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So this past season our beloved band director moved away. Unable to find a new director, our school's choir director is currently in charge. She was alright as a choir director. I didn't actually have her, but I had gotten some good reviews abotu ehr from her students.

However, aparently she has a bit too much on her palte, having to work choir, band and orchestra. She has changed a lot, for the worse. And she is changing oru program, for the worse.

band camp went great. The band was lookign to be amazing. But then, once school started thigns started goign downhill. She started denying us water breaks. On a regular basis, we go entire 4 horu rehearsals without water. Then, she decided that too many people were sitting out because they felt like they were going to pass out. her new rule is if you don't actually collapse or barf less then 3 times, you are to remain on the field marching. And might I add we live in Arizona, where it is hot as hell even now in October?
Next, for football games she has decided to not give us water until after we perform at halftime, or until the otehr band performs at halftime. Even if we perform pregame. We are also not allowed to sit down during football games. soemone nearly passed outand was sitting down, and she made the entire band stand at attention the entire 3rd quarter. We ahdn't even gotten to grab a drink yet.

it is no longer fun. Football games are strict and dull. Everyone is afraid to move, ebcause if they do we might have to stand at attention. Rehearsals used to be the highlight of my week, but now they are jsut tiresome and frustrating. She makes us do 5 pushups if wemake a mistake, per mistake. And she insults people in frotn of the rest of the band. She yells at us a lot. The old director would yell at us a lot as well, but he had a way of yelling at us that made it not as painful. His words would hit hard, but they wouldn't sting. her words knock you unconcious for an hour, and hurt for the rest of the season.

For jazz band, our first concert was a jazz, orchestra and choir combined concert. She told us it would last only an hour and a half. By the way, jazz only performed one of the 3 songs we were originally going to perform, while everyone else got 5 or 6. The concert ended up being 3 hours long. We had some ticked parents.

Now, she is treating all the people she "liked" at the beginning off the year like crap, including me. One kids spot was given to a freshman who can abrely march or play. Yes, the kid whose spot was taken by the freshman is not the best marcher, and doesn't play almost at all, but the parts he does play he plays well, and his marching is better then the freshmans.

She also refuses to work on music alone. at our past festivals, every judge, even the visual judge, commented almsot only on music. Yet she continues to go otuside and work on marching. I understand the going otuside part, but we do need to work on playing more thn marching.

Now here is the part that has me ticked off, and why, if we still do not have a replacement by enxt year, i will be switching schools: At the report card, I became ineligible because of english. I did my best in 2 weeks to get it back up, but the english teacher refused to bring it up purely because I only wanted it for band. Which made me angry because every other band kid ineligible in that class(we orignially had abotu 10 ineligibles, but everyone but 5 got it up) had abot ut the same amount missing, and the director actually went with them to talk to the teacher to get it up, and got it up. she told me to work on missing work during band class. She refused to help me.These other students had the same amount missing, and turned in one assigment of the same worth, and got it up. i turned in everything, doing my best work, and it still wasn't good enough. And nobody would do anythign to help me.

Anyway, durign the 2 weeks I was tryign to get my grade up, she banned me and my other ineligible friend(got screwed in a similar way by a different teacher) from even going outside. we had to stay alone in the abnd room working on missing work. If we didn't have what we needed to work on, we had to run the entire 2 hours. No water breaks. Even when i had turned in everything, she still refused to allow me outside. She won't let me eb section leader anymore because I'm inelgiible. And she yelled at me for being ineligible, got me yelled at by my english teacher for "interupting her class"(which i didn't.) And she had me and this other boy in tears almost every single day.

well at the past football game she started treatign us like crap even more. all 5 ineligibles. It started right away. She won't allow us to wear uniforms, so we look like idiots in band shirts and jeans cause oru band shirts are bright gold and our uniforms are black and dark green. She would ignore everythign we said, and walk away if we tried to ask her soemthing. I had to ask her what she wanted us to do, and she no joke yelled at me saying 'i don't give a s**t about ineligibles. Figure it out." Today, sheyelled at us for not havign a ride to the festival, cause we had to be there but we couldn't ride the bus. It wasn't our fault. we had been tryign all week to find a ride there, with no luck. We finally found one, but she still got mad.
At the festival, she ignored us, and turned us into pack mules. She made us help load and unload the equipment truck and plume the band members(understandable). She also made us squirt water into their mouths, also semi-understandable. Then she handed us her purse, sweatshirt, and a few other personal items and told us to carry it. When we had to set it down on one of the pit carts to stand at attention, she got mad at us for "losing" it. We knew exactly where it was. And she was still ignoring our questions. She expected us to know what to do, when she had given us no prior information.

