Annette Joe has been a piano teacher in the Jackson area for decades, but her story with the piano began long before she made her mark on many children’s musical talents in the metro.
Joe grew up outside of Cleveland. At a young age, Joe’s mother sent her to learn piano. Joe quickly developed a talent for the instrument, and it wasn’t long before she was asked to play for church, including the events that came along with it. She even adapted what she knew from the piano and directed it towards the organ to satisfy the older ladies in church when the regular player was away.
“It wasn’t easy to do but the old ladies always said ‘Oh hunny, that was so sweet,’” Joe said. “Pastor would call and ask my mother ‘Do you think Miss Annette can come and play for us?’”.
During high school she entered contests in Jackson, which would lead to scholarships for many students. She received one of these scholarships and, when it came time for her to attend college, she went to Mississippi University for Women and studied piano performance.
Her freshman year of college, the state supervisor of music came to speak to her class. She informed the women they’d also need to receive a teaching license in order to be able to teach students piano. Though Joe didn’t like the idea at all of obtaining her education degree because of the types of classes it would force her to take, she wanted to be a music teacher so she did what it took.
“Courses like Zoology and all of that were way far beyond me because it wasn’t really where I was going, and I was in a full curriculum with piano performance,” Joe said.
Joe began taking classes in the summer at Delta State University to get her teaching degree. Usually, one wouldn’t be able to get a degree by just taking summer classes, but they made exceptions for Joe.
“They were kind because we could only do 12 hours in the summer, but they let me take 20,” Joe said. “I worked at Baxter’s Laboratories in Cleveland from four until midnight because I went to school until four. The last thing I had was a zoology lab, and I thought I wouldn't live long enough to get out of there. You do what you have to.”
Joe successfully graduated with both of her degrees and some teaching experience at an orphanage nearby, but not before experiencing something her mother told her she would but she’d made it her whole life without to her knowledge: racism.
“At that time, people thought Chinese people were like monkeys in the zoo and weren’t sure they even spoke English,” Joe said. “I grew up in such a good place and never felt different, though my mother always told me ‘You are different, but look at your opportunities.’ She taught us that.”
The time she experienced that difference came when her professor told her, “Annette, go over to the administration building because the head superintendent of Jackson Schools is here for interviews. There’s a cry for music teachers, and you are well prepared. Go get one of those jobs. They have it at the elementary, junior high and high school levels and even somebody over the teachers in those schools.”
She thought it was a wonderful opportunity and went over to the building “bright eyed and bushy tailed.”
“The superintendent asked if he could help me and I said ‘Oh, I want one of those wonderful jobs y’all have for music teachers because I am a music teacher’,” Joe said. “He said ‘I’m so sorry to tell you that I don’t have anything for you.’ and I said ‘But my professor told me you had asked him to send people over because you needed teachers.’ Then, he said ‘I am so sorry, but I will never hire anybody like you.’”
Joe didn’t understand what the problem was because she had never had an issue before.
“I knew I was different but I didn’t ever feel put out,” Joe said. “So when he said that I didn’t know how to accept that, except that my mother had told me to remember I was different and wherever I was everybody would be looking at me to see how I acted and what I said. I wanted to be the best teacher in the whole world. And yet when he did that, it didn’t bother me too much.”
Joe said she has no complaint over how her career started.
“People will ask why I’m not bitter about that and I say ‘Should I be bitter?’ The Lord has blessed me.”
Regardless, Joe moved to Jackson with her new husband, Ed, after they wed on June 29, 1958 just a few short weeks after graduation. He had graduated with a degree in accounting and had a job lined up. However, with all the schools being off limits to Joe, she didn’t know what she was going to do for work.
One day, she went to a music store and asked for advice. They told her to try the schools, which she said wasn’t an option. So, they then suggested she teach piano lessons out of her own home – an option she didn’t even know she had.
“I asked how I could do that because I didn’t have a piano,” Joe said. “They said it was easy and they’d rent me a piano and all the rent I paid, they’d apply it to a piano when I was ready to buy. I did that.”
She taught 20 students for her first year out of their one bedroom apartment near Livingston Park in West Jackson. She got $20 per month for each student, which got them lessons twice a week.
