2026 Teacher of the Year David Davis centers student voices in music class
For many years, 2026 Teacher of the Year David Davis didn’t want to become a teacher. A saxophonist who received his undergraduate degree in saxophone performance, he planned to make a living through performing.
“As you can probably expect, there was a teacher in my life that completely changed my way of thinking,” he told KARE 11 News.
That teacher encouraged Davis to take a pedagogy course — and that course changed Davis’s entire perspective on teaching. While he was initially resistant because of the stereotype that teaching music was for those who couldn’t make it as performers, Davis says that learning the science of teaching made him realize it’s what he wanted to do.
But it’s the way he teaches that really sets him apart. As a music teacher at Park Spanish Immersion school in St. Louis Park, Davis ensures his students have ownership over their learning.
“The education system today favors standardization and compliance,” he said in materials submitted for the award. “But it doesn’t have to be this way. Teachers and students alike deserve an education system that trusts our inherent brilliance, creativity and intrinsic motivation.”
Davis, who grew up in a parochial school environment that was very focused on compliance, initially believed that good teaching meant perfectionism and precision.
However, as an early career teacher, he soon saw that those methods failed to keep students engaged. He began to examine his own assumptions and realized that the top-down approach he had grown up with was not the answer; rather, an approach that involves students in the process and honors their inherent knowledge was the key to capturing students’ attention.
Davis believes learning should be relational, not transactional, and so he invites students to help him create the curriculum. Each fall, he distributes a survey to students to learn what they care about; he then uses that survey in building portions of his curriculum to ensure he includes things they are interested in.
Lessons in Davis’s classroom include units such as Kinder Connect, a muti-week music unit that allows students to share their culture by selecting a song that is meaningful to their identity, home or culture. Working with their families, Davis designs a short lesson around each song and then invites students to co-teach that lesson alongside him when it’s time to present their song.
“Kinder Connect engages students of all backgrounds and abilities by intentionally shifting who holds knowledge and positioning every child as an authentic teacher,” Davis said in award materials. “Because all students are musical and should not be limited by disability, language or traditional measures of skill, this shared power structure creates access for students whose cultural knowledge is often invisible in school spaces.”
Similarly, the “Elder’s Wisdom, Children’s Song” event requires fourth graders to interview community elders and write an original song based on what they learned in that interview. Students then invite those elders to an event where the students perform the songs they wrote.
Older students get to participate in “Garagebands,” in which fifth graders build reflection skills through forming a band, writing songs, creating rubrics and assessing themselves.
Fifth graders Evelyn and Skylar Penna described their experience in Davis’s class in a recommendation letter submitted for the award:
“Sr. Davis is a good teacher because he is nice, thoughtful, a good communicator and he wants to hear what we have to say…Right now, we are working on making a garage band with people in our class, and we get to perform the music we make when we are done. Sr. Davis tells us that we are all musicians and encourages us to express ourselves,” they said.
Through each of these programs, students have opportunities to take ownership over their work by co-creating rules and expectations.
“I see the teacher not as the sole authority in the room,” Davis said in award materials, “but as the lead learner who creates conditions for student brilliance to emerge.”
In addition to implementing students’ cultural backgrounds into music class, Davis also brings in other subjects. He recently completed LETRS training, learning more about the science of reading and how the brain learns language so that he can adapt his music curriculum.
“His crossdisciplinary and research-informed approach is remarkable,” said Dr. Corey Maslowski, principal of Park Spanish Immersion. “[Davis] collaborates across grade levels and teams, creatively integrating a variety of content to help students find success.”
Colleagues and community members praise Davis’s “systemslevel approach” — working to improve the landscape of education as a whole — and his commitment to equity and justice. David is a part of the district’s Music Curriculum Design Team, which seeks to transform E-12 music education. In 2023, he was both a GRAMMY Music Educator Award semifinalist and a Yamaha “40 under 40” Music Educator of Excellence. From 2023-25, he was also a member of the Minnesota Department of Education’s Culturally Responsive Art Education Cohort. He is an Education Minnesota Racial Equity Advocate and a board member of the Minnesota Music Education Association.
2019 Teacher of the Year Jessica Davis (no relation) described Davis’s impact:
“[He] is, quite literally, a monument to change in both mindset and practice…David’s journey affirms that educators can evolve, deepen and broaden their lens — and that such evolution powerfully expands the opportunities and belonging that students experience in his classroom.”
Parents also commend his commitment to inclusion. Each morning, Davis stands outside at drop-off and welcomes students with a speaker playing a different style of music, along with a sign that explains each day’s “Genre of the Day.”
Dr. Jasmine Kar Tang, a PSI parent, shared how Davis used the morning tradition to help her daughter feel seen and included. Ahead of Lunar New Year, the family asked him to incorporate Chinese lion dancing as a genre. He compiled a list of songs and asked for feedback from the family. The following year, he proactively asked Tang what he could do to celebrate Lunar New Year.
When Tang’s daughter came home the day before Lunar New Year, she told her mom it felt like a festival.
“I find David’s Genre of the Day activity to be a meaningful gesture of his devotion to music education and to supporting students,” Tang said.
Davis was announced as the 2026 Teacher of the Year at an awards banquet on May 3. As he accepted the award, he shared these words:
“The growth of young people and the evolution of our education system…doesn’t happen alone — it happens collectively. And when we have courage and plant seeds of change, of love and care, we can grow the kind of future our children deserve.”
