Making it Work

By Kali Poore, Wiley Middle School

By this point, I have been serving at my site for quite some time and have really gotten to know the kids that I serve. I instruct some very talented kids, and was excited when I started my service that the band director was encouraging them to audition for All County band. My excitement soon wavered, when I found out how busy the kids were, and that they did not really want to audition for All County.

They had to work on the music anyway for a grade for class, and eventually many of them warmed up to the idea of auditioning. We even had mock auditions, which the kids came to love and saw as a mini competition against themselves to see if they could improve each week. As the audition got closer, many of the kids had changed their mind, and took a chance at the audition! The following week, 4 of the students I see for instruction every week, were ecstatic to tell me that they had made it into All County and would be participating in a concert weekend. They had such a fun weekend meeting with other kids their age from other schools and working on harder music and two of the kids who were thinking about quitting music decided that they wanted to stay to compete in more band auditions. It was such a joy to see this spark of interest, and to see so much growth in their opinions about music all within two months of knowing them.