We are not getting better. we are getting worse. We are exhausted, we are frustrated. Our old director would give us a break every once in a while, like an indoor rehearsal or a day of just watching a previous show and discussing it. She is endless work. Every mornign we have to be at school at 6:30 to 9 am, then almsot every day we have rehearsal from 6-9. Its too much.

I'm nto the only one tired of her. Half the band is barely remaining in the band. if she is director next year, we will have at most half the band we have now. i'm surprised nobody has quit yet. adn why haven't we quit? Because we lve the sport. Almsot everyone I talked to said they wouldn't stillbe here if they didn't enjoy band. Everyoen is just too afraid to face up to her. I've tried, as have 3 other students, but it just made it worse for us. The band parents will nto do anything, and the principle refuses to lsiten.

Now here is my dillemna, and i need advice: I refuse to be part of a band under her direction. My parents are annoyed with her but won't do anythign about it. i no longer feel like I am part of the band. I have been put to 2 chocies if she returns for another year: quit, or switch schools.
I don't know what to do. I don't want to quit soemthing I love, but all my friends go to my school.
See, over the summr I had to move half across town. i'm now clsoer to a different school, but I am still allowed to go to my old one. The church i go to is seperated into smaller groups, and I am no logner in the one i grew up in. This group just happens to eb within the boundaries of my current school, so I still get to see them. If i switch schools, I will probably not be able to see these peopel again. Yes, my new friends from my new group are at the school i would switch to, but I'm not sure if I want to leave all the friends I have, or the abnd I've come to call my family.
But then, band literally is my family. i hate my parents, and my sister is...a pain. I love these people more then my family. But even those people i love are changing.
I could always make new friends, and a new school would be a fresh slate. But...it will be my senior year. Althoguh, i don't think i will be able to handle another yea rof this.

The school i am clsoer to is actually one of the better schools in town. their band is amazing, and I do have some friends from middle school there, but only on e or two. I'm leaning more towards switching, but i don't know if i would like being in a 100+ person band, as compared to my current 70 person band. So another question: for those of you who know, hwo mcuh differeent is a big band from a small one? Is it still the same family feeling?

Yeah, like I said, almost everyone is ticke off at her over soemthing, but nobody has the guts to do anything about it, even the band parents. Especially now that one person, the one who lost his spot to a freshman, spoe his mind and is no never getting his spot back.

And I think I will take your advice and switch schools. Their band is pretty amazing, and they usually do some good music. I don't want to leave my senior year, but I want to quit my life just because of a crappy teacher. Had I quit eveerything I loved just ebcase I didn't like somebody in it, I would be a lifeless vegetable by now, haha.

i probaly won't switch til next year, just because it will be harder to get situated so late into the year, and harder to switch.

This would also eman that my dream of drum major is ou the window, but oh well. There is still colelge to get that, even if, given I get into the school i want to go to, I would have to compete with 255 other members for it, as comapred to abotu 15 trying out in my curernt band for next year. But, it aso means a larger clarinet section. Next year, most of the clarients at m current schol are swithing instruments, so we would be left with only about 3 or 4, compared to our current 9. We can also look forwad to maybe one freshman. So I gues switchign would be for the better.

Update:
She is at it again. she yelled at em for no reason today.

Well, what happened was she finally had someone take over my marching spot. We have had this clarient player who came in a bit late, so she didn't have a spot, and sucks anyway. Well, to fill my spot, she had one of the sophomore clarient players take my spot, and this late girl take her spot. What made me mad: The director made me show the new girl this other spot. I had no idea where i was going. I've never marched that spot, and she expected me to know it. Not only that, she had the DMs at a crazy tempo that made it impossible to keep up with the drill i had. not to mention, for some odd reason, the spot was written into the opener, but nothing else. Its the c7 spot. We have c1-c6, then it skips to c8. We dont know why it wasnt written in. So she had an invisible spot. I had no clue where this spot was, and it wasnt in the drill. adn when i told the director this, she elled at me like i was an idiot.

