Summer Break
The final bell signaled the end of the school year and all of the students hurried out of the building ready to embrace the freedom of summer. Dreams of sleeping in, no homework, lots of baseball, and hanging out with friends created a palpable excitement that every kid intuitively knows. There is nothing like having almost all day to run and play and it seemed like the call to come on home always came a little too soon. The only drawback to summer vacation was missing so many of the dozens of friends beyond the kids in the neighborhood. You spend so much of your time in school that having those people cut out of your life for a few months was really aggravating.
I would never have believed it if it hadn't happened, but the cure for missing your school mates is to go back to school in the summer. I never had to makeup classwork during the summer break, but when my mom found out that the junior high school had a marching band, she sent me up to the school a week into summer break. I hadn't even gone to the junior high but she reminded me that if I wanted a trumpet I was going to have to use it. So out the door I went and I walked the mile or so to the school.
I saw a throng of kids just milling about. It looked like most of the kids knew each other and I didn't recognize anyone. My junior high had about 800 kids and only 13 came from my elementary school. I wondered if I would even make any friends since it looked like everyone was already in their groups. I found a little spot off to the side and sat on the lawn while we waited for the band director to arrive and give us instructions. While I was waiting alone, things got pretty boring pretty fast. But that all changed when I pulled out my horn and started to run through some scales.
That was all it took. Within a minute, more than 100 kids had taken their instruments out of their cases and began playing a messy cacophony of brass, woodwinds and percussion. It turns out that even though we all probably complained all the way out the door, once we got on the field everybody just wanted to make music and play. It didn't take more than three or four minutes before each of the groups had redivided, not by neighborhoods and childhood friends, but rather by instruments; trombones and trumpets took one part of the field, while the clarinets and flutes huddled near each other in another quadrant. And both groups tried to stay away from the drummers, who just made too much noise.
We didn't have to go practice every morning, but going back to school a couple times a week and marching in a handful of summertime parades made the long break much more bearable.
I would never have believed it if it hadn't happened, but the cure for missing your school mates is to go back to school in the summer. I never had to makeup classwork during the summer break, but when my mom found out that the junior high school had a marching band, she sent me up to the school a week into summer break. I hadn't even gone to the junior high but she reminded me that if I wanted a trumpet I was going to have to use it. So out the door I went and I walked the mile or so to the school.
I saw a throng of kids just milling about. It looked like most of the kids knew each other and I didn't recognize anyone. My junior high had about 800 kids and only 13 came from my elementary school. I wondered if I would even make any friends since it looked like everyone was already in their groups. I found a little spot off to the side and sat on the lawn while we waited for the band director to arrive and give us instructions. While I was waiting alone, things got pretty boring pretty fast. But that all changed when I pulled out my horn and started to run through some scales.
That was all it took. Within a minute, more than 100 kids had taken their instruments out of their cases and began playing a messy cacophony of brass, woodwinds and percussion. It turns out that even though we all probably complained all the way out the door, once we got on the field everybody just wanted to make music and play. It didn't take more than three or four minutes before each of the groups had redivided, not by neighborhoods and childhood friends, but rather by instruments; trombones and trumpets took one part of the field, while the clarinets and flutes huddled near each other in another quadrant. And both groups tried to stay away from the drummers, who just made too much noise.
We didn't have to go practice every morning, but going back to school a couple times a week and marching in a handful of summertime parades made the long break much more bearable.
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