A good week, part one

I told part of this story to Gordo, and he said I should post it. I'd rather blog it.

As you may or may not know, I was hired in December to fill in as band director at a military school (all boys, 7-12th grade) for a teacher who was deployed for 90 days and for a drama teacher who moved away. I expected the job to be challenging, but it was even more challenging than I expected. Even so, I feet like it is where I need to be.

These boys can be really tough. Some of them don't ever remember living in a two-parent home, some of them have been shuffled between parents who don't know what to do with them or kicked out of schools that don't know what to do with them. There are a handful of day cadets, and a good many whose parents live in the Atlanta area, but many of the boys don't go home very often. When you combine this with immaturity and raging hormones, it can make life difficult for students and teachers alike.

About a month ago, I got an email from the local Arts Council announcing that a group called the Dallas Brass was coming to town. As part of their program, they invite local high school students to participate in a clinic and play a piece with them. Our band program has been in a downward spiral for a while, but I have a handful of good players, and out of them I picked the ones whose behavior would reflect positively on the school. Initially I met some resistance from my higher-ups, because the performance was scheduled the night before parents' weekend, and the boys were supposed to clean their barracks that night. Finally I was able to push it through and sign six of my boys up.

I knew what a positive experience it can be for a student to work with a regional band of top players, but I did not fully understand how positive it could be until I was asking one of the students to play. He looked at me and said, "Ma'am, I've never been asked to play for anything."

I said, "So, do you want to do this?"

He just stared at me. "Ma'am. I've never been asked to play for anything."

I got them their music and they rehearsed it. On Thursday, I packed them up in the van and took them to the clinic. We walked in and the middle school group was rehearsing. The kid who had never been asked to do anything looked at me and said, "Ma'am," (they have to call me that all the time!) "these little guys are better than our whole band. I'm going to suck."

I laughed and told him that no one knew that. I advised him to just pretend he was really good and to fly on the wings of positive thinking.

I had to leave to go to another rehearsal (more on that later) but when I gathered them for the performance that night, their eyes were shining. They were all bubbling over about how much fun it was to play with a group of good players. (My boys are quoted in this article.) If you have never experienced the joy of hearing a teenaged boy bubble over (whose primary goal in life is to look like he's too cool for school) I highly recommend it.

But the highlight of the evening was when we were waiting to go in and the director came up to me and asked if I heard how my boys had been singled out at rehearsal. The man conducting the clinic said that they looked like military players in the way they stood. They held their horns up correctly. I almost fainted--I spent several weeks making them stand up and hold their horns up, trying to get them to understand that they would physically, mentally, and musically benefit from it. I laughed and looked at my boys: "You really listened to me?!"

One of them snapped back, "Ma'am, you actually taught us stuff. Major ________ stopped trying that a long time ago....of course we had to give you a hard time about it, but we did learn stuff from you."

Needless to say, I was very proud of them that night. They looked good and sounded great. I try not to let them know this, but I've grown to love those boys.

As the title suggests, there is a second night of educational wonderment to report, but it will have to wait. I'm tired.