If you want to know just how Garfield’s jazz program is so great, it isn’t enough to find out what songs they play, or how long they practice, or even who teaches them. To find out, you have to leave Garfield.

When I walk into the room, everything is smaller than it was when I was fourteen — the chairs, the posters, the music stands — everything.

But when the heavy door clicks and announces my arrival, a familiar face turns, breaks into a toothy grin, and hollers, “What’s up, girl?”

Robert Knatt, the band director at Washington Middle School, has taught music in Seattle Public Schools for 36 years, but this year will be his last. His office walls are saturated with pins, photos of jazz greats, letters of adoration from past students, and formal photographs of every band he’s had since 1990, when he started teaching at Washington. He’s taught thousands of students, most of whom move on to Garfield, and won hundreds of awards.

But he remembers every young student that has braved his band room.

His thin body reclines in a wood swivel chair. His notoriously large glasses are perched on his nose, and his graying hair is cropped close to his head.

When I ask him about any notable memories he’s had during his teaching career, he shrugs his wiry shoulders and says, “Oh god, it all depends about which year you’re talking about.”

“Um… what about 1996?”

The 1996 band photo is in the middle of one wall, third row down from the ceiling.

Then his face breaks into a wide smile and his eyes light up.

“What talented people,” he says. “They had entirely too much damn fun.”

The 1996 band was one of the first to travel to Moscow, Idaho for the Lionel Hampton International Jazz Festival. After their first trip, the Washington band won the competition for nine years in a row. He tells me about Chuck Baxter, a trumpet player.

“We played at about eight in the morning,” says Knatt, his eyes concentrated on the photograph on the wall. “He played I Remember Clifford. You would think, ‘Aw, shoot,’ but he nailed the part. Nailed it.”

Words of praise from Knatt are golden and genuine, and rare.

But instead of lauding Chuck, Mr. Knatt tells me that he put him in In-School Suspension for losing his shoes in a low-stakes poker game.

“He was real apologetic and everything,” says Knatt, the corners of his mouth curling upwards.

Mr. Knatt is often benign and grandfatherly. But the man is terrifying, too. He has strict expectations, and he won’t hesitate to get rid of the kids that won’t work hard enough to meet them. He makes kids cry.

If a student doesn’t learn his or her part, the consequences come quickly: “Go see your counselor, ‘cause you’re gettin’ your schedule changed, and you sure as hell ain’t movin’ up.”

His criticisms can be funny, though, if they’re not directed at you.

“What’s that note? An F, like your grade,” is a common line of his.

“He threatened to break my other arm,” says junior Danny Schwartz.

Even though Knatt isn’t afraid to weed out the people that don’t work hard, he cares about pushing each student to the ceiling of his or her ability.

“We as adults have been missing the boat, because we have a tendency to patronize children,” says Knatt.

Some explanation of the program’s success might lie in this belief; that in order to succeed, kids have to be challenged, not presented with things that are easy for them. At the beginning of each year, Mr. Knatt hands out an impossible-seeming piece to groans and whispers, but at the end of each year, his band plays that piece to great acclaim.

“That’s what learning is, doing something that you couldn’t do before,” says Knatt.

Mr. Knatt will tell you that musical skill is not the most important thing he teaches.

“Work ethic,” says Knatt, solemnly, slowly bouncing in the swivel chair and nodding his head. “Work ethic.”

The band experience at Washington isn’t all work and no play, though. Every time Washington puts on a dance, each student must walk to the front of the class to give Mr. Knatt his or her dollar for admission. When that student reaches the front, Mr. Knatt assigns, with the help of a hollering classroom, a date for the dance. The students aren’t allowed to leave the room unless they are lined up side by side with their new dates.

Mr. Knatt is incredibly respected among his students; a word of approval, or even a nod, is enough to satisfy a night’s worth of practicing. Middle school kids are, of course, easily distracted. But when Mr. Knatt speaks, infallibly, they listen.

Still, Knatt won’t claim stake in the success of Garfield.

“It has very little to do with me. It has a lot to do with them, because now they’ve gained a passion for doing [music],” he says.

His students disagree.

“It was truly him, not the kids, that made the program great,” says Washington band alum Erik Kariya.

This fact, along with Mr. Knatt’s recently announced retirement, is not good news for lovers of Garfield jazz, as almost all of the jazz musicians here went through Knatt’s music program.

But Mr. Knatt assures me that he will keep a guiding eye over his successor. Whatever happens, one thing is clear: Mr. Knatt will not be forgotten.

“‘You’re being stupid,’” says junior Sam Koelle. “That was the most important thing he ever said to me.”