State 101 for Parents
Tuesday, October 18, 2011 at 9:40AM STATE 101---for new parents and a good reminder for old parents!!!
Dear Parents
This note is to give you some information on the upcoming state festival, its importance to your child, and to our program.
As you remember, I wrote you prior to the Midlothian Showcase. I talked about how musical competition versus a festival format. The festival experience---where each group going up against a standard grading scale, rather than competing head-to-head, is a better idea to me. I really like the state festival set-up in that it is truly each band against a standard performance expectation. State Festival is a 7 site, 2 weekend mega-event that includes over 160 bands in total from across the commonwealth. It is indeed a big deal!!! No system is perfect though, we are still dealing with the human element as far as judges go, but this is a pretty fair event for the most part.
Bands at State (now formally called the State Marching Assessment) perform for a panel of 7 state-selected adjudicators (I myself am one as well) and attempt to earn one of five ratings awarded. The rating levels and their representative grades are Superior A, Excellent B, Good C, Fair D, and Poor F. Superior is often called a I, Excellent is often called a II, Good a III and so on.
Like most bands that perform at the highest level, we are in between the Superior and excellent range now and are still working, tweaking and polishing as best we can!!! At State, any band, or for that matter, all the bands, can earn any rating. Just like in math class, there is no limit on the number of As on a test, and the same applies here. Anyone who is good enough can get the Superior rating.
Bands at state are still divided by classification (size) in order to maintain fair comparisons but there are no first place in class AAAA type of awards here. In fact, there are no captions awards of any kind, such as guard or drum line or marching or any of that. All there is is your rating. Thats plenty!!!
A band that earns a Superior at the state marching festival in the fall and a Superior at the state concert festival in the spring (March) of the same school year is awarded a Commonwealth of Virginia Honor Band" title. This is a very distinguished title and puts those multi-talented bands (tops in concert AND marching) in select company so to speak. We at Cosby have earned Commonwealth of Virginia Honor Band titles for the past 2 years, hence our designation as a Two-Time Commonwealth of Virginia Honor Band. In our 5 previous years of existence, we have earned Superior ratings at the past five consecutive concert festivals.
The performance at state is structured like any other contest. Titan parents need to arrive at Hermitage HS early, enjoy some other bands performances, and cheer the Titans on as best you can. Be enthusiastic in your support for your children!!!
We need you as parents, to really applaud for a long time after the opener, because our transition into the second tune is taking a bit longer than we like, and if there is a great crowd response, it wont seem so long to the judges!!!
The Titans performance is the last show of the day. It wont take long to find out our ratings as they announce them in ratings breaks about every 8 bands or so.
IF we earn a Superior, and we are certainly shooting for that, that is a cause for great celebration. There will be some excited Titans, and there should be!!! They need to know how proud you are of them. Be bountiful in your praise for the efforts of your child!!
If we dont earn a Superior, there will be some very disappointed and sad Titans as well. A streak will have ended, and there will likely be some tears and such. Seniors will likely be upset that this happened on their watch, and many will feel like they failed. This is certainly not the case---but.....well.....you know...... That type of reaction, sadness and such, is normal, and to be honest, expected as this event is important to our program. As a parent, your job here will be a bit tougher. You will need to lift up your child should they need it, let them know you are very proud of them unconditionally, and let them know they are still a great band as all of this is certainly the truth.
We all look forward to a great day on Saturday!! We look forward to seeing you there as we go forth and perform on the state level. Thank you in advance for supporting your child at this event and for all you do to support the Titan Band!!!
ES