'A Nutcracker Christmas': Winter Concert Reflections

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It's been a minute, folks. Lots has changed since I posted about our spring concert awhile ago. And like I mentioned in that blog post, I wouldn't post again until December.... surprise, I'm not posting until January! I took the time to really enjoy my holiday and NOT think about work.

St. Laurent School presented "A Nutcracker Christmas". Each performing group (K/1, 2/3+3/4, 4/5+6) had at least one song to sing, and a 'routine' act to a piece from the Nutcracker suite. K/1's sang Gingerbread Cookies, I Want to be an Elf, and a scarf routine for Dance of the Reed Flutes. 2/3+3/4 sang Don't Eat a Poinsettia and performed a flashlight routine for the Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairy. 4/5+6 sang Here Comes the Snow and performed a cup routine for Trepak. Then we had all K-6 students on the stage (or in front of it) singing Jingle Jive.

In between each performing group, we had a storytelling session presented by two high school students. I've never taught senior years students before, but I was so impressed with them. They approached ME asking if they could present a story or a play for the concert. Given our routines for the Nutcracker, I asked if they could do a telling of the Nutcracker story. It was very exciting to plan the lighting, costumes, and the story itself.

We had a door prize to give away, our Parent Council was selling 50/50 tickets and popcorn for the show, and the house was PACKED - standing room only! It was a great show.

Now, for the things we learned, or will change for next time:

Plan ahead for snow date in advance

We planned our concert date in September, for December 15th. Fast forward to the week of December 15th, and the weather forecast wasn't in our favour. We were expecting several centimeters of snow and fast winds - all a bad mix for highway driving. We waited until lunch to postpone to another date, and that day we decided we would have our concert on December 19th. We announced the change, and we were promptly informed that our neighbouring school also had their concert scheduled for December 19th. We spent our morning of the 16th (at home for a snow day, of course) emailing back and forth and we decided to postpone AGAIN until December 20th. This unfortunately meant that any community groups who booked the gym for that evening (very very common in St. L) would be pushed out.

Note to self - prepare snow date in advance so we don't have to scramble last minute. It never hurts to have it booked! That way if we do need the snow date, it's an easy switch.

No risers!

One thing I didn't really think about was about risers. I remembered our spring concert, I was very thankful to have risers. I did not realize until it was too late that St. L does not have access to risers! I think I'll be adding that to an equipment wish list somewhere. It was too bad I thought of it so late (maybe we could have borrowed from another school). Unfortunately, without risers meant that some students were hidden in the crowd on stage. I reminded students to find their "windows" and we worked with what we had. Someone also suggested maybe having one row of kids on the floor (in front of the stage) to help, but then I think we run into similar problems where parents in the back can't see little Jimmy standing in front of the stage. Things to experiment with next time...

Start earlier (as an alternate day teacher)

This year is my first time having a half time position. My music time runs on alternating days. Versus previous schools where I've been there all day everyday for music classes. I'm also going to put some blame on my personal life... I got married at the end of October, which meant that I was not mentally ready until after the wedding was done to even prepare any concert materials. We started learning our concert materials on November 7th... just over a month before the concert. We were scrambling! Thankfully I had classroom teachers happy to help - once the students were fairly comfortable with the melodies of their songs, I asked classroom teachers to review the songs with them, especially on non-music days. It was a BIG help! If it wasn't for their support, our outcome may have been much different. Sadly I had to axe a couple songs because of the time crunch... Next year, I would like to start slow prep in October. Introduce the songs, listen to them a couple times, maybe do some listening activities to go with them, then really start digging into them in November.

Maybe one day I will get around to doing more writing. I always think that I will, and I never do! There's too much going on in life for me to really commit the time to writing, but when I do it's enjoyable.

Happy New Year - Thanks for reading!