Tuesday, September 15, 2009

Friday night lights








Andrew kicked off his first Friday night football game as band director for the Tara High School last weekend out in Baker, LA (about a 40 minute drive from our house) in the pouring rain. The last time I went to a high school football game was about 7 or 8 years ago when I was teaching, so it was fun to be in the midst of all that teenage excitement again.

Charlie & Katie joined me for the trek out there and we all really enjoyed our time getting to see Mr. Powers and the performance band in action, especially their rendition of Michael Jackson's "Smooth Criminal" (side note: the opposing team's halftime show was entirely devoted to a MJ tribute -- I suppose this will be a recurring theme throughout the fall). Andrew has only been working with these kids for about a month now which it makes it extremely tough to launch a full-fledged public performance, but... his hard work and dedication to this new job is paying off and I am so proud of him! Teaching high school is one of the toughest gigs out there and he's really doing a wonderful job of finding the balance between mentor and disciplinarian with these students. I think he's in a position to make a real difference in their lives this year.

Go Trojans!

P.S. The game itself was pretty pitiful -- it was raining so hard that no one could catch the ball and there were penalty flags on almost every play. At least we shouldn't have to worry about Andrew being gone on the weekends during playoff season!

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Love it! Great work, Andrew. Those kids will be better for all you give them!