Marcia Yost juggles many different responsibilities in her role as director of the arts: engagement and outreach, including coordinating the choir tours and festivals and acting as the program director for the Community School of the Arts. However, her primary passion, both at Goshen College and outside of it, has always been teaching.
“What I like most about my roles on campus is what I’ve always liked most about education,” Yost said. “I love being involved with the students.”Before coming to GC, Yost worked as a public school music teacher for 41 years, teaching all levels of students from elementary to high school. This experience was valuable to Yost because it taught her about the differing ways that people learn and what motivates them to engage.
“As we get older, a lot of those things are the same. They might get a little bit more specific, and they might become a little bit more sophisticated, but everybody has something in them that sparks them alive,” Yost said.
At GC, Yost teaches music education classes and supervises the student teachers going into music education. In this role, she puts a particular focus on training future educators to understand how to “find the spark” in their students.
Kate Roth, a junior music education major, appreciates the way that Yost’s insights lend themselves well to practical application.
“She has literally an answer for anything that you could ask about education,” Roth said. “She’s probably experienced it, and she’s dealt with it and she’s figured out one of the best ways to work around it if there’s an issue.”
Beyond her work with GC’s music center and music department, Yost is involved in many other places on campus and in the community. She directed the GC Parables worship group for a number of years, acts on the Performance Arts Series committee, is the chairperson of the board for Goshen Theater and has been the music director at First Presbyterian Church for 38 years.
“I enjoy opportunities where I feel like I can help build community,” Yost said.
Yost also described herself as a “person of action” and stated that you are likely to spot her at community protests or marches. She attributed this to growing up in the 1970s, an era of immense political activism.
“That is just … what we did when things weren’t going the direction we wanted to go,” Yost said of protesting. “We didn’t stick our heads in a hole. We found a way to get involved and strive for something better.”
In her free time, Yost enjoys reading, being involved with the arts and fishing. She clarified, however, that she does so strictly on a “catch and release” basis.
“What I enjoy mostly about that is sitting on a boat in the water. And if I catch something, great! And if I don’t, I’m happy to just sit there and daydream,” Yost said.
Another thing that Yost finds great value in is family. Though she never married, Yost wanted children, and adopted her daughter from China in the 1990s.
“Back in the 90s … single people adopting children was not very possible at all. That’s changed a lot. I’m hoping I was a bit of a pioneer there,” she said.
Though it was difficult at the time, Yost was incredibly grateful she was able to adopt her daughter, describing it as “absolutely wonderful.”
“I feel very fortunate in that, as I look back on my career and my life, I don’t feel like I have anything that I’m saying … I wish I would have done this instead of that,” Yost said. “I feel privileged to have had the right doors open at the right time and the courage to walk through them.”
Yost has also had other unique experiences in her life. As a college student, she had the opportunity to work under the direction of Aaron Copland and Leonard Bernstein, two highly renowned composers. Yost remembered spending most of the experience “kind of in awe.” However, she also took away a different, unexpected lesson.
“Sometimes you have these people up on pedestals … and they are just regular people … We’re all just regular people,” Yost said. “I feel like everybody I meet is special and gives me something that nobody else probably could.”
Throughout her life, Yost stated that she always found a special value in people and what she was able to learn from them, Yost said, “I just love learning from people … I think some of the best lessons I’ve learned in life have never been in the classroom.”
