recalled. “I had half at one time and the other half at another time, two days a week.
“The challenge was keeping kids interested that didn’t want to be there, and a lot didn’t want to be there.”
There were soon enough success stories for Watkins to reap the rewards.
“A lot of them we kept (in chorus) and I’d watch them grow,” she said. “There were a lot who were turkeys in junior high who ended up being the Madrigal jester or leader of the choir in high school.”
Regardless of their initial abilities, if the students had the interest, then Watkins had the desire to work with them.
“Students are like flowers,” she said. “They all bloom at different times. They don’t automatically come into their own as freshmen.
“I listened to every student individually. It was such a delight to see the growth and hear the individual moving forward.”
As Watkins developed the choir – which had barely 30 students when she started in 1981, but featured in excess of 200 when she retired – she learned the value of not situating students within the group in a haphazard manner.
“It was very important where I placed the student for the choral sound,” she said, “and nurturing students to be the best they could be.
“Some were followers, but could become leaders by being seated by a stronger student.”
There was a parallel, Watkins found, between her work with the choir and her work in the garden.
“How do I put the student in the place where they will accomplish the most,” she said. “That’s why I love gardening so much.
“You plant the seeds and then nurture them. You might not see the full fruit for a while, but it’s a part of the process.”
Watkins enjoyed spending the majority of her career in a school the size of Mahomet-Seymour.
“I thought this was an ideal job,” she said. “At bigger schools, you don’t get students until they are in high school and they might come from several junior highs and different modes of teaching.”
When performance time rolled around, except for the few instances where there were solos, it wasn’t about featuring an individual, it was about the sound of the whole unit.
“When the choir performs, at the end of each piece, if it sounded good, or better than good, they all shared in that group sound,” Watkins said. “It’s creating a bouquet of sound, taking different flowers that bloom at different times and at the end, they all find success in the end product.
“I was never just a music teacher. I was growing young people. Mahomet was a good place to grow students.”
Her students became accustomed to her stopping rehearsals and saying, “That was really good, but …”
Occasionally, when she brought things to a halt, she had a surprise for the group.
“I’d usually stop to make corrections,” Watkins said, “and that was what they were used to hearing, but when we hit moments in the rehearsal that were exactly what we were looking for, I’d stop and say, ‘That was wonderful.’”
***
The natural assumption is that when Watkins reflects on her award-winning career, her plethora of accomplishments would come to mind first.
There would be plenty of choices:
— She was the Illinois Outstanding Educator in 1987;
— She was Chamber of Commerce Citizen of the Year in 1999;
— She was Illinois State University’s first Outstanding Alumni of Fine Arts in 2000;
— She was the American Choral Directors Association Harold Decker Award winner for Outstanding Contribution to Music Education in 2002.
Dwelling on herself is not her style, just like she deflects praise for her selection for the M-S Hall of Fame.
“There are so many people who should be recognized way, way, way ahead of me,” Watkins said. “I’m grateful that someone sees the value of the years of teaching, but there are so many others who did many more greater things.
“It’s a matter of someone else noticing something in your teaching and making the nomination, but I don’t feel like I earned that. I wasn’t doing it in hopes of earning anything like that. You just want your teaching to be the best it could be. It’s not about winning awards.”
For Watkins, many of her fondest memories are the moments that were unscripted, but just happened.
In the summer of 2001, the M-S choir toured Austria.
“We were to sing as part of a Catholic Mass that was held in a shopping mall,” she said.
After the group had gotten to their location, they were given a brief break for water or to use the bathroom.
When it was showtime, Watkins realized that her soloist was not in position.
“You are horrified in the moment,” said Watkins, who knew the show must go on. “We had no soloist. I mouthed to Jordan (Moore), ‘Mouth the words,’ and so I sang the words to the solo (while directing the choir with her back to the congregation).”
Afterwards, she discovered the reason for the student absence. The soloist had gone to the bathroom, but when she tried to return, the doors to the sanctuary had been locked and she was unable to enter.
There is the back story about what prompted the foreign trips in the first place.
The idea took root when Watkins and her husband, Dick, joined another couple (Dave and Judy Webb) on a European trip one July.
“We had no previous arrangements, so at night we would say, ‘Where do we go tomorrow?’” Watkins recalled.
They split their time between Italy, Switzerland, Austria and Germany.
“We happened to be in Salzburg (Austria) at the height of the Salzburg Music Festival,” Watkins said. “Two bands were playing (outside) and people were lined up 10 or 12 deep listening.
“I saw how the Austrians loved music and thought, ‘my kids (in choir) have to see this.’ There is so much beauty over there. It was a way for our kids to see a different way to relate to music.”
And then there are the individuals, too many to recount, Watkins said, though some stories are special.
Midway through her tenure at M-S, Watkins had a high school student that she described as “very quiet. He would never try out for a solo.”
Years later, as she watched a local television newscast, she saw this person being interviewed. He was the spokesman for the Champaign County Public Works Department.
