Trade Offs & Departure Day Trip Update

Let me just say that the trip is going great. The kids, as usual, are the best ever! We had a tiny mishap in northern Westchester. While in stop and go traffic, bus 3 was bumped by a car at about 3:45 and we had to stop for about 20 minutes to deal with that. Only a handful of students on the bus actually realized that it happened and everybody was absolutely fine.

As band director, I am constantly balancing the needs of the students with the academics, marching/music rehearsing, and social aspects. We canceled last night’s rehearsal due to these needs. I felt, and the staff agreed, that a night off would help everyone recharge and rest for the up and coming weekend. It would also give people a chance to pack and get some of their school work done. When it turned out to be a nice night my “band director” side said “oh no, we could have rehearsed” while my humanistic side said “good move, the rest will pay off.”

Balancing the needs of the academics has always been an important goal of mine with the building of this dynasty in an academic powerhouse school district. This is why, when some parents were very vocal about leaving after 9th period so that the students would only miss 9th period once, I went along with the request.

I knew it would happen. Leaving 40 minutes later added about 3 hours to our trip. We usually made a point to leave around 1:30, at the beginning of the 9th period in order to get through the city before the traffic became unbearable. Leaving 40 minutes later was a nightmare. The bumper to bumper traffic caused us to spend 3 additional hours on the busses thus missing our free time at the hotel, our traditional “pool time.” We also had to alter our eating arrangements. We had a great dinner at the “Old Country Buffet” in Vestal, NY (just outside of Binghamton) at 8:15 pm. I feel bad that the kids had to sit on the bus all that time, and lose their social time. The trade off would have definitely been more worthwhile if more than just a handful of students went to the 9th period class.

We arrived at the hotel at 11:50 pm and we all immediately went to bed to rest up for a busy day tomorrow. Check back to this blog tomorrow for another update.