Bucket List

This summer marks 20 years since I started marching band as a freshman in high school. While I already knew I wanted to teach band by that point, everything about those four years of marching band brought the icing and sprinkles to my band nerd cake.

Oddly though (maybe not oddly, it was my least debt inducing option), I ended up at a college with no marching band. And then spent my first seven years at a rural school where I desperately tried to start a marching band summer after summer, but encountered a lot of challenges pulling it together with a high school band of 20ish and 5-8 were cheerleaders or football players.

To get my marching band fix, I worked other people's camps throughout college and my first several years of teaching. I'd have continued, but started feeling a little awkward as the age gap between myself and the other staff members continued to grow.

Once I took my current position as a full time middle school teacher, I'd resigned myself to the fact that I'd never be a head marching band director. Honestly though, I adore my job and with a kiddo now, enjoy the hours of a middle school teacher over a high school director.

Life throws funny things our way though and this year was no exception as my good friend Lauren (check out her blog here!) and I began putting out feelers for a maternity sub for her. With an early August band camp and a mid-August due date, whoever came in would have to cover all of marching season from camp through the final football game.

A few people indicated some interest, but had reservations about marching season. So we started throwing around the hypothetical of me maybe (heavy on the maybe) taking over the marching band. The more we talked though, the less hypothetical and more concrete the idea became.

But then came the final push from maybe to definitely. 20 years since I started marching band means about the same amount of time that my dad has been saying that The Who's rock opera Tommy would make a cool marching show. And wouldn't you know it, that was one of the shows on the table for the fall.

If I'm only going to direct a marching band once, it might as well be with that show.

And so I found myself packing up and heading off to band camp again a few weeks ago. It was an amazing week! I found myself in awe of the parents who do all the organizing and the staff who worked with and around my rustiness when it came to the marching side of marching band.

Thanks to some seriously hard working students a great visual tech, we got all three songs on the field! It was really neat being a part of their camp and traditions for the week and I loved seeing all the students I had in middle school all "grown up." Not only that, but I got to bring my daughter to camp include her on the fun.

We've only had a couple rehearsals since camp (including one where the sprinklers came on mid practice...), but our first non-camp performance is this weekend and then it's time for school and football games soon!!!

Fall is always an exciting and adventurous time, but with the addition of marching band and a student teacher (posts on that to come later), it's going to be a wild ride. My inner 14 year old band freshman though is PUMPED to finally be getting the chance to direct a marching band, even if it's just making sure that a well run ship keeps going forward.

I'm thrilled and honored that I get to be part of such a great program! While I'm not entirely certain what my overall teaching Bucket List looks like, this experience is definitely checking off one of the items.