When the bell rings at 2:55 p.m. on Wednesdays and Thursdays signaling the end of the school day at Grandview Elementary School in Windsor, some fourth- and fifth-grade students – members of the Grandview Groove and Grandview Melody Singers – head for the music room instead of the great outdoors.
When time is up, Paul Maley – the enthusiastic, almost-always smiling, pony-tailed music teacher – literally has to shoo them out of the music room and out of the school. Otherwise, who knows how long his “kiddos” would stick around making music.
It all comes with the territory for Maley, who has built a career both as an elementary school music teacher beloved by students and parents alike and as a musician performing with area and regional rock and folk bands including Hot Fruit, Whiskey Blanket, Animated Earth and Equally Challenged.
Funny thing is, Maley never intended to be a teacher. But life has a funny way of steering one toward the direction they were meant to travel.
That’s what happened to Maley, who was born and reared in Greeley save for the times he moved here and there with his family, but like a boomerang, always returning to Greeley.
“I started playing piano in the first and second grade,” said Maley. Later, as a fourth-grader attending Catholic school in Chicago, he joined the school band and tried out a variety of instruments until he found one to his liking.
“I picked up the trumpet. We had a beat-up cornet laying around (at home) so I chose that one. I loved it,” Maley said.
Side note: The trumpet continues to be his instrument of choice and he practices daily to maintain his chops.
Later, as a junior and senior in high school at the Lab School, now University High School, he was a member of the University of Northern Colorado’s gifted high school program and performed with the UNC Concert Band.
After high school graduation, he moved out on his own and started a jam band – The Stone Water Connection. He played drums and “dabbled” with other instruments.
And though he wasn’t a fan of classical music, he enrolled in the UNC School of Music – where classical music takes center stage – to major in the trumpet.
“I was doing well in ensembles, but I wasn’t super focused on playing what was expected,” Maley said.
Four years in and nowhere near graduation – “I messed around too much to get the degree done,” he said – he quit school to play music and work.
Work, however, ended up consuming more of his time than making music. After two years of being a pizza-maker at Whole Foods and Roma, Maley said he began looking at better ways to support himself and his future wife, Jen, a media specialist at Windsor Middle School, while still doing music.
He returned to UNC, but this time majored in music education with trumpet as his primary instrument. Being an older student with a few years of real life under his belt, Maley said he found school to be not that difficult after all.
However, he didn’t see teaching as his dream job. Instead, he saw it as “something I could do until I got famous.” To that end, he kept playing with as many groups as he could to build a name as a performer.
“I played in some fun bands, and a couple big bands, like Bourbon Toothpaste. It was a very heavy hard-rock group. I played keyboard,” he said, adding that one year the group won the “least understood award” from the Fort Collins Music Association.
“We kept wondering, ‘Is that a good thing?'”
Maley also was playing in seven-piece Fatty Jenkins and started the group Undeclared.
In fact, he was playing in up to six bands and still doing well in school.
Nearing graduation, Maley student taught at both Mountain View Elementary and Windsor Middle schools. That’s when magic happened and his eyes were opened to the wonders of teaching.
“To see these kids and how they look up to you, trust you, believe in you. It’s a feeling I did not expect,” Maley said.
His first teaching gig was in Greeley, filling in for a middle school music teacher who left mid-way through the school year. It was not an ideal situation for Maley on many fronts.
“I had to deal with hardships and realities of life that I had not experienced before,” he explained. The upside, however, is that he gained experience doing his first school musical with 30 students performing “Annie Jr.”
Upon hearing that the school would be cutting the choir program the following year, Maley began applying for teaching positions at other schools, including those in Windsor.
He interviewed at several but the only job offer came from Shelly Prenger who was then-principal at Tozer Elementary School in Windsor.
“Shelly Prenger was magical, and now a very dear friend. She helped mold me to be the teacher I never realized I could be,” Maley said.
What did Prenger see in the fledgling teacher?