“I made $400 a month, and my husband made $300 a month as an accountant,” Joe said.
This sent her on a journey of teaching music in Jackson. A journey that would bring her so much more than she could’ve imagined.
They attended Parkway Baptist Church, where she sang in the choir, played piano, and was on the music committee. This led her to create a music curriculum through the church for children ages three to 12 because the schools were losing their funding for it.
“I stepped right into that because I loved it,” Joe said. “We had the largest training union group – over 800 people. I did the coordination of children’s music for a long time. We even had a bus ministry in the later years and brought in tons of kids. We must have had eight or nine buses going out and bringing children in.”
She joined the Jackson Music Teachers Association when she got her rented piano as the secretary. She has held various other positions over her career. She also joined Music Teachers National Association (MTNA) and held positions of president, vice president, secretary and certificate chair.
“That means I have been a member of MTNA for 60-something years,” Joe said. “That started in 1958, and I started there that October of 1958. It has been a wonderful, wonderful trip. I have enjoyed every bit of it. I attended all the conventions all over the place.”
She has also been a member and held leadership roles in various other organizations throughout the years.
“I’ve been told how much I’ve been able to do in the community, and I say I haven’t been able to do it – it’s all just come at me,” Joe said. “It’s just like ‘What’s next?’”
With all the students she taught through her lessons, ministries and clubs, it brought blessings her way. When she became pregnant with their first child, they couldn’t stay in their one bedroom apartment anymore. Not knowing what to do, a mother of one of her students let her know of a property she could build on. Then, a man, whose three children needed piano lessons, built their home just to her liking and on a tight budget.
“It was like a little dollhouse, because I got to choose everything,” Joe said. “It’s nothing but the Lord. I was just being blessed so much. I started teaching the kids all up and down the street at our new house. We stayed there for about 15 years.”
Over her decades-long teaching career, she has gone through phases of her business. One being when she started group lessons in 1967.
“I got four acoustic pianos and put two children at each piano,” Joe said. “It was good, and it worked. I figured it all out where they each had an individual lesson and a group lesson. When I changed to group teaching, I lost only one student for her senior year. And she brought her daughter to me years later.”
Joe said she couldn’t possibly guess how many students she has taught over her lifetime of teaching. At 85 years old, Joe has slowed down her teaching career but still has 16 students on her roster.
“I have had so many people walk up to me and say ‘Hey Miss Joe, I’m retiring from teaching, and thank you for teaching me’,” Joe said laughing. “There’s just so many kids.”
Despite all the kids she has taught, she can tell endless stories of what they are all doing and where they ended up. She has a box full of letters from students who are studying piano in college, now a lawyer, studying at MIT, or even head of a department at Stanford University. However, wherever they ended up, they remember Miss Joe and their love for piano taking the time to handwrite letters or take her to lunch when they come back into town.
“I’ve had more than my share of wonderful students,” Joe said. “It’s been a marvelous journey. It’s a beautiful journey.”
Joe won MMTA’s Music Teacher of the Year Award on Nov. 5, 2021. At first, she declined the award and said it wasn’t right for her to get it.
“I said to give it to one of the younger teachers who is fighting the battle and is in there right now because I’m on my way out,” Joe said. “That’s not the way you should do that. It’s supposed to be an encourager, and yet they said no. They are sweet, wonderful friends.”
She said her favorite part of teaching is how she can encourage, inspire, and threaten children to do their best.
“My granddaughter is 15, and I told her it was her turn for piano lessons,” Joe said. “She told her Daddy, ‘I can’t take piano from Grandma. She is a mean teacher.’ I told her I never mean to be mean, but I think when you’re going to school, you need to get down on your knees and thank the Lord for every mean teacher you have ever had because all they’re trying to do is get you to do your best. But she never has taken piano.”
She has always prayed she would be a good teacher, and that is her life.
“When I think back on all of this, I realize the Lord has a plan for your life and when you follow it, he blesses,” Joe said. “Who am I? Nothing but just a little pile of dust. Then, God breathed in us and made us human beings and who am I? I’m just here to be molded and taught.”
