Greg VanStrien is in his 25th year as a music educator and teaches at Coopersville Area Public Schools in Coopersville, MI.
The Coopersville Bands consistently earn superior divisional ratings at the MSBOA Festival Evaluations both at the District and State level and has a long-standing reputation of excellence in our State and a source of pride for our community.
Outside of his school district, Mr. VanStrien has worked as an arranger and Drill Designer for several Michigan schools since 1993.
Mr. VanStrien is very active in the Michigan School Band and Orchestra Association (MSBOA) having served as VP of Solo Ensemble, Treasurer, and four years as President of District 1. Currently, he is a member of the State Executive Board serving as President of District 7 after six years as State VP of Adjudication, State VP of Band and Orchestra and State Secretary/Treasurer. Mr. VanStrien is also a clinician for bands and adjudicates Solo Ensemble and Band and Orchestra Festivals throughout the state. Mr. VanStrien was selected as the MSBOA District 1 Teacher of the Year in 2013-2014 and 2015-2016 and was also nominated and selected to the prestigious American School Band Directors Association (ASBDA) in 2011.
In his free time, he enjoys working with and learning about new technology. He enjoys working in his home studio where he works on music composition, website design, photography, audio/video production, and many other projects. Outside he enjoys camping and is an active cyclist.
At home, Mr. VanStrien enjoys spending time with his family and friends. He has two children James (18) and Alanna (16) and has been married to his wife Amanda for 19 years.
Danger Notes has been a program I’ve been working on for the past 9 years and launched to the public in July 2021. It was developed by watching students and making observations on how they understood key signatures. Many of the difficulties I observed was students that played transposing instruments or students not understanding other octaves outside the key. The time it takes a teacher to explain to each instrument what their key signature means (or doesn’t mean) takes a lot of time and students would often just “check out”. The students that didn’t understand the key signature reverted to the “fake it to you make it” or watched what others did in their section. Over the past nine years, I have been using various components of the Danger Note series and in the 2020-21 school year used the entire series with bands in grades 6-12 as a test run. We saw a vast improvement in reading and no longer dealt with the “B flatuals”. As their teacher, we saved significant time before reading a new piece by simply asking the kids to check their Danger Notes. The confusion of transposition and octaves not displayed in the key signature were gone! I hope you can find success with Danger Notes as well and I’m always open to good ideas and suggestions!
Thank you for stopping by!
Greg VanStrien