Batavia music teacher honored as one of Yamaha Music’s ‘40 Under 40′ for 2023

Just like any touring musician, Lisa Hatfield is always on the move. The fifth grade Batavia band and orchestra teacher divides her week between six elementary schools and a large group of students.

“This year I have over 200 [students],” Hatfield said. “I teach small group lessons every day, pretty much from when school starts to end. And then two days out of the week before school, I’ll have rehearsal, so we’ll put them all together and practice all together.”

Her hard work with all of those students has paid off. She was named to Yamaha Music’s “40 under 40″ Excellence in Education for 2023. According to Yamaha Music, the program was created in 2021 as a music education advocacy program “to celebrate and recognize outstanding music educators who are making a difference by growing and strengthening their music programs.”

“There are hundreds of nominations and they picked 40,” Hatfield said. “And I was the only one from Illinois, which made it even cooler.”

The program recognized Hatfield for her creative teaching methods, including arranging current songs and trends to incorporate more advanced skills such as accidentals and higher ranges, according to Yamaha Music’s website.

“Your ego only goes so far as what your surroundings feel like day to day, and I only talk to 10-year-olds all day long,” Hatfield said. “All of a sudden, it’s like, ‘Oh, my gosh.’ I made a difference for someone to reach out and then made a difference enough for them to look through my info.”

Chris Owen, music educator and fine arts coordinator at Batavia High School, called Hatfield “a treasure.”

“Lisa is the complete package as a music educator,” Owen said. “She has a magnetic personality that students are drawn to, she is a pedagogical genius that always comes up with new and exciting ideas for her students, she works with every student to meet their needs, and she has the best sense of humor on the planet. Learning an instrument in Batavia is cool because of Lisa Hatfield.”

Originally from Oswego, Hatfield attended VanderCook College of Music in Chicago, which she said specializes in music education.

“The only major there is music education, so every single person who goes there becomes a music teacher,” she said. “We didn’t have any sports teams. We didn’t have anything else. We lived and breathed music education.”

Hatfield said VanderCook proved to be a great fit since she grew up with a deep interest in music.

“Very first instrument that I learned was piano and I was little. I was probably like 5,” Hatfield said. “I even remember telling my mom when I was 5, ‘OK, I’m going to be a piano teacher.’”

Hatfield said her love of music education was reinforced by her own music teachers.

“My piano teacher was female. My middle school and high school band directors were women,” she said. “I had really good influences because I just look at them and could be like, ‘Well, I’m just going to do what they do.’”

Hatfield began her teaching career with Batavia after taking over for seventh grade band teacher Susan Ozsvath, who now helps Hatfield as an assistant teacher.

“Susan is amazing. I love her,” Hatfield said. “She is the reason I am the teacher I am today.”

Seventeen years of teaching and a countless number of new learned instruments, Hatfield said she has comfortably made her dream of becoming a music teacher a reality.

“There was no other thought in my mind. I was going to be a music teacher forever,” Hatfield said. “Thank God I’m OK at it!”

Though she officially teaches fifth grade, Hatfield runs summer camps and teaches private lessons for a range of age groups.

“Even though the kids leave me as their teacher in fifth grade, I still will see them throughout their entire musical career here at Batavia,” Hatfield said.

“My goal now is to expose music to as many kids as possible,” she said. “I want to hook [students] so that they’re like, ‘Oh, my God, this thing is so cool, I need this in my life.’ And that doesn’t necessarily mean they’re going to go on to be professional musicians. That just means ‘I love learning my instrument, I love listening to music, I love learning about different kinds of music.’ Music is now a part of their life.”