N.C. Symphony seeking nominations for great music teachers

If you love the music teacher in your student's life, then this might be a great way to honor them.

The N.C. Symphony is accepting nominations for two awards for music teachers. North Carolina parents, students, colleagues and community members can nominate teachers for the 2011 Maxine Swalin Award for Outstanding Music Educator and the Jackson Parkhurst Award for Special Acheivement. Nominations are being accepted now through April 15.

The Maxine Swalin Award for Outstanding Music Educator celebrates a North Carolina music teacher who makes a lasting difference in the lives of students of all abilities and backgrounds, serves the community in an exemplary manner as a role model in music education, instills a love for music in children and inspires students to reach appropriately high musical standards.

The $1,000 award is made in honor of Maxine Swalin, wife of Dr. Benjamin Swalin, North Carolina Symphony music director from 1939 to 1972.

In 2009, the Education Committee of the North Carolina Symphony created a new prize, the Jackson Parkhurst Award for Special Achievement, to be granted in the years in which a strong second candidate for the Swalin Award demands recognition. The prize is named after the Symphony’s former director of education, in honor of his longstanding service to the students of North Carolina.