The 2015 uniforms have arrived.
ALTON, Ill. (Oct. 21) — The temperature was moderate and the wind calm Tuesday evening here at West Elementary, where Alton High School’s marching band, a group larger than it has been in the recent past, took the field alongside eighth graders.
Numbers are up this year and have been increasing steadily from about 80 when this year’s seniors were freshmen to more than 130 this year.
The marching band has been known as the Marching 100 for decades, but director Alyssa Cudney joked that the band might need a new name if the trend continues.
Which, of course, it might. And if the band keeps growing, the school will have a few thanks to hand out, starting with its ABCs:
A is for Alyssa Cudney
Ms Cudney came to Alton High School right out of college, having grown up in the area and attended Belleville East, where veteran director Mark Tessereau imparted more than a few lessons about building a top-notch band program.
Her first order of business in 2009, though, was to reinvigorate a band program that had been victimized by two former directors (St Louis Post-Dispatch). Their sexual abuse of female students landed one director in prison and the other looking for a new career because the statute of limitations had expired.
Zora Vredeveld, a senior at the school and a French horn player who became a drum major as a sophomore, credited the current band leadership with making the marching band strong again. “Zora’s a good kid,” Ms Cudney said about the Marching 100’s head drum major. “We’ll miss her when she graduates.”
Ms Cudney “is such a great director,” Ms Vredeveld said. “She keeps things light, but she works really hard. And it shows. She keeps everybody focused out there, and she’s taught me a lot, just by talking with me about what it means to be a good leader. And with her being a woman … it’s just helpful to see a woman leader, a role model. I’ve really enjoyed working with her.”
B is for Band Buddies
The main purpose for this night is recruiting. Eighth graders get to share pizza with members of the Marching 100 and spend some time with a junior or senior—often a section leader—learning a few sets of the show, Ms Vredeveld explained.
“We give them a taste of what it’s like at a rehearsal. We show them the ropes,” she said. “We also teach them some basic things like what they’re supposed to do on the field, the right way to march, and so on. They can see what it’s like to be in the band for real, with a buddy. And when they’re ready, their buddy can leave the field, and they can march in the show on their own.”
There’s more to the music program than the Marching 100, of course, and Ms Cudney is quick to recognize her assistant marching band director, Jennifer Shenberger. The school also has two concert bands and an orchestra, noteworthy because orchestras are increasingly rare, especially in rural districts like Alton.
Middle school band directors Tim Jarden and Ken King had a big part in tonight’s event as well, getting students out to the performance and pizza party. In addition to a middle school jazz band upon which Annice Brave, an English teacher at the high school and a National Board Certified Teacher, heaped great praise, Mr Jarden also runs the jazz band at the high school.
Ms Cudney also introduced members of her staff at the eighth-grade night, in order to reassure students and parents that many highly qualified and hard-working teachers and other specialists are needed to make the Marching 100 what it is.
C is for Community
Finally, the Alton Band and Orchestra Builders have been supporting the program since the 1940s, said Amy Hillery, president of ABOB.
Some band uniforms, pictured above, arrived at the school on Oct 22, paid for by the school district. However, ABOB plans to raise enough money to reimburse the district for the uniforms over the next five years, Ms Hillery said.
At the eighth-grade recruiting night, two men, officers of ABOB, spoke to students after Ms Hillery, informing them of the way they can donate money to the 501(c)(3) organization. One even informed students and parents that there was a way to convert stocks into tax-exempt donations to ABOB. In fact, every single word spoken by the two men was about donating money to ABOB.
In front of more than a hundred impressionable eighth graders, this sermon was at best wasteful of children’s evening hours and at worst unconscionable. Speeches like this have no place at school-night events that students are forced to attend, as this kind of proselytizing implies that students should not only participate in their public education but raise money for it as well.
But just because the agenda of ABOB is irrelevant to marching band students doesn’t mean the marching band’s agenda is irrelevant to the community, including music parents.
“The Marching 100 has always been really important to the community,” Ms Vredeveld said. “As the years have gone by, we’ve become really well known, I think. I can remember when people at the school didn’t really know a lot about the band or when we performed.
“But the hard work—and Ms Cudney has definitely brought that in—and positive environment do attract people. The band has just gotten better, and that has brought people in and kept people in.”
Extending the metaphor
If we were to use the ABCDs instead of just the ABCs, the D would be for drum majors, who seem to have more of a clue as to what matters in their curricular sixth-period class than the parents’ organization does. ABOB, though, does date from a time when public schools looked nothing like they do today. Drum majors have a big job to fill, and that comes with challenges they work on throughout the marching band season, which will end for Alton Saturday at a festival in Missouri.
Ms Vredeveld said she might have had trouble setting the tempo at exactly 145 beats per minute at the first football game, but the tempo has been solid ever since. Recognizing and overcoming challenges is a big part of leadership, she admits.
“It’s really important to have a relationship with the people you’re leading,” she said. “It’s something I’ve learned from Ms Cudney and from (drum major) camps (at Indiana State University) and from leadership classes that we take once a week. We learn in that class that leadership is servitude. It’s about serving people.
“It’s also about knowing the people you’re leading and leading them by caring about them and by loving them and helping them—not by saying, ‘This is what you’re doing wrong; this is what you need to do.’ It’s more, we can do this together.”
We extend our sincere thanks to Alton High School and to Ms Annice Brave, an English teacher there and Illinois’s 2011 Teacher of the Year, for their kind hospitality in allowing us to develop this story.