AP Exams

Money and stress is what people put into AP exams.  What do they get out of it?  Well, if you pass the exam and get a high enough score you can get college credit and save thousands of dollars, but if you are like many and don't pass the exams then you have just wasted a bunch of money and time.

IBA

What does this weird short phrase stand for?  To all dedicated musicians in Iowa this means the Iowa Bandmasters Association.  It is that time of year again and people are getting excited. 

Concerts

The stressful times of the school year when your band director announces a concert time.  With so many things happening it is hard to keep track of what's going on during the week and what needs to be done in order to be prepared for the upcoming concert.

Detention

               School discipline is always under debate by adults, but what about what the students think.  I do not speak for everyone, but I do speak for many when I say that students need discipline sometimes.  How else are we supposed to learn from our mistakes if we don’t even know what they are?  Teachers now hesitate to assign detentions because they are afraid of lawsuits and other unfair retaliations.
                Discipline doesn’t always have to be abusive and sometimes detentions aren’t enough.  What are adults supposed to do if students don’t care about detentions and only want to make teachers mad?  Well I have no idea, but sometimes I think that students respected teachers more when teachers were able to hit kids.  I am not saying that abusing kids is alright, but something has to be done about the lack of respect for teachers. 
                Getting sent to the office can sometimes help with punishment, but some kids get so used to that and see it as a way of getting out of learning in class.  Some kids just need to be put in their place and if fear has to be a way of doing that, then so be it. 
                I rarely get in trouble when I am in school, but one time I did get into trouble for no reason and I got really embarrassed because a teacher yelled at me in front of the whole class.  Yelling should never be allowed by a teacher towards a student and a student should also never yell at a teacher.  Yelling gets people nowhere and it only shows disrespect to both people.  I would say that for me to show someone respect, it would mean that they would also have to show respect to me.  Respect goes both ways and sometimes I think if rebel students would just get some respect and attention, then maybe they wouldn’t be so bad and would also show respect to the teacher.
                What other punishment should be done?  For me I would be devastated if I got any form of punishment, but some people just don’t care.  I would say that it is the parents’ responsibility to make sure that their student is good during school because how a student acts at school represents the home life. 
                How about lowering grades or not allowing someone to go to an activity?  That is already a form of punishment, but what more can be done legally?  Having teachers being able to hit kids with a ruler just doesn’t seem right, but it might be the only option left. 
               What if punishment is only making the kid want to rebel more?  Well in all reality, it is.  I read this one article and it has made me realize that everyone is different and what might seem like punishment to someone can feel like another reason to just keep rebelling to another person.  Children are hard to figure out and no specific thing is going to work for each person.  That is why I think each person needs and individual approach and maybe that is why the parents should focus on punishment at home and teachers should only focus on teaching.  Nothing against teachers, but I don’t think it is their place to discipline someone else’s kids.  Parents just need to get a handle on their children. 

Paying a Little Extra

       Private lesson teachers are costly, but effective.   To become better in music, it is almost necessary to invest in it.  Private lesson teachers are like coaches that keep track of how much you do and what you need to do to improve in music.  While it may seem like a waste of time (which sometimes it can be), it is needed to for even the best musicians that want to become better. 
            Private lesson teachers hold you accountable and can tell if you have practiced or not, they are like a weight scale when someone is on a diet.  If you step on the scale and the number goes up, the results would show that you haven’t truly put much effort into it.  It you step on the scale and the number goes down, it would show improvement and that practice or in this case exercise has been used to help a person get better.
            Private lesson teachers can be like your best friends and always chatty about the latest gossip during a lesson or they can be strict and always focused on music during the lesson.  I prefer in-between, but that type of person is hard to find.  Private lesson teachers can seem to be the most critical on you, but they are paid to tell you what you need to do to improve.  The truth can hurt sometimes, but often it is needed.  For a person to be a private lesson teacher, they would have to be musically qualified and better than the person they are teaching (otherwise both people are clueless).  Private lesson teachers can also encourage and support a person when they are going to do a competition or a performance. 
           During practice they may ask you to play scales, solos, or individual warm-ups.  A lesson is only as good as the person who is paying for it makes it to be.  If no time is put in between lessons, then the lesson would only focus on a particular thing until it gets better, and it would take more time for the lesson to progress onto other things.  Private lesson teachers are amazing and help each individual person become a better player.  It is definitely worth the investment and time.  If you found this post helpful and are interested in taking private lessons here is the link to a site that can get you started.  Have fun in the wonderful journey of paying extra.

