Terrance Bankett

Encouraging students to believe in themselves and their ability to be successful is what Terrance Bankett strives to do. Through his work as the Band Director at some of the middles school in Davidson county including Brick Church Middle School, Neelys Bend Middle School and Jere Baxter Middle school, Terrance has worked on fulfilling his passion for music through seeing student growth and success. During his 10 tenure as an educator with Metro Nashville Public Schools, Terrance has been able to build a non-existent band program within the span of one year at Neely’s Bend Middle School, as well as, create an exceptional band program at Jere Baxter Middle. This exceptional band has led Terrance to become teacher of the year, and district nominee teacher of the year in the 2019-20 school year. Terrance credits all his students for his nomination, for all their hard work and passion in his band classes.

Throughout his tenure at Jere Baxter, the band program has been fortunate enough to travel to Atlanta, Georgia to perform at a music festival, to Chicago to perform at the Chicago State University Music festival, to Washington D.C. to perform at Howard University. The band has also played at the SEC Woman’s Basketball Tournament in Nashville Tn. These opportunities allowed students to realize that if they work hard and push themselves music can take them anywhere in life. 

Terrance’s passion for music began as a young man playing the drums in church. He realized that he wanted to help inspire other children to discover their passion for music. This prompted Terrance to move from Sacramento, California to Nashville, Tennessee to pursue a degree in Music Education at Tennessee State University. During his time at Tennessee State, Terrance was part of the Aristocrat of Bands under the direction of Professor Edward Graves and Dr. Reginald McDonald.  Terrance was one of the lead percussionists during his time at Tennessee State and was able to participate in the Tennessee Day of Percussion, where he was able to premiere “Arcanical Plains” composed by Christopher Deane. In addition to his undergraduate degree, Terrance received his Master’s of education at Vanderbilt University. He majored in Urban Studies with a concentration in English Language Learners (ELL). It is his vision that he will be able to grow a music program that allows ELL students to be as successful as all other students. 

Terrance gives all credit to God and to his students for, not only believing in him, but believing in themselves as well. Terrance has stepped away from teaching and has enter administration role as the dean of students at H. G. Hill Middle School. He feels he still has a strong passion for students but wants to be able to lead not only students but teachers and staff as well. Terrance will continue to push students to reach their full potential. He will continue to work toward his goal of helping students be successful and believe in themselves.