A screenshot photo of Mark Borden in his video that he posted for his fellow teachers prior to Teacher Appreciation Day last spring with new lyrics that he penned to Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious from Mary Poppins about what teachers went through during the COVID-19 pandemic last spring. The video went viral. Photo from the video
People may recall a movie from 1995 called Mr. Holland’s Opus about a music teacher who inspired his students.
For 36 years, the last 34 spent at his alma mater, Mark Borden could have been the teacher that the movie was based on. Borden, a 1979 graduate of Honeoye Falls-Lima High School, retired at the end of the 2019-2020 school year. Despite COVID-19, his retirement did not go unnoticed by appreciative former students and their parents. In an hour-and-a-half long segment, that was put together by Borden’s youngest daughter Manda with help from his middle daughter Emily as well as others, at the end of the Union Star Lounge Broadcast of June 27, Borden was presented with a series of video tributes by former students and some musical performances by many of them as well. (Click here to watch it again in its entirety).
“It was really special to hear from some of the kids that I had 35, 36 years ago in my first job and then some from those I had just a year ago,” Borden said during a phone interview recently. “It was very moving for me.”
Oddly enough, however, Borden almost did not become a music teacher. Following his graduation from HF-L, Borden enrolled at Ithaca College and started out as a math major (but not math education). It was after his freshman year; however, that he knew music was the direction he wanted to go in.
It might have seemed logical for him to go into education. After all, his mother Dot was a music teacher (and still directs the choir at United Church of Pittsford) and his late father David was a social studies teacher and later guidance counselor before working in the admissions office at Monroe Community College.
“My dad thought my sisters might go into music, which all three did, but he thought I was more suited for engineering, something that I found out years later,” Borden said. “He later told me I made the right choice. However, in all honesty, both my mother and father were influential. They both were involved in and loved music and were difference-makers for me. They educated us on the value and importance of music in peoples’ lives.”
Despite that, Borden says there were two teachers who influenced him as well, one in particular who kept him in music when he had made up his mind to quit. That teacher was Middle School Band Director Jane Fraley.
“Going into sixth-grade, I had made up my mind to quit band,” Borden said. “I liked band, but I did not practice as much as I should have. My parents told me that there was a band director at the middle school and to give this teacher a chance. They said give her a try for two weeks and, if I still wanted to, then I could quit band. After the first lesson and band class, I knew I wanted to stay with band. She was terrific. I just connected with her and she made music and band enjoyable. When I became a music teacher, I always kept that in mind. There are so many opportunities for kids today and I wanted to make music and band attractive and enjoyable. The other music teacher who inspired me was my HF-L High School Band Director Mike Lester. When he got to HF-L, the band program had been struggling and was not as strong and he raised the bar by bringing us a higher difficulty of music to play. He was also very supportive of me.”
After making the switch to music education at Ithaca, Borden graduated from the college in 1983. Fresh out of his undergrad studies, he had a bunch of interviews but did not get a job until the week before Labor Day 1983. The job was at Cincinnatus Central School District, a rural community southeast of Cortland.
At Cincinnatus, Borden taught students from the elementary level to the high school level. When he got there, the district had an elementary level band for fifth and sixth grade students and one for grades 7-12. He split the 7-12 grade band into a band for seventh and eighth grade kids and one for the 9th-12th grade students. While at Cincinnatus, he also started a pep band at the school which had just had a new gymnasium built, bringing a little something extra for the kids who rehearsed as a pep band after school.
In fact, two of his former students at Cincinnatus thanked him during the Union Star Lounge special segment, one in a video and the other via a letter that was read by HF-L High Choral Director Ken Goold.
Both students mentioned how he opened up their world; one of them, Shawnee Black, writing that he took them to places they normally would not have gone: Marine Band in Syracuse, the opera in Binghamton and All County.
“He was an excellent teacher,” Black wrote. “Compassionate; he was so kind that all the students, especially the ones who were incredibly shy or needed extra attention felt like they belonged.”
