The Week in Review

This has been a tough week. The first full week of school usually is. We are off tonight but everybody should live it up because we will be going every week now for 10 in a row starting next Friday. I think most of the students are starting to get the fact that we will succeed or fail...individually. The problem is that we will succeed or fail individually while we are all together. Meaning, how much we achieve individually will make all the difference when we are all together at competitions or football games. The worst part of my job is when I have to go back to the band at a competition and things did not go well for us. You see regardless of how I am at rehearsal or whenever I really do love my students. I hate to see them fail or even just not get all they want. When we are at competition and things don't go well, they all look at one person...ME! I just got goosebumps thinking about it. I promise! I always talk to my students after every performance but the sad looks and the tears make me crumble. So I promised myself along time ago that even if everybody thought I was the meanest thing they ever saw, I would know I had given it everything I had to put my band in a position to do well. This year is no different. I will push them further than they think they can go and I will push everybody that way. I expect nothing less than I am willing to give myself though. If I could, I would do it all for them. If I thought that if by me learning every bodies spot on the field would work, be assured I would be on the field right now. If I thought I had to do that on every field in which we will compete upon would mean success, I would be there now. If I thought that if I could play every part perfectly would make the difference I would do it. (I really can do that though in my head). But that is not the way things work. My career rest in the hands or maybe more precisely, the hearts, of young adults age 14-18. Think about it. How many people can say that?

I hope everybody has a great Labor Day weekend. Rest up! I will be fishing.

P.S. The pictures are just too cute to pass up. They're my Boyz!