Music education is not just about music.

Michael Bieniek, who heads the music program at Moriarty High School, said he expects 3 percent of his students will go into a music career.

"I can't be training future musicians," he said.

What he wants, he said, is for his students to be valued members of society who take responsibility for their actions. For them to be able to give and take commands.

"(The music program) really fills in gaps left by other parts of the curriculum," he said, adding that he will be teaching some of the students from middle school to their senior year of high school. "I would hope that six years would be enough to at least impart some of that."

He added that he expects the music program to grow. Right now there are only 24 students in the high school program, which has left the band with a few gaps.

"We're missing quite a few instruments," he said, which means a flute player may have to double on saxophone or he may ask the tuba player to play the trombone. "The kids are pretty good at being diversified … I'm pretty impressed."

Fortunately the new crop of students coming into middle school looks promising, Bieniek said.

Bieniek started his teaching career spending over two years as a substitute teacher in Michigan, living in a rural area near Battle Creek. He said he decided that he liked teaching there, which is one of the reasons he applied with the Moriarty-Edgewood School District.

Around that time he was also picking up a little spending cash by playing saxophone in a band, Friends of the Family. He described the music as a hip-hop, funk, soul project.

"It was a lot of fun … it bleeds over into how I teach," he said. "The experience taught me about the administrative aspects of running and ensemble … dealing with people who are chronically late."

It was because of a chronically-late band member that Bieniek learned to assemble a drum kit, he said.

Now that he's teaching full time, he said, he feels rewarded by his students' successes.

"To see them grasp concepts that took me years to learn or that I saw colleagues struggle with," he said, then clarified that he wants his students to come to their realizations on their own. "We're training future citizens here, not just little robots … I hate giving kids the answer because I feel like I'm cheating them out of a tool that they can be developing to get the answer on their own."