Part II of My School Year Reflections 2011-12

In November we opened our Winter Arts Concert with this performance from our middle school choir, their first public performance in over 5 years, which was the last time that there was a vocal program at SMS. I had originally given this medley to the choir just to sight-read and challenge them a little, since it really is a high school pops piece. Darn it if they didn't fall in love with the music straight away! So there was no choice but to use it in their fall concert:



I wish we could bottle all of this energy and save it for when they are older and lethargic in school!

Annual School Year Reflections 2011-12

I am so far behind in updates here, but I have good reasons: I was busy teaching! Indeed it was a good year, though filled with uncertainty and new experiences. There are always lots of things to gripe about in the workplace, and for certain in public education, but I won't use these pages to do that, because I'd only be repeating what is being said all over the media about funding, test scores, student achievement, job security ..... the list goes on.

Rather, I'd like to celebrate my students' achievements this year in my small musical world - and they were many. Our challenges were also many; in my high school vocal music program we lost one of our best senior choir classes in spring 2011 to graduation. These kids were motivated and will be destined for greatness. Many enrolled in collegiate music studies and had fine years as freshmen. So I knew that my vocalists had a hard act to follow. In addition, our jazz program also suffered key losses of high quality all-state type students due to graduation and the new, younger students enrolled I felt had a big challenge ahead of them. I felt that over all this would be a rebuilding year, and once in which I might just be rebuilding for the new high school on our district, since some of my remaining students would be transferring there in the fall of 2012-13.

There were other challenges for me as well. I accepted 6/5 time status because our middle school principal had a strong desire to start a choral program at her school, after a five plus year absence. None of the seven other teachers in our district wanted to take on this assignment, so I volunteered; the program was going to feed into my high school choir anyway, so why not? There were problems, of course. Since there was only one period that it could be offered, the class was huge (50 plus students), and grades 6-8 were lumped together. And the added work load and loss of a prep period was staggering, until I was able to manage it by starting my day at 5:30 am each day. I had a zero period class too, so I went from 7:15-3:00 daily, with break for lunch and short 20 minute respite before traveling over to the middle school campus at the end of the day. I never really valued prep periods that much until I no longer had one!

Because of this workload, I was fairly intense all year long. My students responded in kind, and so many great things transpired, including a successful re-launch of the SMS choir, a great mid-winter vocal show, a back-to-back Heritage Festival trip to Anaheim (I have never done back-to-back trips out of state before over two years), and rapid maturity of my jazz ensemble. Those students in particular were phenomenal. The expected weakness of the rhythm section turned into a strength, with two enormously talented seniors stepping up on guitar and bass.

The good news began with an early winter concert on November 18th, before Thanksgiving. My middle school group went crazy over a 15-minute Mamma Mia/Abba tribute that we had started working on in the fall, but we had no place for them to perform it except on our high school concert. It went over great with the high school audience and I was so happy for these young students, most of whom had never performed in public before. They capped off their year with a fine performance at the middle school's spring concert. The kids had matured so much since that November showing, musically, physically and emotionally. It is so rewarding to see kids grow so rapidly. It wasn't an easy year dealing with such a large class of first year middle school choir students, but by the end we were getting across what was essential for musical growth. Such a fine collection of great young voices! And so energetic too!

My high school choir seniors had requested a return trip to Anaheim in the spring for our advanced group, called Chorale. The balance of this group was a problem, with not enough quality male voices enrolled; there was no way they would achieve anything near the sound I felt they could achieve with out using some singers from our Mixed Choir, a lesser experienced class that met at a different time of day. It was that group which made the greatest strides.

Once both classes understood that only be working together would they get the results that everybody wanted, things went much better. Students did the work at home, stayed after school, worked in sectionals, and even organized rehearsals at home with kids who lived nearby to get the job done. The first indicator or things to come was our Broadway Revue show, "A Night to Remember", staged on February 3rd. Turnout was great, and I think we were all amazed at how smooth the show really went. Our seniors really took charge and our underclassmen were willing to be led. The end result was a great show. The box office was nice too; this was the catalyst for the funding needed to get back to Heritage in May 2012. A tune-up at the Eastern Arizona College Large Ensemble Festival yielded great results in April and confirmed that we were on the right track. We were pleased with the results in Anaheim, though I felt that they had sung better in the warm-up. Still a silver award in their category (30 other choirs) was not a bad showing!

Our jazz students had a year to remember too, performing well at its winter concert, a paid performance at the local Jazz For Fun event in Green Valley, the Chandler-Gilbert CC Jazz Festival, the ABODA Area Jazz Festival (in which it qualified for State), and the State Jazz Festival, earning a high score there. But it saved its best performance I thought for The Spring Arts Concert in our auditorium, bringing the house down.

I had thought that this band would have to settle for playing grade 2-3 charts this year, because I anticipated this to be a developing year. But I found quickly that this band loved and needed to be challenged. Consequently I was able to use much more difficult materiel, including some Mingus charts. They did a wonderful job on these numbers, and proved to be very teachable with respect to the specific jazz styled that were presented with each new chart. They did all that I could ask of them, despite being short-handed all year long in the trumpet section.

Here are some sounds and sights in video highlights that were posted on Youtube throughout the year: