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Tag: Neodesha High School

Kansas Profile – Now That’s Rural: Ray Essington, Music Teacher

Is there an electronic piano keyboard gathering dust at your house? I‘m afraid there is at mine. We don’t seem to find much time to use it. Today, we’ll learn about a high school music teacher who is helping students with their keyboard skills. In doing so, he’s building on the tradition of one of the world’s most famous musical instructors. She came from this very same hometown.

Ray Essington

Last week we learned about Dorothy DeLay, one of the world’s most famous violin teachers. Miss DeLay graduated from Neodesha High School in 1933.

Ray Essington is the music teacher at Neodesha today. He grew up at Council Grove.  Ray got a bachelor’s degree in music at KU, taught in Arkansas and then earned his master’s in music education at Kansas State.

Ray’s first Kansas school music teaching job was at Thayer, a rural community of 497 people. Now, that’s rural.

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