(Left to right) Symphony Board members Lois Saye and Lynn Lastraps, Music Teacher of the Year Robbie Giroir (Baton Rouge Magnet High School), Classroom Teacher of the Year Margaret Sansovich (Our Lady of Mercy Catholic), Symphony Music Director and Conductor Tim Muffit and Board members Judi George and Wayne Miley.

At its annual recognition of local educators providing excellence in incorporating music into the classroom, the Baton Rouge Symphony Orchestra named Baton Rouge Magnet High School teacher Robbie Giroir its 2010 Music Teacher of the Year.  The event was held in mid-April.

A Choral Music teacher, Giroir requires his students know the language, mathematics and alphabet of music and the proper enunciations of vowels and consonants.  During his 25 years at the school, his students have performed at such world venues as St. Paul’s Cathedral in Paris, St. Stephen’s Cathedral in Vienna and the Basilica of San Miguel in Madrid, among others.  In recent years, Giroir and parents raised money for students to travel to a national competition at the Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts in New York City and to perform at the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington, D.C., when the school received the National Creative Ticket Award of Distinction.

In addition, two music teachers at Jefferson Terrace Elementary School, Norma Alexander and Dawn Knight, were given the Symphony Orchestra’s Teachers of Distinction awards.