Happy New Year everyone! I am excited to get back to school with you all. I hope you have had a restful break and are ready to return to making music together! Let’s look at what is ahead.
Schedule
Monday evening is the regular Percussion rehearsal from 6-8p as they prepare for the Percussion Concert that this year will take place PRIOR to SPRING BREAK. All percussionists are invited and encouraged to participate. This is a fun time to stretch and enhance your percussion abilities with your friends.
Also on Tuesday evening is the monthly Band~aides meeting. The Exec board will meet at 6 and the full regular meeting will take place at 7p. We are preparing for the upcoming Pancake Breakfast concert on Saturday, February 17. We will also probably talk about the concerts and festivals for the semester, along with the year-end banquet. Please consider joining us so that you can find a way to plug into this incredible group of dedicated parents as they support your students. ALL parents are supporters, we know that, but we do need a few parents who will take on small leadership roles (individually or jointly) to spearhead our efforts to encourage and provide for our students.
Basketball Pep Bands, we do have games this coming Friday (Black) and the following Thursday (Gold)/Friday (both). For Friday’s game we will host our 6th grade Honor Band students. This is a recruiting event, so we need to be encouraging and helpful and certainly mind our manners. We do not have an alumni night scheduled due to the timing of our games this year. We MIGHT be able to do something on Friday Jan 19 depending on the tournament schedule. We do not want alumni this coming Friday with our little kids – that would be to many folks.
KMEA District Honor Band members – This coming Saturday are the All-State auditions in Salina. We will meet at Northwest at 5:30a and the bus will depart at 5:45a. We will return between 5-6p. Please practice like crazy! I would love to listen to you and provide another set of ears to help you refine your audition sometime this week. We WANT you to make state!
Student Leadership Expansion
Finally, I would like to offer some additional leadership roles for students – any student in our band program is eligible. I’ve been doing lots of research on leadership and think we can involve more students and provide more opportunities for individuals to express themselves and give back to your band. Please look at this list and let Dr. Thomas know if you have questions or would like to serve in any of these areas. Dr. Thomas also has detailed job descriptions available if needed.
- Pep Band Librarians – 2 for each band – 20 lettering points
- Rack and Stack Team– 4-6 students – rack all chairs and stands on Friday after school gets out and then replace the chairs on Monday mornings into our typical concert band set-up. – 20 points for second semester, 40 points for a full year.
- Bulletin Board Team (in front of auditorium) – 2-3 creative students – change up the bulletin board monthly. 25 points for this semester, 50 points for a full year.
- Historian/Publicity Team – 2-3 students 20 lettering pts for semester/40 for entire year. Take pictures at all band events to provide to social media/website director, bulletin board team, and year-end video team.
- Year-End Video Team – 2-3 students with video editing/creation abilities – 40 lettering points. This team needs to gather pictures and video from students, FB, SmugMug, Seniors and more to put together the final video for the banquet and to share with the students. (Please also reach out to ‘webmaster@bandaides.org’ for copies of parent videos and photos).
- NEXT YEAR – Water Managers – 2-3 students to oversee water jugs, ice, cups and trash bags for all rehearsals and football games.
As you can see, we are looking for 15-25 students to help in various capacities. This is a great way to establish your willingness to serve others, develop and demonstrate leadership skills. Some of these positions need special skills, and some do not. Please look at the list and let Dr. Thomas know how you would like to be involved. We really want to spread this around and involve more students especially underclassmen – EVERYONE is important on our team!
Let’s dig in tomorrow morning and look at new music for the semester!
Until then…