The First Week of School

The first day of school is always an exciting day for parents, students and teachers. Parents can breathe again because the kids are out of the house during the day. Kids get to see old friends and make new ones, while of course showing off the new clothes, shoes, mp3 players and cell phones! And of course for teachers it's a return to doing what they love; why else would you work in a job that you are under paid in, yet demands constant updates to your education?

But enough of that for now! Opening day at my high school was busy but fun. I saw a lot of smiling faces and that is always a good sign. This was my 26th opening day and I must say it was the smoothest yet.

In fact the whole week went pretty well. We have some new internet technology designed to allow kids and parents to access their grades in realtime online; that launched well. Now the trick is for teachers to keep their grades up to date. Each class can now create a web page easier than ever, but there were some glitches with students accessing mine this week. I'll work with our IT department this week to fix this.

My performing groups are shaping up to be very good this year. Jazz band has plenty of returning players plus some strong new players. I do need a third trumpet but I have a five-sax front, four trombones and a full rhythm section, so it is almost a full big band. I'm still working hard on recruiting that trumpet. There are some players available.

I split my small choir into two parts, keeping the advanced kids in a group called Chorale. They will perform a wide variety of music this year, including barbershop quarter, swing choir, and English madrigal. Great voices in that group.

The younger group has potential but I will give these freshmen a year in high school choir to work on technique and music reading skills before introducing them to senior high school vocal music. There is plenty of talent in this group and I am pleased.

The funniest thing that happened this week was a problem a transfer student from Clark County Nevada had on his first day. He was caught smoking cigarettes on campus and was suspended immediately for the max, 9 days. Our school has a zero tolerance policy toward tobacco, alcohol and drugs. The student's parents stormed into the principal's office demanding to know why there wasn't a smokers lounge at our school. There was one in his former high school in Las Vegas.

The principal let them rant and then quietly pulled up state and federal law regarding smoking in a public educational institution and the law regarding underage smoking. He never said a word other than handing them copies of the law. Both parents huffed out of the school. Presumably back to their old school.