TI:ME is proud to announce that Bob Habersat of Oak Lawn Community High School in Oak Lawn, Illinois, has been selected as the 2026 recipient of the Mike Kovins Teacher of the Year Award.
Bob Habersat currently works at Oak Lawn Community High School in Oak Lawn, IL, where he is the Department Lead for the Commercial Music Program, and also teaches Music Technology, Music Theory, Guitar, Modern Band, and Choir classes.
Bob is a highly energetic musician who shares his love of music and performance at every opportunity. He is a truly gifted teacher who infuses everything he does in the classroom with technology that keeps students highly motivated to learn music by creating together. Bob also shares his excellent technologically-centred music lessons with hundreds of other teachers (and therefore thousands of students), through his “Shed the Music” and “Electronic Music Elements” curricula.
Bob is not only a force to be reckoned with in the classroom, he is also a true leader outside the school building as well. He gladly shares his experience, knowledge, and skills within the developing field of technologically-centred music teaching, consulting frequently with major music hardware and software developers, and also through speaking at local, State, and national Music Educators’ Association conferences.
Bob’s tireless devotion to both the students at Oak Lawn Community High School, and his enthusiastic work in helping other educators learn to improve their music teaching through technology, make him a stand-out educator in the spirit and tradition of Mike Kovins, in whose memory the TI:ME Teacher of the Year Award is given. Kovins was a devoted advocate for the integration of technology into music education, and the award only recognizes the very best of the best. We congratulate Bob Habersat on his outstanding teaching and leadership by presenting him this highly prestigious award.
Previous winners of the Mike Kovins TI:ME Teacher of the Year Award are: Amy Burns – 2005, Karen Garrett – 2006, Michael Fein – 2007, Ace Martin – 2008, Wayne Splettstoeszer – 2009, Rick Dammers – 2010, Joe Pisano – 2011, Barbara Freedman – 2012, Richard McCready – 2013, Catie Dwinal – 2014, Will Kuhn – 2015, Marjorie LoPresti – 2016, Stephanie Sanders – 2017, Cherie Herring – 2018, Shawna Longo – 2019, Anne Fennell – 2020, Stefani Langol – 2021, Ryan Van Bibber – 2022, Heath Jones – 2023, Gillian Desmarais – 2024, Robby Burns – 2025.
TI:ME is very grateful to industry partners Yamaha and Oxford University for sponsoring the 2026 Teacher of the Year award.
Full Bio:
Bob Habersat is a high school guitar, music production, theory, and choir teacher at Oak Lawn Community High School in Illinois. During his time at OLCHS, he has focused on expanding access for non-traditional musicians by creating a four-year guitar sequence, a two-year modern music theory sequence, and a two-year music production pathway. In addition to these classes, he serves as the director of the after-school commercial music group MME, coaches more than nine student-run ensembles, and sponsors the student-run entertainment label The Morning Show, which produces a weekly concert series in the school’s media center every Friday morning. He also currently teaches three choirs, blending traditional choral singing with commercial music ensembles, original compositions, student arrangements, and recording.
Bob is a Yamaha 40 Under 40 award winner for 2025 and regularly presents on music production, music theory, and guitar at state and national venues. Along with his colleagues Paul Levy and Samantha Elliott, Bob organized and hosted the first statewide commercial music festival for ILMEA in 2023 and 2024 at his school.The festival provided performance and clinic opportunities for student bands from across the state, as well as collaborative cohort experiences for the top 20 student music producers in Illinois.
Eleven years ago, Bob co-founded Shedthemusic, a music education website focused on providing resources and curricula for music teachers. Shedthemusic now hosts free classroom tools, free professional development courses, and full curricula in music production, music theory, and guitar. In 2024, Bob and world-renowned DJ Eric Jao launched Electronic Music Elements, a non-performance-based music production curriculum for grades 4–12. They are currently developing a second-level and capstone course, scheduled for release in fall 2026.
Bob is currently working to leverage the engaging nature of music production to improve student performance in reading and writing as an extension of music production and media arts courses. He is preparing to run a study in fall 2026 examining the effectiveness of integrating ELA instruction into these courses, with a focus on contextualized reading and writing tied to student interests through a modified version of his curriculum, Electronic Music Elements Communicator. The goal of this work is to provide administrators with data demonstrating how integrating ELA into the arts can elevate student achievement in reading and writing while fostering a sense of belonging within the school community.
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