Day 1

My alarm clock went off extremely early today. 6 AM is a little earlier than I'm used to. I got to CHS at 7 AM. I was the one to unlock the doors for the students today. Well, at least I tried to. I couldn't get my key in the band room door lock, but my CT, Todd, arrived just as I was having trouble and he finished the job. The first thing that happened today was that the band played in the quad as people were arriving to school. I was very impressed with how they play already. I do see the areas that they need work on, but, I could tell they did a lot of work at band camp. There was even a little hint of dynamics this morning.

The rest of the day was rather uneventful. Mostly, Todd went over the policies of the classes with the students. During 2nd period, which is Todd's prep period at the high school, we went over a few things, including Todd's schedule is. At CHS, zero and 1st period is band, 2nd period is prep, and 3rd period is guitar. At CJHS, 5th period is Beginning Band and 6th period is Concert Band. He also has a Jazz Band at the high school on Wednesday evenings between 6-8. I'm not sure I will be able to make it to any of the Jazz rehearsals because I have a class at that time at the university.

My biggest concern at this point is learning everybody's names! There are so many students to remember! To help with this, starting tomorrow, Todd is having me take roll in all his classes. If anyone has some good name remembering techniques, please comment below.

Today made me even more excited about this upcoming year! It's really interesting to see how a new band director to the school adapts and changes things that the previous director did. Todd isn't changing everything at once, but you can tell he is slowly changing everything.

Just as a side note: This morning I wore a blue shirt, thinking I look good in blue. I didn't even think about CHS's colors of Red and Gold. Two colleagues of mine let me know too that Blue is the color of PV, CHS's rival. Oops! None of the students said anything about it, but I think I need to look into getting more red shirts!