Last week was LGPE for elementary and middle school string orchestras. We were scheduled to perform on last Wednesday at 6:50 pm. The problem was the weather the day before. The time for our performance would be delayed two hours. Based on my timing, my 2nd, thru 5th grade students would have gotten back to school at 10:00 pm. In any case, I called to cancel. I mentioned this to say that I feel my students were ready to play. This year I would have incorporated my 2nd graders who have been with me since kindergarten. They were excited along with their parents. I am getting a lot of notice and positive feedback, support and encouragement from my parents. I want to build on that for the rest of this year and the beginning of the next. The String Fling musical in the spring will be a good time for all the string teachers to parade their work to the parents in APS and promote the program hopefully to stem the tide of cutbacks due to the financial crunch.

Recruitment will be the focus for the remaining school term. I have the support of my principals and parents and I want to create new ways of promoting music and the arts in the schools. With all the testing and reforms taking away from the arts in the schools we are going to have to do more than just perform at PTA's and Holiday programs. I want to find ways to get the entire school thinking about music throughout the day. We have talked about integrating arts into the curriculum, but I see that more is needed. The parents are the key to what we need. Which brings me to my violist. I have a 4th grade viola students who is behind in his work. He has already been kept back and I think he will be kept back again. The only thing he wants to do is to play the viola. He is a good viola player and I think he will stick with it throughout high school. His mother wants him to play the viola, but she seems not too interested in his classroom work. I am thinking that music may be the key to turing him around. This creates a problem for me. I want him incorporate music and homework together. I don't know what the future hold for the young man. I might have a great violist hidden behind all of the bad grades. This reminds me of the movie with Sandra Bulloch. Maybe I will have to intervene in some way.