Borden was at Cincinnatus for two years. While he admitted that, during the first year, he was not sure that music teaching was for him; by the second year, everything was so much easier and he was more comfortable and knew he was on the right career path. Following his second year at Cincinnatus (academic year 1984-85), however, he had the opportunity to go back to Ithaca for his master’s degree, which he needed to get within five years of starting to teach. He decided he wanted to get the master’s degree done in one year (it’s usually a two-year process); so he lined up an assistantship at Ithaca College and left the job at Cincinnatus. By taking summer courses both before and after the regular academic year and also by overloading on credits in the fall and spring semesters, he got the master’s degree in the spring of 1986.
That master’s degree could have cost him a chance to return to teach at his alma mater. James Dollard, then the HF-L High School Principal, called about a month after Borden had made the decision to leave Cincinnatus and pursue the master’s degree. Dollard said the band director was moving and asked if Borden was interested.
While Borden was intrigued by the opportunity, he told Dollard that he had the assistantship lined up and that the master’s degree was his plan. That could have shut the door to his return to HF-L; fortunately, it did not. The next year, Dollard called Borden again: the person who had been hired to be the high school band director was going to the Middle School, would Borden consider interviewing for the high school job? Borden applied and got the job. It was the fall of 1986 and Borden never looked back.
“I was only at Cincinnatus two years, but it holds a dear place in my heart because it was where I learned to love teaching,” Borden said. “It was also beneficial because it gave me experience at all three levels. I had an affinity to teach the older kids though and Jim knew that.”
Since the fall of 1986, Borden has been instrumental (no pun intended) in raising the profile of HF-L’s music program to the point where the high school and the district are highly thought of in music education circles, not just within the Rochester area or the state, but nationally.
Borden directed the Wind Ensemble and Jazz Ensemble and both often received high ratings and accolades from judges at the Virginia Beach Music Festival when the instrumental program went to the festival every other year, alternating with the choral program. Then, there was national recognition for the Jazz Ensemble when it was chosen for the Essentially Ellington Competition at Lincoln Center in New York City. The first time was in 1996 and the Jazz Ensemble was selected again in 1997. In 1999, HF-L students combined with a group of Fairport High Jazz Ensemble students who were directed by Bill Tiberio, a friend of Borden’s, to return to the festival.
“It was the first year that conglomerate bands were allowed and we were the first to be selected,” Borden said. “We had only three rehearsals. In 2000, Bill and Fairport had another commitment but some HF-L students combined with some students from Gates Chili, some from West Irondequoit and some from Pittsford to form the Rochester Area Jazz Ensemble and were chosen again to attend the Ellington festival.”
The HF-L Jazz Ensemble was selected for the Essentially Ellington competition twice more, in 2004 and 2007.
“I always told the kids ‘Aim high and enjoy the ride’, meaning I wanted them to have the best of both worlds – high standards of achievement but enjoy the process,” Borden said. “That applies to life; it is both product and process. The biggest takeaway is the connections made with students, many of which last through today. Those are the most valuable and trips to Virginia Beach and to the Essentially Ellington made some great memories for everyone. At Virginia Beach, the kids were successful and it was judges who were saying that they were achieving at a high level, not just mom and dad or neighbors. The trips to Lincoln Center for the Essentially Ellington with the Jazz Ensemble put HF-L’s music program on the map nationally as just the top 15 schools in the country were chosen each year and I was proud of that. But, it was watching the kids in the Jazz Ensemble working on stage with someone like Wynton Marsalis and seeing their joy that was priceless.”
In addition, Borden encouraged students in the music program to pursue their ideas such as when Rich Oppedisano wanted to make a CD recording of the music groups for a project in one of his other classes. Borden told him to delay for just one year until he was a senior so that copyright issues and other aspects could be looked at. Once those items were checked off, the first CD was made in 1997. It was like a musical yearbook for the students with three songs from each of the performing groups at the high school. The project morphed into a club at the school and CDs were made through 2013. Because at that point people were moving away from CDs and toward digital access, Borden and the students started the Pod squad and, instead of three musical pieces from each group, there was a full recording from the winter and spring concerts that were uploaded to a YouTube site.
Borden found other ways to support students as well, by coaching girls volleyball and helping to coach the softball team until he stepped aside due to a growing family life (he and his wife Lindsey have three daughters: Kelsey, Emily and Manda).
