Great Salt Bay Community School music teacher Anne Marie D’Amico conducts the school band during her final spring concert May 17. Retiring after a 32-year career, D’Amico said she ends on high note, inspired by her final group of advanced band students. (Courtesy photo)
To hear Anne Marie D’Amico tell it, she slowly came around to the idea of teaching music for a living. Once she embraced it, however, she gave it everything she had.
D’Amico, “Miss Anne Marie” as she affectionately known, turned in her baton at the end of the school year, bringing down the curtain on a 32-year career as a music teacher at Great Salt Bay Community School in Damariscotta. She was honored at a school-wide assembly on the last day of school June 14.
During her tenure, D’Amico helped build a thriving music program several times over, leading both the band and chorale programs at various times and finishing her career as the school’s band teacher.
Her original plan involved a career as a performer. She changed her focus because she wanted to make a career in music and she knew the life of a professional musician could have some significant downsides. Her parents also strongly encouraged her to think about her future and eventual retirement.
At this point in life, D’Amico said she is happy that is advice she heeded.
“Friday afternoon when the bell rings at school and you know you got the whole weekend ahead – that feeling?” D’Amico said. “Yeah, that’s going to be the rest of my life. I’m going to be able to be that performing artist and I am going to get paid for it. I have my pension and I’m still young, and I’m still very active.”
It was her student teaching experience that inspired a passion for the profession. D’Amico was finishing up her second master’s degree at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst when she attended a workshop led by a public school teacher named Elizabeth Brian.
“I was blown away with what she was presenting,” D’Amico said. “I was like, ‘Are you kidding me, like you’re so alive and so full of energy,’ and so I asked her if I could student teach with her. She allowed me to and that is where I learned how to become who I am today as an educator. I could not believe what she was pulling out of those kids.”
D’Amico ended up working with Brian for six months, from January to June.
“I just wanted to get as much as I could out of her,” D’Amico said. “She basically taught me that you make the music program what you want it to be … it was like somebody gave me permission to create. It was a whole level of creative expression that I never knew was out there.”
After graduation, D’Amico sent out literally hundreds of resumes to schools up and down the East Coast. She had a solid offer in Vermont when she decided to take a flyer on one last interview for this tiny school in Damariscotta. When she arrived for the interview, Dick Marchi, the GSB principal at the time, was waiting to greet her in the parking lot.
“Who does that?” D’Amico said. “So I got out of the car and we shook hands and when we connected through that handshake, both of us sort of had this resonance that this was a really good thing that was about to happen.”
D’Amico offered high praise for Marchi, who served as GSB principal for 29 years, retiring in 2007. She described Marchi as an excellent communicator and effective leader who set clear expectations for his staff, gave them the tools and support they needed to do the job, and then held them to account for the job they did.
“He was a great leader,” D’Amico said. “Great. I could not have done what I’ve done without him … It was a good balance of him giving me what I needed, but also saying you have to still work within some very expandable boundaries, but I’m not going to let you go past a certain point.”
She took the interview only because she knew she already liked Maine, D’Amico said. She wasn’t expecting to get the job in Damariscotta, so during the interview, instead of carefully crafting the politic answer D’Amico spoke from the heart. It was enough to impress the hiring committee.
“When they asked questions, like, ‘What method are you going to use?’ and I was like, ‘Well, I’ll use the D’Amico Method,’” she said. “‘How are you going to deal with the budget?’ ‘Well, all I need really is a pencil. Just give me a pencil and a janitor’s closet and I’ll be fine.’”
Retiring Great Salt Bay Community School music teacher Anne Marie D’Amico is the guest of honor at a schoolwide assembly on the final day of school June 14. To celebrate her 32-year career, students delivered speeches and teachers and community members performed “When the Saints Go Marching In.” (Courtesy photo)
In brief, D’Amico said, her teaching method involves connecting with each individual student and teaching by words and example, how to be a good person. If a student sees an elderly person at the door, it is more important they help open the door than be virtuoso, she said.
“It’s the Miss Anne Marie Method now,” D’Amico said. “I’m totally known as Miss Anne Marie. If you called me D’Amico, they wouldn’t know.”
As she learned from Brian, the art of teaching is quickly figuring out what motivates her students and then creatively figuring out how to keep them motivated.
“I know every kid can learn,” she said. “Every single kid can matter, and it’s my job to figure out how to get inside of their heads.”
D’Amico views her students as members of her family and treats them accordingly.
“It is just really down to earth,” she said. “There’s no pretense. There’s no line between educator and student. It really is like the adult and child of a family.”
D’Amico said she had been thinking retirement for some time, but this year ended on such a high note she was almost motivated to reconsider. She gave special credit to her eighth grade band members who were up for any challenge she put before them.
“I wasn’t clear on whether or not I was going to retire this year, but this particular group of advanced band kids, it was just so magical,” she said. “Of course it was hard for me not to get inspired by them. Like, let’s keep going but I thought because I graduated 13 of them I would have to build the program again, and I just couldn’t foresee me wanting to do that again. It’s a great time for somebody else to come in because it’s really solid, but it’s going to be a young band again, and they need to build it up to where it was.”
Most of all, D’Amico said she will miss her coworkers, her peers who contributed to the success of her program by making time for her students to work with her.
In the immediate future, D’Amico said she has firm plans to work in and around her Harpswell home and stay open to the possibilities that life presents her.
“I love so many things,” she said. “You know, I love writing music. I love performing music. I love making stone walls. I love deep cleaning my home. I love cleaning up the debris from the storms, which is still on my property. I love doing puzzles in the New York Times, you know, there’s just every day I want to see what happens. I have no plans.”
(Correction: An earlier version of this article online and on page one of the June 26, 2024 edition incorrectly reported Anne-Marie D’Amico finished her career at Great Salt Bay Community School as a combination band and choral teacher. While she did fill both roles at separate times during her tenure, D’Amico finished her career as the school’s band teacher. Troy Sirkel is GSB’s choral teacher. The Lincoln County News regrets this error.)
