This school year marks the last year that Dr. Joel Gittle will be directing the Manhattan High School Big Blue Marching Band. Gittle will be retiring and moving to Florida with his wife, after one last crescendo to his multi-decade career. Facing the age of 60, retirement is an arms length away after a fulfilling 37 years of directing high school band, 36 at MHS.
“I am leaving on a very good note,” Gittle said.
Ever since his freshman year of high school, Gittle felt his calling in the band room as a director. In 1989, moving from his home state of Massachusetts to Kansas, Gittle took on the task of being a graduate teaching assistant at Kansas State University. Upon his graduation from KSU, Gittle took on the role as the band director at Herington High School. After a school year’s passing, a fortuitous job opening caught Gittle’s eye. An opening in the MHS performance arts department, waiting for a new director to take the mantle of the bandmaster of the Big Blue Marching Band.
“I always wanted to teach in a team-teaching environment,” Gittle said. “I’ve been here ever since.”

MHS’s performance arts department has a variety of sounds, including the many faces of band, orchestra, choir and drama. But to Gittle, he feels his directing work in the band is seen more by the public.

“Band is an outreach,” Gittle said. “Of all the performance arts classes at Manhattan High School… the non-music public sees the band more because we’re at football games, we’re at basketball games, we’re at parades and things like that.”
From marches in Chicago and Houston, to down Main Street in the Magic Kingdom in Disney World, each and every one of his students has worked hard under his tutelage.
“[I was] feeling a bit emotional as our school colors were moving through those streets,” Gittle said.
Awards and moments like that are not just Gittle’s work, but the co-directors and students worked together to achieve those awards.
“Everything we do is a team effort, so I share all of those with my co-directors and students,” Gittle said.
Across the band program, there’s a unanimous opinion that Gittle is a beloved teacher for students across the year. Gittle has done a lot in his tenure, and establishing a brilliant culture is one of them. But according to Gittle, the culture and sense of community wasn’t  just built by him alone, but was built by the efforts of all his students and fellow directors.
“Band is a place where anyone can thrive. In our band family, you are welcomed, safe, valued and heard,” Gittle said. “Everyone is welcome in the band, and we will always find a place for you regardless of talent level.”
It’s a nurturing community where you can excel knowing that people have your back. Every student and teacher pitches in to help grow familiarity and friendship in that department, a team effort on everybody’s part.
“If you would just listen to the trombone and the saxophone section, you would think, ‘Oh, that sounds pretty nice.’ But you have to hear us all together playing as well as we can, and that’s when it really sounds beautiful,” sophomore Becky Graysneck said. “Some people’s 100% effort isn’t as much as others, but that’s fine. You just need to give it your all. Everybody in the band giving it their all will result in the band being the best they could be.”
Gittle’s job also includes showcasing and leading his students to show what unity and hard work is to others. He strives to show that performing arts is necessary for this modern age with his students performances.
Regarding his retirement, many students are sad to see him go at the end of the year
“I’m sad. This is my second year with the guy,” sophomore Leah Rebekah Gotsch said. “He’s so silly.”

But after 37 years, it’s simply just time to retire.

“I’m tired,” Gittle said. “I have great memories of this place.”

His legacy as a teacher lives on in the countless students he has taught.
“…the world has never been my stage,” Gittle said.  “That has always been reserved for the students I teach.  I want my students, when they leave our band program, to say to themselves ‘it was worth it.’”