For over two decades now, SBO has honored an instrumental music educator, one from every state. The tradition continues, but you can imagine the process is involved, and chasing down a nominated band director times 50 is daunting.
In September I watched a couple of directors herding middle school band students at a theme park in Florida. Yeah, it’s kind of like that.
First, they think the email is spam, if they even open it. Or, they think we are trying to sell them something (which we are not). Or they reply right away and assure me they will have the three questions we ask them to answer back to me by [*insert missed deadline here], and without fail, there is a race to the deadline that will go neck and neck up until I’m sweating bullets and about to board a flight to who knows where before we put the issue to bed.
If you get an email and priority mail letter from Timeless Communications (our parent company), please open and reply right away. This is kind of a big deal.
This December edition was planned back in the day as something nice to do for directors during the Midwest Band Clinic. Great idea, but tricky timing. I get it. It’s holiday concert rehearsal and marching season, a fall break and more to contend with, and you’re all really busy.
You can nominate a colleague, friend, spouse, former director, or even just somebody you know that is an exceptional instrumental music educator. And we are challenged each year to get teachers from some of the fly-over states (you know who you are), and Alaska and Hawaii. So, if you’re in North or South Dakota, Wyoming, Idaho, Alaska, or Hawaii, we really want some great choices from there this year. We want great choices from everywhere, but those particular states are always on the list of only a couple of directors for our review team to choose from versus, oh, Texas, Florida, California, et cetera.
Do me a favor, though. If you hear from me saying you were nominated, try extra hard to reply quickly and get this extremely awesome honor off your to-do list ASAP. You’ll feel better for it, and the anonymous submitter will be delighted to see their favorite director included.
