Welcome back students and parents! | Back to school is a very exciting and busy time. It is also when Band Director's usually hold seating auditions. This is typically a potentially traumatic time for flute students as the flute is an unusually competitive instrument. Now, is therefore, a particularly important time for the students to be practicing as they will fare better in the audition process if they are well prepared. I will be assisting the students in preparing for these auditions and ask that parents please encourage extra practicing at this time. I will also be helping the students to prepare mentally and teaching them skills to help them with their nerves. It is not important to me who is first chair or who is seated above or below but that each student is able to do their best. Nevertheless, there will undoubtably be some upset students and I will do my best to help them accept whatever seat they are assigned.

New! this Fall is the Outstanding Student awards program. Each week I will choose a student who will receive an Outstanding Student certificate. The certificate will be displayed in my studio for one week. When a student is chosen the next week a new certificate will be displayed and the student from the week before can take theirs home. If your child brings one home, it means that they acheived an unusally high level of success at their lesson. These certificates will be difficult to get because so many children will be striving to get one and only one student will be honored each week. All of the months winners will be posted in the following month's Newsletter.

At this time I would like to recognize Christina C. who auditioned and was accepted to play with the McLean Youth Orchestra for the 2005-2006 season. The MYO is a tuition-based, audition only orchestra and winning a seat is highly competitive. In addition to their local concert schedule the MYO hosts an exchange program with their sister orchestra in Chiba, Japan. Every other year students from the MYO have the opportunity to travel to Chiba, stay with host families and perform. I am extremely proud of Christina for her huge accomplishment. For more information about the orchestra go to: www.myo.com.

Good luck to all of my students with their seating auditions and with the Outstanding Student program.