Education & Community

2024/2025 Salem Music Educator of the Year

2024/2025 Winner

Allie VanderMolen

Grant Community School

Allie VanderMolen has been a passionate and creative music educator since 2019, currently teaching K–5 General Music and Elementary Choir at Grant Community School and assisting with 5th Grade Band at Parrish Middle School. She holds a Bachelor of Music from the University of the Pacific and incorporates Orff, Kodály, Feierabend, and Dalcroze methods to create an inclusive, joyful classroom. Her music room is filled with hands-on learning—xylophones, recorders, bucket drumming, and dance—and she organizes events like Family Folk Dance Night to build community through music.

⁠Allie also contributes as a leader in Salem-Keizer’s music community, serving on curriculum and festival committees, mentoring future educators, and fostering professional growth. She provides enriching experiences for her students, including performances with local choirs and symphony field trips.

⁠Her students describe her as kind, encouraging, and full of “pazzazz.” They love her fun, creative approach—whether it is unique vocal warmups, themed concerts based on The Day the Crayons Quit, or helping them master instruments with patience and humor. As one student puts it: “She adds a special magic touch to everything we do in music.”

Read the Press Release

2024/2025 Nominees

Serianna Rosberg

Salem Heights and Morningside Elementary Schools

⁠Serianna Rosberg is an elementary music teacher at Salem Heights and Morningside Elementaries, where she teaches general music, choir and orchestra. An alum of COCC and Corban University, she received her BS in music, GradCert in music education and MSEd in ESOL. Before working for the Salem-Keizer School District, she taught in Helena (MT), Bend, and Albany. She has been teaching since 2005. Ms. Rosberg is passionate about the developmental impact music can have on every child - regardless of age, ability, or perceived talent. Every child can learn to make music, and every child can benefit from musical activities. This passion has driven her to create a classroom culture of accessibility and inclusivity, with a focus on Deaf and Hard of Hearing (DHH), autism and limb differences.

Jeff Crueger

Keizer Elementary School

Growing up in Wilton, CT in the early 1970s, Jeff Crueger vividly remembers the moment that sparked his lifelong love of music: a trip with his father to Lincoln Center to hear Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony. He was nine or ten at the time, seated just a few rows from the stage. One memory stands out—after he clapped enthusiastically (though prematurely) at the end of a concerto’s first movement, the nearby piano soloist turned, smiled, and acknowledged his excitement. His father quickly hushed him, but the pianist’s response made a lasting impression.

Today, Mr. Crueger teaches General Music and Choir at Keizer Elementary School, where he shares that same joy and curiosity with his students. He teaches music because it brings people together across differences. Because it builds listening skills, sharpens attention to detail, and draws on every core subject—language, math, science, and social studies. Research shows that music education enhances brain development and supports academic achievement.

But above all, he teaches music because it helps students connect with their own emotions—and understand those of others. To him, there’s no greater life lesson than that.