“When I ran into Kris Koester, I said, ‘Never did I dream I’d watch you on TV keeping the public informed on road conditions,’” Watkins said.
“That’s what teaching is about, when you see the ‘becoming.’”
Another former student, Will Meachum, is someone Watkins started working with in junior high.
“He was the class clown,” she said. “In high school, he became my (Madrigal) jester.
“In college, he got into music. Now, he’s a pastor. The class clown ends up as a pastor. It’s neat to see how their story is shaped.”
Often, the feedback Watkins received didn’t arrive until her teaching career was complete.
“Students would say, ‘Why do I need to know about an augmented-third,’” Watkins recalled, providing the answer, “because it’s part of the package.”
In time, it becomes clear.
“Nezar Kassem (Mahomet dentist) thanked me for the theory training,” Watkins said. “He was helping his daughter with band. It’s neat to see they encourage their kids to go on.
“I wanted them to love music and nurture it in their own children and families. I love knowing you were a part of their process along the way.”
***
Janet Watkins has time to reflect how her life might have been different if a few factors had been changed.
“When I was young, I read books about medical people,” she said. “In high school, I remember doing a term paper on micro-biology, for some reason.
“No one in my family had been to college before me.”
Her father was a farmer and her mother was a farmer’s wife and housewife.
“With a little encouragement, I could have been led to a medical area,” said Watkins, who was one of 35 students who graduated from DeLand-Weldon High School in 1963.
That she would be a trailblazer and attend college, she said, was nonetheless the expected path to her future.
“There weren’t any other options,” Watkins said. “That was the pathway I was on, probably from my classmates.
“There was a group of us who were college-bound.”
Her declared major at Illinois State University, in Normal, was English.
Her original thought was that she would study to be a teacher.
“In high school, I thought about what a teacher’s mind was like,” Watkins said. “I had a biology and an English teacher, and I loved to watch how their minds worked in the classroom and how they guided class discussions to go a certain way.”
Once at ISU, however, Watkins quickly changed her mind, though ultimately she found her way back into the education spectrum.
“By the time I got through the registration line, I thought, ‘This (English) is not what I want to do,’” Watkins related. “I went right back (through the line) and changed to music.”
She had a long-time background in that arena.
“I was 5 when I started piano,” Watkins said. “My mother was a drill-sergeant.
“There was nothing I could do to get out of practicing piano. My sister had started, and when we came home from school, that was the first thing you’d do.
“I think my mother wanted to continue in music, but didn’t, and was determined that her kids would do it.”
The ironies of life aren’t lost on Watkins.
She never pursued a career in any medical fields, but finds herself as a hospital volunteer virtually every week.
“I think about that when I go to the NICU (neonatal intensive care unit) on Tuesdays to cuddle babies,” she said.
***
Sixteen years after entering into retirement, Watkins is seeing the musical performances from a different perspective.
“We have nine grandchildren and they are in eighth-grade through high school,” Watkins said. “They are all in music and sports.
“We’re going back to our roots, hearing kids sing in their choirs.”
Each time, she is greeted by an assortment of emotions.
“When I sit in the audience, I understand what it took to get them up there,” Watkins said. “It’s a good feeling to know they are carrying it on their own.
“When I think back, it brings up warm, good memories and what it meant to your life. It was a good career and I enjoyed the whole process.”
M-S had four choirs by the time Watkins retired.
“I loved the different levels,” she said. “The goal is to produce a good choral sound and teach the basic aesthetics and fine moments of choral singing.”
In truth, Watkins wasn’t planning to step aside when she did.
“Our contract was up and the (incentive) options being offered (were too good to pass up),” she said.
There were no regrets.
“It was God’s timing,” she said. “My mother got bad and took a lot of care and time. It was God saying, ‘You need to be free.’”
Janet Watkins finds her freedom now in the six distinct flower areas that populate her family’s rural homestead.
“I love to create with pots around and about,” she said. “Some are perennials. Some are in pots. I love to create color and form. That’s how I get my art out.
“Since my kids were very little, I’ve been interested in using color to make the yard more interesting.”
At one time, she cultivated more varieties than she does presently.
“When the dogs died, we discovered the dogs were keeping the deer and rabbits away,” Watkins said. “My impatiens disappeared. I had to change the whole landscape last year.”
She found a trick to preserving some of her plants, especially the hostas and the knockout roses.
“I carry a big container of garlic and sprinkle garlic on them,” Watkins said. “Garlic is not palatable to the deer.”
In the toils with her gardening passion, Watkins came to the realization that similarities exist between that endeavor and her life’s work with music students.
“It’s the same component,” she said, “artistry with music.
“Color, texture and form instead of working with voices that are high and low. It’s just more seasonal now, and dependent on the rain.”
And just another chance for Janet Watkins’ light to shine.
M-S Education Foundation Hall of Fame
2020 Inductees
NAME GRAD YR.
Fred Kroner 1973
Jason Seaman 2007
Leo Vitali N-A
Janet Watkins N-A
NOTE: The inductees will be enshrined at the homecoming football game on Friday, Sept. 18 against Effingham.
