CBAA seeks music teachers for local directory
JOEL MARTIN | Hagadone News Network | UPDATED 8 months AGO
A Moses Lake high School student has joined forces with Columbia Basin Allied Arts to create a directory of local music teachers, to help students find guidance without having to leave the area.
COURTESY PHOTO/YAN KRUKOV/PEXELS
Columbia Basin Allied Arts Director Shawn Cardwell said connecting students to music instructors can help young musicians in many ways.
Joel Martin has been with the Columbia Basin Herald for more than 25 years in a variety of roles and is the most-tenured employee in the building. Martin is a married father of eight and enjoys spending time with his children and his wife, Christina. He is passionate about the paper’s mission of informing the people of the Columbia Basin because he knows it is important to record the history of the communities the publication serves. | February 18, 2026 3:15 AM
MOSES LAKE — Young musicians need good teachers, and sometimes those can be difficult to find. A Moses Lake High School senior has created a way to connect students with the instruction they need.
“Often people have to go outside of our area to go find music teachers or people to study with, or people to help them with their instruments,” said Molly Hanover, who’s compiling a directory of local music teachers in conjunction with Columbia Basin Allied Arts. “And so I think providing that database of music teachers or people that can help (will mean they) don’t have to go far or pay a lot more to commute to another area, which is what I've been doing.”
Hanover, who plays flute in the Moses Lake High School band, said she first noticed inequities in music education when her band did an exchange with an affluent Seattle-area school district. Some of the Moses Lake students were playing on old and broken instruments, she said, while the other district’s students had thousands of dollars’ worth of instruments. That set her to thinking about ways to make music and music education more accessible to students, which in turn led to her contacting CBAA Executive Director Shawn Cardwell.
“We looked at a list of amazing ideas and insights that Molly has for the musical community in Moses Lake and the surrounding areas and … we thought the music teacher database was something that we could start on immediately and for relatively low cost,” Cardwell said.
Teachers can benefit from this directory as well, Hanover said.
“It’s hard for music teachers around here to get the word out,” she said.
The directory can also help school music teachers when their students approach them asking where they can find further instruction, Hanover added. It’s also good for parents whose children are interested in music, Cardwell said, including her 5-year-old.
“My daughter … loves playing piano,” Cardwell said. “My husband also brought home a half-size violin and a three-quarter-size cello, and we have a guitar in the house. It’s amazing how connected children are to creating music and expressing themselves that way. And I’ve been like, well, I don’t know who to start with … There’s a need in the community.”
Teachers who would like to be listed can fill out a very simple questionnaire asking about their education and experience, what instruments they can teach and their rates. The questionnaire also asks for a website, which can just be their personal social media page, and a photo. Those are simply to make sure the person registering is legitimate, Cardwell said.
There are no particular minimum qualifications, Hanover said. The directory will include instructors in Grant, Adams and Lincoln counties, as well as those who offer lessons online.
“Basically, we're trying to get teachers who work in the Columbia Basin who have some sort of education in their instrument and who know the instrument well enough that they can teach it,” she said. “That includes everybody: music educators, people who have gotten a degree in music who need to take some dust off their case and start teaching again and people who are really passionate about teaching music.”
As of Monday, CBAA had signed up instructors in voice, piano, drums, guitar, ukulele, trumpet and flute, Cardwell said.
At the same time, CBAA is compiling a directory of local musicians and bands, to help connect them with performance opportunities and increase their visibility. As of Monday, about 40 musicians had registered. There is no cost to be listed in either directory.
Once the directories are ready to go live, they’ll both be hosted on CBAA’s website, Cardwell said, for the public to access at will.
Cardwell was impressed with Hanover’s drive and the quality of her ideas, she said.
“Molly was so inspiring to me and continues to be inspiring,” she said. “There's two sides to the conversation. There are those who observe her generation from arm's length and think that they need to be fixed somehow. And then there's those of us who get the opportunity to interact with them, and you realize they just need to be given a chance. They need to be listened to, and they need to be given an opportunity to inspire us.”
Teachers and musicians can register for the directories at www.cba-arts.org.
Columbia Basin Allied Arts Director Shawn Cardwell said connecting students to music instructors can help young musicians in many ways.ARTICLES BY JOEL MARTIN
Endless battle
Noxious Weed Control Board works to keep invasive plants under control
MOSES LAKE — Some of the nastiest plants in Grant County were the topic of a class led by Jay Johnson, a consultant with the Grant County Noxious Weed Control Board, Tuesday. The Noxious Weed Control Board, as its name would suggest, is tasked with keeping weeds under control in Grant County. That’s not a small job; the board’s website lists 129 species of noxious weeds that are found around Grant County. A noxious weed is defined as an invasive, non-native plant that threatens agricultural crops, local ecosystems or fish and wildlife habitat, according to the Noxious Weed Control Board. Washington state law requires that these weeds be identified and their spread kept to a minimum, if not completely eradicated. “We’re one of those agencies a lot of people don’t really understand,” Johnson said. “We’re a county office and … our funding is tax-based assessment. When you get your tax bill and you look down at all the expenses that you pay for, there we are.”
BASIN EVENTS: Oct. 16-24
COLUMBIA BASIN — Whether you feel like shopping, crafting, learning or seeing a show, there’s something happening for you this week in the Basin. Oct. 16 ‘My Family (Mi Familia)’ screening Spanning three generations, “My Family (Mi Familia)” is a heartfelt drama that follows the Sánchez family as they build their lives in East Los Angeles. Through love, hardship, triumph, and sacrifice, the film explores the immigrant experience, the strength of family bonds, and the traditions that connect one generation to the next. Lowrider show and taco truck before the screening. Sponsored by Columbia Basin Allied Arts, EDUBS C/S and the Moses Lake Creative District. $12 per person. Doors open at 6 p.m., film begins at 7 p.m. at the Moses Lake Civic Center Auditorium, 401 S. Balsam St. Tickets and info: www.cba-arts.org.
Moses Lake author encourages women to look beyond church culture norms
MOSES LAKE — A Moses Lake author’s book, “A Christian Woman Striving to Live Her Faith in a Man-Controlled World,” takes aim at the role to which many churches relegate the female half of their congregations. “It’s to encourage women in the faith,” Linda Curran said. “A lot of churches say, ‘Teach Sunday school, do this, do that, but don’t (evangelize.)’" In her book, Curran recounts a time when she moved to a new community and joined a church there. She was surprised to learn that, as a new female member, she had been automatically assigned church cleaning duties. When she questioned it, she wrote, she was met with condescension and her objections were brushed aside. In other churches, she said, women who were capable of teaching were relegated to “women’s ministry.”