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Year 4, I Can Hardly Believe It!

Just last week we had band camp and I was talking to the accordion player Lee. I asked him what year he was and he said "I'm a senior." It hit me...the students I had as freshmen four years ago are now seniors. I am very proud of this group of students as they have stuck with band through the thick and thin. We've made many positive changes in the program and it is thanks to this group of seniors and the group that graduated last year.

This year is all about refining, refining, and refining. My goal is to accomplish more in the school year with a higher level of efficiency. I think the biggest change for me will be having the high school students using binders. Each student will receive two copies of music, one that stays home and one that stays in the binder. Too much rehearsal time is lost when trying to hunt down music that a student lost. Hopefully this will help them keep organized more. We piloted it at the middle school last year and it was highly successful!

Our Middle School music department has gone through a major change. When I started teaching the middle school 7th/8th grade combined band four years ago, there were 41 students in the band. Each year there has been a steady increase and last year we had 60 students in the band. As a result we are going to be splitting the 7th and 8th grade bands into two groups this year. I am hoping this will give me more time to spend on teaching the "special" instruments to the 7th graders while being able to move my 8th graders to a higher level of musicianship. Also, my colleague David Schumacher is going to be getting a teacher edition of Smart Music. We will both be giving assignments. Once again, we will be using binders which helps out a lot.

I am very excited for the upcoming year! I am hopeful that numbers will remain positive and that musicianship will be as high as ever. So many great things to look forward to!

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