RUSSELLVILLE, Mo. - Each afternoon in the beginning band classroom, Elaine Buschjost is not the Russellville Middle School principal. She is a fellow student.
Buschjost takes her music home to practice each night and has even been chastised by the first-year band director Nathan Gargus.
"We don't see her as the mean principal," said her fellow percussionist Roby Mehmert. "We see her as the instrument-playing, fun person.
"We treat her like one of our own."
That's how she wants it.
Growing up in Russellville, Buschjost was never in a position to join band or any other extra-curricular activity, she said. Between limited finances and caring for family, it was never an option.
So when Gargus asked her to join - his motivation being to have his administrator more familiar with his program - he learned her story, and she jumped at his offer.
"I get to live out that part of my life in the very school I attended," Buschjost said. But the band room is in the basement where Buschjost attended shop class.
Now, she attends seventh-hour, sixth-grade band each day.
"I am treated just like every other student and have homework," she said.
She also shares in their first-concert jitters.
"I've never been in band; I've never played in a Christmas concert," Buschjost said. "I'm as nervous as the kids are.
"If I mess up, I will stick out like a sore thumb."
The daily routine in the classroom can be a little "weird" sometimes, Gargus acknowledged.
One day he asked her "how's it going?" - expecting constructive feedback from his boss. Instead, Buschjost gave him the student-answer of how she feels her improvement on the drums is going.
"I try not to change my behavior," Gargus said of treating her like another student.
But a challenging moment arose when he scolded the percussion section one day, asked for the culprit who had written the note names on the bells - a no-no in the band room.
"I was taken aback," when Bushjost raised her hand, Gargus said. "I didn't expect it to be her."
From Buschjost's perspective, she was struggling to learn the mallet parts and penciled-in her labels "to impress my teacher."
Otherwise, Gargus said it has worked out well to have her in the class.
Buschjost said she has gained an appreciation for the different environment in the "special" class as opposed to a typical academic classroom.
However, it is a challenge for her at times to stand still and wait while he works out a part with other musicians or takes care of other classroom housekeeping.
She is used to having a very busy, regimented and controlled agenda. And she has to rein in her instinct to discipline when students get out of line.
Buschjost knows if she were to break out of her student role, it would be difficult to regain that sense of being a peer among her classmates.
"I know he has a very good grasp on discipline; he's the classroom authority," she said.
Taking on the role of learner again also gives Buschjost a temporary break from her other duties and responsibilities.
"I'm not teaching, guiding, making decisions, coordinating or writing plans," she said. "No one looks to me except to play my part."
Despite her own limitations about learning music in her youth, Buschjost made it a priority with her own children, she said.
"It's a language spoken in my culture that I didn't understand," she said.
"I love all kinds of music; it had been a part of my life unexplored."