Ms. Pendleton’s kindergarten class sits in pairs around their math bins, counting toy cars, building with wooden blocks.
“Look, Ms. Pendleton, I made a keyboard!” a little girl announces.
“Like Mr. Dane’s?” teacher Jene Anne Pendleton asks. The student nods with a grin and returns to her project.
“Mr. Dane” is Dane Market ’26, a music major and education studies minor who visits the Hose Elementary classroom three days per week. The keyboard he brought to class one day made such an impression that the kindergarteners now build replicas out of blocks and ask about him on days he’s not there.
“Every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday they know that he will be here,” says Pendleton. “At breakfast time they’ll ask, ‘What time is Mr. Dane coming?’”
Four years ago, Market wouldn’t have imagined himself captivating a full class with a piano performance. The Plainfield, Indiana, native came to Wabash as a quiet freshman, uncertain how to find his place on a campus that seemed to demand extroversion.
Market’s parents initially enrolled him in swim lessons as a timid 4-year-old as a chance for him to get out and make friends. With each lap, his confidence grew along with his speed. By high school, he had dropped his two other sports to focus on the pool, and he began to consider continuing his athletic career in college.
“I was super indecisive about where I was going for school, but this place and this team astounded me every time I visited,” says the swim team captain. “The camaraderie of the Wabash swim team is what set this place apart from the others.”
Still, the adjustment to a new environment was trying at times.
“I was super quiet when I first arrived on campus, and I wasn’t really sure how to approach any group,” says Market.
“I felt like the shy kid on the pool deck again.”
His freshman year, Market stood on the mall at the annual fine arts kickoff, watching Professor of Classics Jeremy Hartnett ’96 direct the Wabash Pep Band. Each year the band sets up extra instruments at the event and invites anyone to join.
“Professor Hartnett saw me watching and said, ‘You look like you know how to play the drums. Get up here,’” Market recalls. “He didn’t even give me a choice.”
Market took the drumsticks and never looked back. Four years later, he’s still playing drums, improvising his way through football and basketball games without sheet music.
“That was the first step,” says Market. “I came in freshman year very uneasy, but once I figured out how to put myself out there a little more with the help of the swim team and some other things like pep band, I was really able to find my place here.”
In retrospect, Wabash Head Swimming and Diving Coach Will Bernhardt sees that Market’s full potential was unlocked only once he recognized and embraced his capacity for leadership.
“His freshman year, I think he had a little bit of a path, but he didn’t quite know yet how impactful he could be,” says Bernhardt.
Swimming, Market says, can be isolating if you allow it to be.
“You’re in a lane by yourself with your head underwater, so you can lean into that if you like, and I did for a long time,” he says. “But that’s not sustainable. It’s a recipe for burnout.
“I used to think the way to get through things was to shut your mouth and grit your teeth until it’s done. Having that mentality really kept me down my first couple years here.”
Once he made that realization, he began pouring his time and energy into the team. He embraced the swim team’s big brother program, which pairs freshman “littles” with veteran teammates. Market now describes himself as someone who “swims vocally” and makes practice “more of a party than a grind.”
“I swim with the guys in my lane,” he says. “That’s what I would preach to every single guy who comes here—this is not a place where you can do things on your own. This is a place where you have to collaborate with the people around you.”
“He’s done a great job every year of not only connecting with his littles that year, but then following through as they’ve now grown into bigs themselves,” says Bernhardt. “That’s his impact as a captain. That’s his impact as a person. He really wants what’s best for the guys, and cares so deeply about their well-being.”
As Market’s outlook shifted, so did his goals. “In my final season, most of my goals were not really time based anymore and they’re not place based either,” he says. “It’s how can I leave a positive impact on this team? How can I help the freshmen continue on to lead good careers here too, and how can I leave this place better than I found it?”
His desire to invest in others’ futures pointed him toward teaching. Market sees Wabash’s education studies minor as an advantage because it “forces you to get creative and go find experiences yourself.”
In his search for classroom experience, he enlisted help from the Wabash Career Services Center and earned the opportunity to lead a school-age day care program at New Beginnings Child Care.
“I had 15 crazy kids ranging from kindergarten to third grade, and I had no idea what I was doing at first,” he says with a laugh. “These kids were on summer break and weren’t interested in learning anything, but we had a fantastic time. It was five days a week, eight-hour days, and it was my headfirst jump to figure out my teaching style. That was a great first foray, even though I wasn’t fantastic at it.”
Next, he wanted something more structured than the controlled chaos of day care, a chance to observe and learn from an experienced teacher. He reached out to Pendleton, who had welcomed volunteers from the swim team to her classroom ever since her son, Jack ’25, was a member of the team. Pendleton gave him that chance and more.
“Jene Anne has been fantastic and even passed me the reins at times,” Market says. “She’ll give me activities and say, ‘You’re going to take these kids who need extra help in this subject.’”
Pendleton is confident Market is prepared to lead a class.
“I have seen him flourish and bloom in the classroom, and I see him as a teacher now,” says Pendleton. “If he has something he’d like to do with the class, I feel fully comfortable to let him do that. He’s been such an asset as a positive male role model,” Pendleton says. “He’s a bright spot in our day.”
Market’s proclivity for teaching translates to the pool, too. Each spring and fall, the Wabash swim team offers swim lessons for children in the Crawfordsville community. Lessons were put on hold for two years during the Covid-19 pandemic, and when they resumed, the upperclassmen with experience in teaching had graduated. Seeing the need for instructor training and standardized “lesson plans,” Market took the initiative to revamp the entire program—creating a rubric for his teammates to track each child’s progress and know what skills to teach next. Bernhardt says it’s no surprise Market is the most requested instructor.
“He’s got that helping gene in him,” Bernhardt says. “Whether it’s a teammate, a young student, or a kid learning to swim, he’s truly invested in their future and wants to help them be the best person they can be.”
After graduation, Market will enroll in a teaching transition program that allows him to student-teach, take classes, and earn his master’s degree simultaneously.
“I’m thinking elementary school right now,” he says. “I love all forms of teaching, but I think grade school is missing a lot of positive male representation. I would like to step into that role.”
Bernhardt sees teaching as the perfect fit for Market.
“He understands his impact is in the future of education and being able to take all he’s learned over his four years at Wabash and instill it on a class, on kids as they grow up,” he says. “That’s been pretty special to watch him grow into that role and embrace his calling.”
As Market’s college career ends, he reflects on everything he’s learned about connection and purpose through swimming.
“The biggest thing that upperclassmen can do for underclassmen is have conversation,” he says. “I had seniors who did that for me when I was a freshman, and that’s what got me out of my shell and to this point,” he continues. “I think the easiest thing I can do now is repay that kindness and mentorship to others.”