New Head Band Director Peyton Lee walks up to door 34 on the last day of school, takes a deep breath and prepares to meet the new group of students he will spend the upcoming years with. After the former band director took a job at Keller Central High School, Mr. Lee stepped in as Legacy’s head band director.
“I had a lot of anxiety about leaving my old school,” Mr. Lee said. “There’s the stress of this new job, a bigger position and a new school of students that I’ve never met. It was really difficult, but I tried to take things one day at a time and focus on what I could control.”
After graduating from Texas Christian University, Mr. Lee taught as the assistant band director at Timberview for seven years before securing the position of head band director at Legacy.
“I actually didn’t envision myself leaving Timberview, but the opportunity came up and some people from the district encouraged me to go for it,” Mr. Lee said. “I really liked working in Mansfield and I knew this was ultimately the next step. It was a time in my life where I felt like this is probably a good situation.”
In his second year teaching at Timberview, Mr. Lee took full control of the marching band. He designed the show theme, built props and taught students how to march.
“I think the challenge is trying to take what Legacy’s band is comfortable with, and what they’ve done in the past, while tying in the things I’m comfortable with and kind of marrying those things together,” Mr. Lee said. “And I think it’s working out well.”
During the summer, Mr. Lee met with the band’s drum majors and captains to learn how they operated in the past and what their strengths and weaknesses were. From there, Mr. Lee began planning how to improve and structure marching camp to align with what the band already knew and what they needed to work on.
“I’m very grateful that the students have been very accepting and willing to go along with what I’m doing,” Mr. Lee said. “I’m trying to keep things as similar as possible, but obviously things are going to be different.”
Along with a new head band director, Legacy also hired Assistant Band Director Wade Russell.
“The long term goal was to either move into a head middle school position or assistant high school position, and this job opened up,” Mr. Russell said. “I knew that they had a good band program and really good kids and staff at Legacy, so I knew I was getting a good foundation coming in.”
Mr. Russell taught for 11 years before coming to Legacy. He spent two years as the seventh-grade band director at Carthage Middle School before teaching middle and high school in Chapel Hill. He then spent five years as one of the high school band directors at White House High School. Last year he worked at Charlene McKinzey Middle School.
“Every school I’ve been in has a different socio-economic setting, and there are different backgrounds from everyone,” Mr. Russell said. “I feel like I’m able to be more flexible to the needs of kids because of it. Teaching is teaching wherever you are, you just have to do it a little bit differently based on the individual.”
Different programs use different styles of marching band. Previously, Mr. Russell taught military style, but Legacy uses corp style. After being hired, Mr. Russell met with the rest of the staff to organize and figure out the next steps they would take.
“My main goal is to make sure that the groups that I teach stand out among the region and that they sound good on all the fundamentals,” Mr. Russell said. “If we’re not the best band, that’s not the end of the world, I just want people to think that we sound really good.”
In class and after school, the directors work with students on music and marching to prepare for halftime and contest performances of their 2025 marching show, “Borealis.”
“I love winning marching contests as much as anybody, but ultimately those things aren’t always under our control,” Mr. Lee said. “For me, it’s ‘Are we doing the right thing day in and day out?’ ‘Are we enjoying doing the right thing every single day?’ Because that’s what’s gonna create success for us and lead us to doing better at all the things we wanna be good at.”