Bullying

                Bullying is a major problem everywhere.  It not only occurs in the early years of a person’s life, but it seems like bullies never seem to go away even later on in life.  Being in school, I witness bullying every day.  I would be considered a bystander and sometimes bystanders are just as bad as the bully because they are letting the bully continue without doing anything.  I don’t always just watch it happen, but sometimes I don’t have enough strength to stand up for the person getting bullied. 
                It has always been taught in school that bullying is bad and that whoever is a bully will get in trouble with administration.  In some cases people do get in trouble, but not often enough bullies get stopped.  It is sickening sometimes to hear the comments of bullies and how they can make someone feel like they are dirt and don’t mean anything.  I feel like administration hasn’t done enough to deal with bullies.  So many kids go home crying and yes I have been one of those kids and nothing ever got done.  They would say take it up with their parents and sometimes parents don’t care about what their kids do.  Things like bullying need to be taken seriously and handled at a higher level.  We are all people and have meaning in the world.  Why should someone have to make another person feel like shit just so they can feel good about themselves?  That question will probably never be answered with the right response, but we should all think about what we say and do before we do it.  Just saying one word can be the difference between making a person’s day good or bad. 
                If you have not been bullied then you have probably been the bully.  I would consider talking behind someone’s back to be bullying so technically I have been a bully and I feel so much regret for ever making someone feel terrible.  Bullies need to commit to their wrong actions and fix what they have done.  Admitting that they and I did wrong makes the situation better and hopefully makes the person who was bullied feel better.  Being mean is unacceptable and yet it continues to this day. 
                There have thought to have been many causes of bullying and in this article it explains a few.  It think it all goes back to how each person was raised and what their family life is like.  Now if you are a bully you can’t blame your family for your wrong doing because you still have a choice to be naughty or nice.  I just feel like a person will be better at making good choices if they are raised in a caring family.
                Next time you see someone getting bullied please have the courage to stand up to that bully or to even tell an adult about it because something needs to be done with that bully.  Bullying leads to many poor decisions and no person should feel like they are worth nothing.  Everyone is loved and should feel that way.

Varsity vs JV

The nervous moment when your coach decides if you are varsity material or if you should still be in junior varsity.  Talking to my dad about this, many years ago when he was in high school the varsity team was only for seniors and the junior varsity team was only for juniors.  That can be good and bad depending on what kind of player you are.

Gym or Band

              Since I am in band I have a full schedule and am not able to take a gym class.  A common question over marching band and gym is if marching band students can get gym credit during marching season.  My school offers it while many schools don’t.  An article was published a while back and it mentioned marching to the beat is a great form of exercise. 
                Being a band member I know that the band gets a lot of exercise during marching season because of all the competitions and daily practices.  The problem is convincing over people to think that band members get enough exercise and don’t need any more by adding another class to their schedule. 

                There is a lot of physical involvement, especially for the lower brass instruments and drum line.  Carrying those big instruments through a seven minute show is pretty hard and almost everyone is panting and about ready to collapse after a performance.  My band director once said “You don’t get muscles like these playing the flute.”  I loved hearing that because often people complain about how hard it is to hold up an instrument and then all the low brass players (including me) look at each other and smile knowing that they wouldn’t be able to last a minute holding up our instruments.

               Total steps of a marching band member are almost three times higher than the average person because of so many practices and steps during a show.  During a practice there is always warm-up and people don’t just warm-up by playing music.  All the instruments get set down and there are stretches and jumping jacks.  It would be like a normal warm-up if a person was to take a gym class.  Each band practice is long and there is always a lot of marching with repetition.  Since things have to be repeated, a person would have to go to an original spot or a previous set (formation).  Instead of walking to that spot the band members have to run and get there quickly or the set will happen without them and they would get into trouble and probably owe laps.  Did I mention that people do laps?  If a person is late or not paying attention, they will have to do a lap or two around the track and possibly push-ups.  Band members may not do as much physical activity as the football team, but we still do more than the average person would do if they had a gym class every other day. 

Paying School Fees

It's almost the end of the year and slips of paper keep wandering into classes.  What are these slips of paper you ask?  They are the bills that still need to be paid before school ends.  In high school there can be many school fees. 

Graduation Parties