Seth Gardner Offers Insights After 36 Years of Teaching

and past and present students praising him as an outstanding music teacher that inspired them to become something more, Seth Gardner took a bit of time to speak about some of his insights that he gained after more than three decades of being an educator.

Clad in black shorts and a black shirt highlighted with colorful palm trees and flamingos, Gardner chiefly said that of former and present students, faculty and parents meant a lot to him.

“This is a wonderful night and I didn’t expect anyone to come,” laughed Gardner. “This means a lot to me.”

But he told the Haverford-Havertown Patch that he has some advice for teachers, such as when it comes to students you should have the same expectations for them as you would for yourself and to treat them as adults.

“Make sure you have a good sense of humor and you can laugh at yourself,” the retired music teacher also said.

While he first taught music at Lackawanna Trail Junior/Senior High School in Factoryville, Pa., with the help of his sister Barbara Gardner-Heller he became a music teacher in 1979 at the Haverford Township School District.

But Gardner said that when he first started at the school district in 1979—the same year that such classic movies as Rocky II, Alien, Escape from Alcatraz and Star Trek: The Motion Picture debuted—the older teachers told him that the students at that time were not as respectful compared to the ones in their younger days.

“That’s not true,” Gardner insisted, stating that students have always acted the same way since the day he started teaching to the day he retired.

But he has seen a change in how parents raise their children, he added.

“We don’t expect from (students) what we should be,” Gardner said. “Parents should have students work hard for their self confidence.”

He said that as a society as a whole many students do too much and are not focused on a specific area and that many teachers, in general in today’s society and not aimed at anyone in particular, give out “blanket A’s” to students who have not worked hard enough to earn them.

But during his reflections, he said one of his most rewarding moments in his teaching career is when he and his Seventh Heaven, the award-winning select choir group, were invited to the Kennedy Center in 2000 to perform at the Music Educators National Conference.

So far it has felt like a normal summer for him, Gardner commented, except for the amount of paperwork that he has to fill out since he is retiring.

“It won’t hit me (that I’m retired) until the fall,” Gardner said to a student.

But he told Patch that he would be doing consultation work for different school districts.