Also, at mornign rehearsal, we were watching the video of the satruday festival. Well, while we weres till getting situated, she was talking abotu how her sister lvoed our show. Apparently, her sisdter took a lot of pictures, one "good" one of us ineligibles. the director said about the picture: "I should blow this up and put on it "Don't be this people.""
The entire band laughed except for the ineligibles and a few of our friends. A joke is only funny if everyone laughs. If the person its about isnt laughing, its an insult. She insulted us in front of the entire band. Needless to say, I was pissed. My friend, another of her, er...'fanclub', had to hold me down t keep me from atacking her. She was so lucky I have a good amount of self control...

Speak to your principal. Denying you guys water, rest, and hell, even fun, is abusing her power.

I've never said this before but if she is your director again next year and you can't switch schools, you really should drop the program. Our old choir director was like that all the time and everyone hated her. It's not worth the stress if it's an us v. them mentality.

I'm so sorry for your program. Really.
If I had a cloning machine I would make clones of my director for every bad band program out there so he could make them as good as ours is...

This is horrible D:

and im just commenting on the big band thing


My marching band has.......wait for it........156 kids in it. YES 156 kids. It is one of the biggest disfunctional families I've ever seen it. We are all very close, there are some power struggles in the section for dominance (mainly in the trumpet section between me and a sophomore who is trying to run the whole damn thing), but in general being in a huge band is one of the coolest things in the world. The fear we strike in the smaller bands eyes, and the huge hits in the show are incredible when all of us rip it, the volume of sound is uncomparable to any small band. I know its gonna be hard switching schools, but tbh, at least in the other school you can have fun in band, and not have to worry about a crappy band director.....just my two cents.

We have three-four hour rehearsals before all our rehearsals, and I am a lead trumpet player that does all the screaming high stuff....while at first the long rehearsals killed my chops (my band director always tells me to take it easy, but i refuse), im now capable of playing for a very long time, and its helped the show's sound tremendously. I mean we do have 2 hours of warm for our band, but most of it is basic blocks, across the floors (<3), big warm up, section tuning, and then we play the sike-out game by playing our entire show full volume to scare the other bands lol..............I still think this ineligible thing is completely ridiculous.

Sorry bout the small writign haha.

ayway, I understand like how you do it, but theres a difference between the way my director is doing it and how yours does it. Mine does multiple show runthroughs, full volume, before we even get on the bus. Our warmups ar eusually a simple Bb scale. Just once. Then its full on music, full volume. Its different if you warmup first. we dont.

As for more updates: now she is saying ineligibles are not allowed to go to state. we can go if we find our own ride, but if we do go, we are not part of the band. We have to go as audience. Which is depressign because I was looing forward to it. And now, I can't go because I have no way there. Anothe rineligible tried to find us a ride with his grandma, but it didn't work out. So I guess I have a free saturday early...and I wont even know what they got until monday...
Which means i wont know if we go to state championships or not until the week of. Hopefully, i'll be eligible for that if we make uit, and she has already promised me the ability to march my spot again.

Lol, I don't think she would appreciate me giving her number out over the internet. She already exploded a few weeks ago beause someones parent called her cellt o yell at her about something.

I agree that we are part of the band. Just because we have a bad grade, we are not massive blobs of useless gunk without feelings. She is treating us like we are not people, let alone members of the band.

We were also unable tog o to the game last night because we had to find our own ride there(away game), and were unable to.

It feels so weird sitting at the computer right now...and depressing. Possible last competition of the year, and I'm at home wishing I was there...
Well, i have a feeling this is gonna lead to some long hours fo practicing. I do that when I'm depressed or when we had cancelled rehearsals for weather a few times last year. Thats what I did most of last ngiht. Practiced my clarient for 4 hours straight. I may have mastered the concert B and E scales...and the fight song.(if you saw our fight song, you would know why thats an accomplishment)