When Miami music teacher Jennifer Jimenez accepted the 2026 Music Educator Award at a GRAMMYs ceremony last weekend, she could hardly believe what was happening.
“It was surreal,” said the Frost School of Music alumna, a 2003 music education graduate. She got a standing ovation from the audience at last Saturday’s Special Merit Awards Ceremony in Los Angeles, which included music legends like Chaka Khan and Elton John's songwriting partner, Bernie Taupin, who shook Jimenez's hand and congratulated her afterward.
“I was flabbergasted,” said Jimenez, director of magnet bands at South Miami Senior High School. “I was like, ‘You guys are icons, why are you standing?’”
They stood for Jimenez’s passion for her life’s work. “Music education builds connection,” she said in a thank-you speech, which brought some at the ceremony to tears. “It fosters empathy. It creates a shared space where people from different backgrounds and beliefs find belonging and strength, especially in times of need. Music unites us by asking us to listen to one another and work toward a common purpose. When we invest in music education, we are investing in children—children who learn that their voices matter, that differences can coexist in harmony, and that they never stand alone.”
Speaking by phone Sunday from Los Angeles, Jimenez, who was a finalist for the award last year, said she was grateful the Recording Academy was recognizing the mission that inspires her and countless others.
“This award spotlights the work every music educator does across the country,” said Jimenez as she prepared to head to the main GRAMMY Awards. “I so appreciate the GRAMMYs elevating the teachers who are contributing to the growth of all these musicians.”
She credited the Frost School as a crucial inspiration for that work.
“Great teachers become great teachers because they have great teachers,” said Jimenez, who has taught at South Miami Senior for 19 years. “Being at the Frost School and around the faculty there was indelible for me.”
Jimenez had an unlikely journey to that indelible experience. She grew up in the Quad Cities, an area straddling Iowa, Illinois, and Nebraska. Her father was a pastor, while her mother gave up teaching to raise their children. Although money was tight, they made sure their daughter had piano lessons. In middle school, she joined the band, where she was elated to discover she could learn to play drums and that being a band director was a job. “I came home and told my mom I wanted to do that,” Jimenez said. In high school, she got a scholarship to attend Michigan’s famed Interlochen Arts Camp for two summers, where instructor Keith Aleo—then on the percussion faculty at the Frost School, where he had also studied— urged her to audition.
“He said, ‘It’s the best place you’ll ever be,’” Jimenez said. They persuaded her parents to fly her to Miami. She fell in love with the campus and the Frost School, which offered her a generous scholarship. She entered as a percussion major. That changed her first year, when she joined the Frost Wind Ensemble, led by former professor and director of bands Gary Green. “Being in his ensemble changed my trajectory,” said Jimenez. “The way he was able to motivate students and put all these great alumni into the community really impacted me.”
She became a double major in music education and percussion and played in the Frost Band of the Hour. She also fell in love with Miami, whose vibrant mix of cultures, peoples, and music reminded her of the Quad Cities. “Being at UM was like being home,” she said. “I didn’t know I had craved that.”
She is an enthusiastic Cane who has become deeply integrated into the community. Her Miami native husband is a pastor near the University of Miami campus. Their sixth grade daughter plays French horn, while their ninth grade son plays alto saxophone in Jimenez’s program and says he wants to attend the Frost School. In addition to her teaching, Jimenez is the principal percussionist for the Miami Symphony Orchestra.
The GRAMMY honor comes with a $10,000 award for Jimenez and a matching grant for her school. She’s received a flurry of attention, with a feature on "CBS Mornings," a story in the Miami Herald, and social media tributes from Miami-Dade County Public Schools and Only in Dade, which has two million followers.
Jimenez has stayed close to the Frost School, where faculty praise her as an important partner who regularly mentors their music education students as interns. Craig McKenzie, the Frost School's associate director of bands and a leader of the Frost Band of the Hour, stepped in for her at South Miami Senior while she was in Los Angeles.
Her high school students adore her. She has led them to perform at Carnegie Hall and two Super Bowls, at the 2010 pregame festivities with Queen Latifah and Carrie Underwood, and at the 2020 halftime show with Shakira and Jennifer Lopez, where guest star Bad Bunny congratulated them with high-fives afterwards.
Her high school students built Jimenez a wooden podium, since the band program’s budget is devoted to things like maintaining their aging instruments, and engraved her deceased parents’ names on the bottom.
“My students told me that every time I step onto that podium, they hope I feel [my parents’] love lifting me, just as music and this program have lifted them,” Jimenez said in her speech. “Cue me ugly crying at a concert.”
She urges her fellow music teachers to nominate one another for the Music Educator award and for communities to support music education in their schools. South Miami Senior has sometimes had to limit enrollment in the band program because it didn’t have enough instruments.
“I am a staunch champion for our community and our kids and the idea that every kid deserves to hold an instrument,” Jimenez said. “Support is essential. So get the word out—music does change lives.”
