Band Season

Here's a fair warning: It's about to get real nerdy up in here. I'm a little bit of a high school marching band jock. This has been on my mind today as many schools I know and love are competing at BOA Atlanta and South Carolina State competition is today and Grand Nats is coming up.

So here is where I'm coming from (if you don't know):
At Pope I did marching band every year and was a section leader twice and I loved almost every minute of it! We had some good shows and some not so good shows (dream catchers what a train wreck) and I made some of my very best life long friends in marching band! Amanda, Amanda, Colleen, Lindsay, etc. It was so much of what I did in high school and I'm totally ok with that because I loved it and I knew I wanted to be a high school band director and we were good so I enjoyed having the opportunity to see other great schools and to live what people all over the country dreamed of having in their school. I sort of knew how lucky we were but I didn't really know until I got to USC.

So over the summers during college I worked for other schools in Cobb at their band camps and loved the experience. I met wonderful colleagues and was blessed with the opportunity to work with some amazing programs. Hillgrove was special to me because they were the first school that I worked with other than Pope and I learned so much from the directors there. I love their style and just a really classy school. The past two years I've been fortunate enough to work with Harrison who is just an amazing program. They're going to Grand Nats this year and I am so going to buy the subscription and watch them.

Senior year I had the awesome opportunity to work with White Knoll and it took a lot of time but it was so worth it. It really showed me what it is like to be with a top-notch program all season. I enjoyed that experience very much and was really proud of all the students.

Basically, to sum it up, for a long time high school marching band was the easiest way for me to put my music ed skills to use and to get real experience teaching music. I also had some private students which helped me grow as a teacher as well.

So you may be thinking, what in the world is this doing on Elise's North Dakota blog? Well, I tell you, marching band is really different here and that's ok. However, this time of year, I really miss it. This year was my shortest marching band season ever... 2 weeks. 12 days of rehearsal. Who knows what next year will bring, but I feel very fortunate to have had the positive experiences I had with marching bands.

Maybe one day I will be working with a high school where I am the director or assistant director or even the middle school director who is on staff and helps. Who knows?! As for now I still love my kindergarten babies. I'm doing my best to teach them to keep a steady beat so one day when they go to high school they have a fighting chance in band. Or just like so they can succeed in life. Whatever.

In summary: I'm a high school marching band jock. I miss it. Best of luck to all of those competing at BOA Atlanta finals tonight, or any other competition and I can't wait to see how Harrison does at Grand Nationals!

P.S. For the record, I still don't understand the point of "State". I'm glad Georgia didn't have one and I still don't really get the way SC does theirs but that's ok. A lot of people dislike BOA but I love it. We all have our thing. It really doesn't matter though because I teach elementary music and don't direct or make decisions for a marching band so my opinions are simply my opinions and that is all.