President Elect’s Message Reach Out . . .
and make a change A
s I sit down to write this article, my family is on the way to Portland, Oregon, to visit my brother-in-law and his family. Up to this point we have traveled
4000 miles (all the way to southern New Mexico, Phoenix, Arizona, home four days for soccer camp, and then to Portland). I have been “on the road” since June 27th when Lila Kennah, Sandy Steele, and I, accompanied by two University of Wyoming college students, went to Washington, D.C., to represent WMEA and NAfME for “Hill Day” and meet with Wyoming’s representative and senators.
Some of you reading this already know me, however some of you maybe are not sure who I am! My name is Steve Schofield. I am starting my 24th year of teaching, all of which have been in Campbell County. I spent one year in Wright as the 5-12 instrumental teacher, one year at Pronghorn and Paintbrush Elementary Schools in instrumental music. Next came 14 years at Campbell County High School (eight as the director of bands and five years computer tech support). I was called out of “music retirement” and spent six years at Twin Spruce Junior High as director of bands, one year back at Campbell County as the director of bands, and now in my second year at the new Thunder Basin High School as director of bands.
As you read this article, many directors around the state have been knee-deep in band for around a month as their marching bands are well on their way to performing halftime shows and fine-tuning for competition season. Facing the music, indeed!
Being a band director is a unique position. The rest of our local school colleagues cannot
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Steve Schofield WMEA President Elect
believe how we just start the year at full throttle. By the time the first week of school is finished, most of us have already finished our first performance!
For those of you who have not experienced this, it can be a blur. But it’s also really rewarding to see how the students bond with each other in an extremely short amount of time. Most of us would agree that we are in awe of how quickly and efficiently the students go from first day of camp to performance ready! The directors are certainly “facing the music”.
What does it take for this process to be successful? A major component is the ability to make time-critical decisions and adjustments. You have to evaluate strengths and weaknesses and make the best decision for your ensemble using the best, most “updated” information. And this changes daily.
One of the books I read over the summer was Failure is not an Option by Gene Krantz. Is the name familiar? He was the flight director at NASA for most of the Mercury, Gemini,
Wyoming Windsong
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