Every year the Wilton High School World Language and Art Departments host the World Language Festival and Arts Week. The first three days of the week are dedicated to enriching WHS students’ understanding and knowledge about the various languages and cultures of the world, while the second two days are devoted to showcase art and its many forms. WHS students run the program and many are featured in some of the week’s acts of the week alongside guest performers.
But during the last period on the last day before April Break, one act takes the stage, a pop/rock band that’s annually the crowd favorite: Walsh, Sheridan and Friends. But this is not just any band–it’s one whose members the kids know well…they’re WHS English teachers.
These four talented English teachers–Mike Walsh, Jim Sheridan, Thomas Hahn, and the newest member, Eric Mendleson–stage a concert for the students of WHS every year. Walsh and Sheridan play guitar and sing, Hahn plays drums, and Mendleson plays bass guitar. Together they delight the student body with performances of classic rock and modern pop songs.
Their day jobs blend into their musical world very well, and they say they’re lucky to have been able to exercise their creative side the way they have. “We all have a passion for words and music,” says drummer Hahn, adding that, “[We] all play different instruments, which is really difficult to find and [we’re] all in the same department no less.”
Scott Webster is the co-instructional leader of the World Languages Department, and he is one of the advisors who helps the student planning committee. He’s thrilled that the band keeps coming back each year, as the students look forward to the traditional closing act.
“They performed this year again to a packed auditorium in the Clune Center, continuing a very special tradition with their amazing singing and guitar playing,” he said.
Music is a big part of the men’s outside lives as well. Walsh and Sheridan each play gigs with other bands outside of school, and they love when their colleagues attend shows. Previously, Mendleson was in a band, called ‘The Classic Case,’ that had been signed by a label. Growing up he played in several bands and even toured with a couple, but having just relocated to CT from Long Island, he hasn’t found a band locally–yet. Despite the fact that he doesn’t live close to the other English teachers, “We have sort of recently agreed that were going to start playing regularly together,” he says.
That’s good news, especially to their most important critics–their WHS students, who remain in awe year after year. This was the first year seeing Walsh, Sheridan and Friends perform for freshman Claire Vocke. “It was a fun, stress relieving performance and it was a fantastic way to end the school week before break,” she said.
Sophomore Aqueelah Muhammed agreed. “It’s good to see teachers outside of the school setting. It helps us relate to them.”
That’s music to an educator’s ears, according to the musicians’ fellow English teacher Kristina Harvey, who says the performance, “is a great school culture building experience. It shows the students that their teachers are human and have lives outside of school.”