“He has a passion for music,” she said. “One of Paul’s many gifts is to work with children at the elementary level with a wide range of skills and ability levels while including all students in engaging programs.”
Tozer, however, is kindergarten through second grade. Maley wanted a position that let him teach K-5.
Five years ago Grandview Elementary had such an opening and he got the job.
Maley, who has certifications in Orff, Kodaly and Dalcroze methods of teaching music, implemented grade-level music programs his first year, and added a percussion ensemble his second year.
“I had no idea how to do one. I got a lot of help from friends,” said Maley, who writes and arranges music for the bands he plays with and now also for his school-age music groups.
That same year, he submitted the ensemble for consideration to perform at the following year’s Colorado Music Education Association annual conference. He did this knowing that the ensemble had little if any chance of being selected.
He was wrong. Out of 117 schools that auditioned, the Grandview Groove was one of four school groups chosen to perform. The percussion ensemble performed “Vivace” by Carl Orff along with “Walk Don’t Run,” by the Ventures and “Twinkle Twinkle Little Stripes,” a mashup of “Twinkle Twinkle Little Star” and the White Stripes’ “Seven Nation Army.”
They also performed “Amethyst in Winter,” a song Maley wrote for his mom who passed away earlier in the year.
“It was my way of bringing her with me to the concert,” he said.
Ever since, interest in the percussion ensemble has grown exponentially year over year. This school year, 75 students auditioned for 36 slots, Maley said.
The Grandview Melody Singers has had similar growth, he added, and averages about 75 fourth- and fifth-grade singers each semester. Unlike the percussion ensemble, however, there is no limit to the number of students who can join.
Although there have been many shining moments for the Grandview Melody Singers, one that stands out for Maley is being recognized by the Avett Brothers on Twitter and Facebook pages for their version of “Ain’t No Man.” The video now has more than 7,500 views.
Maley noted that the success of the Grandview music program is not just all him by any stretch of the imagination.
“The work ethic I’m getting from these kiddos – they work so hard all of the time. They’re practicing before I’m there and they stay when the bell rings. I see kids teaching each other their parts.”
And loving every minute of it.
Windsor resident Chelsea Dow now has the youngest of her four children participating in the percussion ensemble. Her third youngest, Marley, now a sixth-grader, returns from time to time to sing with the group.
One day, Dow said, Marley told her, “Mr. Maley brought music into my heart.”
That sentiment could just as easily be said by any one of his students judging from the infectious smiles and enthusiasm at rehearsals and performances.
Maley also has had help from Jesse Turner, his longtime friend and bandmate in Equally Challenged who has served as accompanist all nine years Maley has been teaching.
And Maley has had big-time community support.
His first year as a teacher at Tozer Maley’s music budget was $300.
“At Grandview alone, I have raised and been donated $17,000 worth of new instruments,” he said. Fundraisers have included the Bacon and Beer Fest at High Hops, created by Maley and his friend, Carli Taylor, along with donations from the Piano and Guitar Institute and from private donations.
Funds have gone toward the purchase of xylophones, tubanos, steel pans, mallets, a drum set, sound system and miscellaneous percussion instruments.
Another plus for working at Grandview for Maley? His students include his own sons, Hudson, 6, and Crosby, 5.
Outside of teaching and the occasional ski trip, Maley continues to make music every chance he gets.
“When I was 15, my life’s dream was to play Red Rocks.”
It took him 20 years, but he got that opportunity when he was invited to perform with Whiskey Blanket.
Now he wants his students to experience the same thrill of performing at the iconic venue, perhaps prior to a showing of a children’s movie at Film on the Rocks.
So what about Maley’s dreams of being a big-time rock star?
“Only if I could be a rock star in the summertime,” he laughs. “I wouldn’t want to give up the music program, my kids, my teammates, my principal. I’m very spoiled by life right now.”
But, for Dave Grubbs, principal at Grandview who has a cameo in Grandview Groove and Grandview Melody Singers’ latest video “Happy” by Pharrell Williams, Paul Maley already “literally is a rock star.”