“The first year I was at HF-L, girls volleyball was a winter sport and Walt Dyer was the varsity coach,” Borden said. “I had learned to play volleyball through a couple of teachers at Cincinnatus and played on a club team at Ithaca when I was in grad school. When I started to teach at HF-L, Walt (who I had as a teacher when I was a student at HF-L), asked me to help and I did. The following year, girls volleyball was moved to the fall and, because Walt was already coaching the boys varsity soccer team, the volleyball coaching job opened up. Because I had worked with the kids, I took over coaching the varsity team in the fall of 1987. I was the varsity coach for nine years and stopped when my daughter Emily was born. During my first five years of teaching at HF-L, I also helped Nancy Rhoades in coaching the varsity softball team.”
Students of Borden’s have been grateful to have his support in not just their music endeavors at the high school but academic and athletic ones as well. A 2020 graduate, Hayden Smith, even honored Borden by choosing him to be the teacher he honored on Teacher Appreciation Night at an HF-L boys varsity basketball game this past winter.
“He pushed me to diversify my high school experience and supported and encouraged me in academics, music and athletics,” said Smith who was in the Wind Ensemble. “I felt he cared about me and the other students as well. He’s just been very inspiring to me.”
Those sentiments were echoed by numerous former students on the tribute to Borden on the Union Star Lounge program and are amplified by the fact that many former students were planning to return for a Retirement Celebration concert that was planned for this past May.
A year ago, Borden made the decision that 2019-2020 would be his last year of teaching. With some former students from each one of the decades that he taught at HF-L, Borden planned a four-day celebration spanning Memorial Day weekend. HF-L grad Ike Sturm was scheduled to come back to Rochester for a gig in Fairport on that Friday. Saturday would have featured a rehearsal for an alumni concert with the HF-L alums and a pizza party. Sunday would have been the concert and the Monroe Street Park was reserved for a party for the alums and their parents. Monday would have been the traditional Memorial Day parade. However, COVID-19 changed all that. The hope now is for the festivities to take place Memorial Day Weekend in 2021 and the group intends to start meeting again in October to make those plans.
“Originally 140 alumni were coming to play in the concert with another 50-60 just coming in but not playing in the concert,” Borden said. “If we can’t do 2021 due to COVID, we’ll go to 2022.”
Borden admitted that it vaguely crossed his mind that he wished he could have a do-over of his decision to retire when it became clear that he wasn’t going to see his students for the final three-and-a-half months of his career.
“When I made the decision to retire, the timing felt right,” he said. “I hated going out with COVID. I hated not being able to have those last concerts with the kids. I felt bad for the kids, particularly the seniors. I wanted to soak in and embrace the last time I conducted a concert and feel that emotionally for the 36 year career I had and I wanted to share that with the kids on the stage. That didn’t happen but it doesn’t take away from the memories. We had a gathering in the park with the six-foot distance enforced with people in their cars in June. It was an opportunity for some closure and it gave the kids, particularly the seniors, an opportunity to be together in a socially-distanced way.”
Borden also has enjoyed conducting for the high school musicals. While COVID forced the cancellation of the high school musical Bye Bye Birdie this past March, it doesn’t mean Borden won’t have another chance to conduct the pit band for the school show. Bye Bye Birdie will be performed next March with most of the cast returning as there were only a handful of seniors in the cast and one senior in the pit band and Borden right now is scheduled to conduct that show. So there will be one more opportunity for him to be dressed up in some sort of costume for the last performance of the show, continuing a long-standing tradition that has seen him dressed up as a cowboy for Oklahoma (he added to that costume by riding into the District Auditorium on a real horse in 2011) to donning a Euphonium costume for Beauty and the Beast in 2010. For a number of years, students even worked his name into the show during the last performance.
Oddly enough the last time HF-L did not present a musical was when Borden was a senior in high school. He was a member of the pit band his freshman and sophomore years and was on stage as a junior. He even returned to play in the pit during his college years at Ithaca.
“Maybe I was the jinx this year,” he said. “The last time we didn’t have a musical at HF-L was when I was a senior and now we didn’t have one in the last year of my teaching career here.”
The memories are what he holds dear: the concerts, the Virginia Beach trips, the Essentially Ellington trips, the musicals and the day-to-day interactions with students in class.
“There are so many great kids that I was fortunate to teach,” Borden said.
