The music room at South Elementary School, usually filled with the melody of instruments, was quiet when Julie Diehl, 64, reflected on a career that spans nearly three decades.
Diehl is the district’s elementary string instrumental music teacher—a position she’s held for 27 years. Her musical life began almost from the moment she could hear. Diehl has been selected as Andover’s Educator of the Year and will be honored at the Rotary Club of Andover’s 2025 Citizens Who Care, Educator & Student of the Year Gala on Thursday, May 8 starting at 5:30 p.m. at the Andover Country Club.
Teacher of the Year is an accolade she never expected.
“Surprised, shocked actually,” Diehl said with an amused expression. “I love what I do, but I work with amazing colleagues. There are so many wonderful educators in every one of these buildings.”
Raised in Ohio as an only child, Diehl grew up in a home filled with music, largely thanks to her mother, a piano teacher.
“From the time I was a toddler, I was listening to my mother’s piano students in the afternoons in the studio below my bedroom,” Diehl recalled. “When I was supposed to be taking a nap, I was never napping. I was always sitting up and listening to the music, and then I would beg to be put up on the piano bench.”
This story was published as part of a collaboration between Andover News and the Department of Journalism in Boston University’s College of Communication. The student journalist is a member of Professor Meghan E. Irons’s Reporting in Depth class.
This blend of nature and nurture, she believes, is what sealed her future. “I knew I’d be a musician of some kind. It’s just who I was. I was that kid,” Diehl said.
Her parents, avid supporters of the arts, nurtured this interest. Through junior high, she took piano and violin lessons.
“My parents had taken me to the symphony concerts,” she said. “I always went, and it was just what we did… so I knew what orchestra sounded like. I knew what strings sounded like. I loved the opportunity to do it myself.”
Diehl’s childhood wasn’t without its challenges. Her father died of cancer while she was in high school. A decade later, her mother, too, passed away from cancer shortly after Julie had begun her teaching career. She briefly stepped away from teaching to care for her mother in Sarasota, Fla.
“It was not a question when I would go home to help her. It was immediate,” she says.
While in Florida, Diehl deepened her craft, earning a master’s degree in violin performance from the University of South Florida.
“It was a really great chance for me to work on my own personal playing skills and musicianship,” she recalled. “I relish that time now… it was a gift.”
After some time teaching near Sarasota, Diehl met her husband, a professional trombonist and principal trombonist of the Hartford Symphony. The two decided to return north, settling in the Boston area, as Diehl had briefly taught in Andover years before. “Serendipity prevailed,” she said. “I was able to come back, and I’ve been here ever since.”
Living in the same town where she teaches has added an extra layer of connection.
“We raised our son here,” Diehl said. Her son attended Andover schools before heading to Walnut Hill School for the Arts and is now a violinist with the New World Symphony in Miami Beach. “So we are two musicians and we raised a musician,” Diehl said with a smile.
As an educator, Diehl has seen the highs and lows of the public school system. Budget cuts once impacted the music programs in Andover to the point that she was the sole string teacher in the system.
“I was left to be the only string teacher in town to try to keep a few elementary kids going, keep a middle school orchestra going, keep a high school orchestra going,” Diehl said. “So I was kind of juggling all these plates at one time to just keep something happening.”
But the tide eventually turned.
“In the last 10 years or so,” she said, “we now have a coordinator for the Fine and Performing Arts… and we’re in a good place.”
Today, the Andover string program includes three full-time teachers, with Diehl focusing solely on elementary education. She travels to a different elementary school each day of the week, a schedule she deeply appreciates.
“I love being in a building for the entire day, and being able to follow up about a kid and speak to a teacher and do the things I have to do to tie up the loose ends at the end of the day,” Diehl said.
Diehl has a very warm and welcoming dynamic with her students, according to Kaitlyn Sicinski, elementary band teacher and Diehl’s colleague.
“She’s always just very friendly and kind and encouraging with her students,” Sicinski said. “They feel safe, and it’s a great environment for all. She just creates a very positive environment.”
Diehl’s impact on her students can be traced in the emotional moments that have stayed with her, like the high school concerts where she would introduce graduating seniors she’d taught since third grade.
“They would write a little paragraph about themselves, and I would read their biography,” she says. “I don’t think a single year went by that I didn’t choke up doing that.”
The Rotary Club connects individuals from diverse businesses, professions and services to learn about their community, serve the community, and foster mutual trust within it.
“To nominate the Educator of the Year, what we’re looking for is someone who is an example of the Rotary kind of model: service above self,” said Alan Timm, president of the Rotary Club.
After a comprehensive nomination process, Diehl was selected to be honored in 2025 with the title.
The people who nominated her included Sean Walsh, the town’s school department manager of arts and music; Kathy Meyer, music director of South Church in Andover, and two of her fellow teachers.
The other honorees of the 2025 Rotary Club’s Citizens of The Year Are: Ellen Arvidson, Ajita Bhat, Donald Cooper, Mary Beth Ellis and Eric Olson from The Sidney Mae Olson Rainbow Fund, Amy Janovsky, Martha Mahoney, Susan K. McCready, Shawna M. McCloskey and Kristine A. Arakelian, Mark Morgan, and former town manager Buzz Stapczynski.
The 2025 Student of the Year recipient is Sofia Duran-Clark.
“Julie Diehl came back with a remarkably strong endorsement, and she was nominated by four people,” said Steve Fink, a director at the Rotary Club.
When the Rotary Club was reviewing her recommendations, they mentioned Diehl’s ability to motivate people to perform and engage in music as part of their lives.
“It wasn’t just [that] she’s a good music teacher; she was changing people’s lives, using music to develop who they were and what they were going to do with their lives,” Fink said.