Old Mill High School music teacher and department chairman Michael Miller has been named Anne Arundel County’s winner of the 2014 Agnes Meyer Outstanding Teacher Award by The Washington Post. Miller is one of 20 winners of the honor, awarded annually by the newspaper to outstanding teachers.
The awards are named for Agnes Meyer, the wife of Eugene Meyer, a former publisher of The Washington Post. They recognize “teachers who have shown initiative, creativity, and an exceptional degree of professionalism in teaching,” and are accompanied by a $3,000 award.
Miller has been a music teacher in Anne Arundel County since 1990, and has spent the last 15 years at Old Mill High School. Having brought the first and only high school steel drum band to the county, Miller has also forged an appreciation for music to a myriad of students and audiences that spread internationally. Covering tunes from pop to rock to country, the band shares a laid back, Caribbean vibe at its 25-plus gigs a year. The band’s smooth and succinct performances are truly a reflection of Miller’s approach to teaching.
While this award is indeed a milestone in Miller’s career, he has been fortunate to have many accomplishments.
“One of my proudest moments so far came when I traveled to Trinidad (home of the steel pan) to see two of my graduates perform with the top steel bands in the world at Panorama,” he said of the largest steel drum performance competition in the world. “This experience really brought things into perspective for me because my students reached a level of performance that well surpassed their teacher.”