Junior High can be a lonely time. But when Ginny Packer taught at Blatchley Middle School, there was at least one classroom where students felt seen. Susan Brandt-Ferguson was one of Packer’s students.
“When you were part of the music program at Blatchley, in the time that Ginny was there, you weren’t just taking a class,” she said. “You really felt like you were part of something bigger than that.”
Packer taught at the school from the mid-70s to the mid-90s. Brandt-Ferguson says Packer built the program into something elementary students aspired to, and middle school students departed more confidently to take high school head-on.
“It was absolutely the strength of the whole system,” Brandt-Ferguson said. “There’s so many music teachers and professional musicians that came out of that program, and I attribute a lot of it to her.”
Brandt-Ferguson remembers the day she realized she didn’t want to be a cheerleader anymore. She told Mrs. Packer about her conundrum. And she saw in that moment how much Packer genuinely cared about her students.
“She didn’t talk about the fact that it was out of character that I was one in the first place,” Brandt-Ferguson said. “This is the funniest part. I remember saying, ‘Well, I don’t think I’ll ever be a professional cheerleader, and I really want to spend my time on things that matter. But she took that conversation so seriously.”
“She made us think think hard about, about what our futures held,” Brandt-Ferguson added.
A few years later, she told Packer that she wanted to be a music teacher.
“She just looked at me and she said, ‘Really? Well, why?’ And it amazed me that she didn’t understand that it was because of her.”
Brandt-Ferguson made that dream a reality. And she’s not the only Packer alum who was inspired to teach. On a recent episode of The Happy Hour on KCAW, former students discussed Packer’s legacy.
Roger Schmidt, who now leads the Sitka Fine Arts Camp, said Packer was fearless.
“When I think of Ginny Packer, I think of a person that absolutely had no fear that their purpose on the planet, as an educator, was to change people’s lives in the most dramatic way possible,” he said.
High school teacher Mike Vieira leads the local teachers union, and sometimes they hold their meetings in the music room at Blatchley.
“Unlike any other place in any other building, like there’s a visceral feeling of magic that hits me whenever I walk in that room,” Vieira said. “It’s overwhelming when I walk in there…it was such a unique, transformational place in that room.”
Teachers like Viera and Brandt-Ferguson have been working to recreate that transformational experience for students in Sitka today.
“I may have said this many times, but I’ve been teaching now for 30 years, teaching music, and I don’t think there’s been a single day when I haven’t thought about Ginny Packer, and when she hasn’t impacted my classroom in a positive way,” Brandt-Ferguson said.
Ginny Packer passed away in January. She was 81 years old. She was honored by the Alaska Legislature with a citation this spring for her “tremendous contributions to advance music education and performance in Sitka.”
