GREENVILLE, N.C. (WITN) – WITN highlights an educator every Wednesday. This week’s WITN Teacher of the Week is Thomas Seaman.

Seaman is a band teacher at East Duplin High School and B.F. Grady Elementary. As the band director, he choreographs and leads students in performances and teaches them to play their instruments.

He has been the band director in Duplin County for eight years. Since he teaches in two schools, he says he feels blessed to have the opportunity to follow a student’s musical career and development as a young person from the start of middle school to the end of high school.

Seaman says the foundation of his classroom is an “all-together environment,” with pillars of teamwork, determination, persistence, and fun.

His nomination comes from one of his high school students. She says he is one of the only band teachers she’s met who truly cares about music and about his students, noting that he wears a wig to cheer up his students. She says Seaman makes more jokes about him being bald than his students do.

Along with the sound of music in the classroom, Seaman says he strives for students to look beyond the county lines of Duplin County. He says recent graduates have gone on to play in the pep bands for NC States Women’s Basketball Team, and one even acquiring a Platinum Record for writing and recording Electric Love sung by Borns.