Hello Trojan Band Family,
I have an important message about the Lock-In. Our kids really deserve something to celebrate an amazing semester. Social events are something that they love and the band lock-in is something they have been wanting for a long time. They LOVE it. SURE, I will say as an adult….it’s not my cup of tea. That 2am-5am shift is not fun for any of us ‘old’ folks, but I will tell you in years past it’s always the lock-in shift that I take. This year we have struggled with parent help in key situations. Parent help is important because it allows us band directors to ‘duplicate’ ourselves to take care of 210 band kids! 4 adults to 210 kids is not enough…we need more 🙂 I think there is an illusion that ‘it will all be ok’ because as a student pointed out to me today, because we travel so much and have so many systems, people think they can be disengaged. That leads me to the next story I want to share:
This is a story about four people named Everybody, Somebody, Anybody and Nobody. There was an important job to be done and Everybody was sure that Somebody would do it. Anybody could have done it, but Nobody did it. Somebody got angry about that, because it was Everybody’s job. Everybody thought Anybody could do it, but Nobody realized that Everybody wouldn’t do it. It ended up that Everybody blamed Somebody when Nobody did what Anybody could have.
I communicated with everyone that the signup genius would come out the week of the lock in and to ‘get ready!’ The sign up genius went live Sunday night and stayed live until Wednesday night at 10pm (as stated in the Sunday band blast linked here).
I have had lock-ins where we only had 4 parents end up showing for a middle of the night shift. That is why the 10 people number was SO important to me. I cannot monitor kids with only 4 parents helping me. I had to draw a firm boundary.
We have to all know that we are on the same team and everybody needs to step in to help! It cannot be the same 12 people that take all shifts, do all the things, etc. We ALL have to chip in, or we can’t do what we truly want to do!
We will have a Movie/Game night but it will end at midnight. We will use the volunteers for the first 2 shifts as usual, the second shift volunteers will just have a shorter shift and help with clean up! I am drawing a very firm boundary on this with the parameters that were set up and the cause and effect of when we cannot run an event successfully.
Thank you so much to those that stepped up! Going forward – let’s all assume NO ONE will do it so that SOMEONE does it – for our hardworking band kids!
Mrs. Gonzalez