It is a real honor to be chosen as the Grand Marshal of this Saturday’s Railroad Days parade, says Matt Wenman,  but it can’t really compare with getting stuck, with the Mount Si High School band, on a bus on Snoqualmie Pass for hours.

Wenman, about to start his third year as band director at Mount Si High School, was happily surprised to hear from at least one of his students on the 2014-15 end-of-year survey, that waiting out the Snoqualmie Pass closure on their way home from a band festival at Central Washington University was a favorite memory.

It wasn’t being stuck that made the memory, he said, but the camaraderie that it created among the students.

“When one of the most important moments in their high school careers was from band, that’s pretty inspiring,” Wenman said in a phone conversation.

Wenman finds as much inspiration in those moments as in the growing list of awards and honors his students, both at Mount Si and Twin Falls Middle School where he taught for four years, have earned. Maybe more.

In his two years at Mount Si High School, he has launched a drumline program that’s expecting 22 students this year, expanded the band program to reach about 200 students, and led his Jazz Band 1 students on not one, but two trips to the prestigious Essentially Ellington Festival, featuring only 15 high school bands nationwide, selected by audition, to perform at Lincoln Center. At Twin Falls, his jazz band was repeatedly in the top three placers o its festival circuit.

From that list of accomplishments, the thing that Wenman talked about most was expanding the music program.

“Going to Ellington is a really great thing,” he said, “but just seeing the students’ improvement from year to year, seeing the program grow, that reaches even more kids.”

Music at the high school hit a milestone this past year, with the largest number of music students in a graduating class, but Wenman wasn’t talking just about numbers.

“It’s also grown in quality and in offerings,” he said.

As the new school year approaches, he is excited about his, and vocal music teacher Haley Isaacs’ plans for expansion beyond 2015-16.

“We’re trying to look at more ways of offering music to more kids,” he said. For example, Isaacs will be teaching a musical collaboration and creativity class this year, he said, and he hopes to bring World Drumming, an introductory music course back in the future.

“And we want to start an orchestra really soon,” he added. “We want to make a place for everybody who wants to do (music).”

This year, instrumental music offerings will include three levels each of jazz and concert band, plus a percussion ensemble class, a full schedule for Wenman, with a similar load on the vocal side for Isaacs.

“I have tons of help, though,” Wenman said. “There’s the boosters, and the kids help a lot. There’s no way I could to it all by myself… I kind of feel bad getting recognized, because I just represent a lot of other things.”

The help he gets from his students is actually part of his teaching style, learned from “just having really great teachers” from his own student days, and from student teaching at Bothell High School and Redmond Junior High. Wenman puts the power, and the responsibility, in the hands of student musicians to choose their work. While he and a dedicated group of parents got the drumline started, it was students who led it. Two years ago, he gave the jazz band the option to audition for Ellington, or not, and laid out the repercussions of both options: not trying, or going all out, with extra rehearsals and complete commitment.

“I’ve tried other ways, but it just seems to work better this way,” Wenman said, about putting students in charge.

Students will also lead the Snoqualmie Valley Youth Marching Band in their first appearance in the Railroad Days parade, 11 a.m. Saturday. Wenman, appearing early in the parade as grand marshal, will have to rush back to the lineup to walk along with them. It’s not so much that he really needs to be there with the group, but he wants to be there.

“If they’re successful, then I’m successful,” he said.