This evening we attended Rachel's fall concert, which was mind-blowingly impressive. The progress she's made from last year to this is astounding (though I guess I never blogged about her "monster concert" at the end of last year (it's not a monster-themed concert; rather it's a combined concert with every elementary school orchestra in the district, so it's monsterously huge...or so they thought) but that doesn't mean I don't love you, Rachel, it only means that life was insane (we were moving, remember?) and I didn't get around to it but I'm sure I have a video from it somewhere)) and the program is challenging and serious, but also enjoyable.
Here's a clip of the 7th grade orchestra playing British Grenadiers, which was my favourite piece of theirs. Don't mind the shaky filming job—I was holding Alexander on my lap and helping him sketch on the magnetic sketch board while also filming so it is what it is:
I couldn't pick her out of the sea of middle schoolers; there are over 100 kids in her orchestra (and that was just her grade). I'll assume you won't be able to pick her out, either, so here's a video she made for her playing test a couple of weeks ago:
The concert was held at the high school which is ginormous! It's like an entire campus—and with 4000 students it needs to be. I'm trying to wrap my head around going to high school with 3999 other students (give or take) and I can't. My first high school had 550 students and that felt huge (though it's smaller than any elementary school my children have ever attended); my second high school had 1,500 students, which really felt huge.
4,000 students seems impossibly large and I can't fathom why anyone would want to create a high school as big as that (though it seems to be the norm here).
WAIT!
This just in: I looked up the actual numbers. 4,000 is what I had been told. Our high school, though has only (haha—"only") 2,741 students, which is on the low end for our county (which does reach into the high 3,000s (Norcross High School, for example, has a student body population of 3,778 (and Raymond, the town where I was born, has a population of 3,708 according to data from 2016, so you can see why these numbers seem staggering to me. These high schools are like cities (or...very small towns...but still)))).
Anyway, Rachel is doing great at her middle school. She is loving orchestra (and even PE—they're doing a hockey unit right now!) and has joined a musical honours society of sorts that does service projects and things like that. She tried out for soccer and didn't make the team but is considering joining and intramural team (which I think is a great alternative to being on the competitive team) and also ran for student council. She didn't win the election (even though her posters were amazing) but was put in as a 7th grade representative (because not enough students ran for that position and there were vacancies to fill) so she's pretty thrilled about that.
She's a good kid!
Here's a clip of the 7th grade orchestra playing British Grenadiers, which was my favourite piece of theirs. Don't mind the shaky filming job—I was holding Alexander on my lap and helping him sketch on the magnetic sketch board while also filming so it is what it is:
I couldn't pick her out of the sea of middle schoolers; there are over 100 kids in her orchestra (and that was just her grade). I'll assume you won't be able to pick her out, either, so here's a video she made for her playing test a couple of weeks ago:
The concert was held at the high school which is ginormous! It's like an entire campus—and with 4000 students it needs to be. I'm trying to wrap my head around going to high school with 3999 other students (give or take) and I can't. My first high school had 550 students and that felt huge (though it's smaller than any elementary school my children have ever attended); my second high school had 1,500 students, which really felt huge.
4,000 students seems impossibly large and I can't fathom why anyone would want to create a high school as big as that (though it seems to be the norm here).
WAIT!
This just in: I looked up the actual numbers. 4,000 is what I had been told. Our high school, though has only (haha—"only") 2,741 students, which is on the low end for our county (which does reach into the high 3,000s (Norcross High School, for example, has a student body population of 3,778 (and Raymond, the town where I was born, has a population of 3,708 according to data from 2016, so you can see why these numbers seem staggering to me. These high schools are like cities (or...very small towns...but still)))).
Anyway, Rachel is doing great at her middle school. She is loving orchestra (and even PE—they're doing a hockey unit right now!) and has joined a musical honours society of sorts that does service projects and things like that. She tried out for soccer and didn't make the team but is considering joining and intramural team (which I think is a great alternative to being on the competitive team) and also ran for student council. She didn't win the election (even though her posters were amazing) but was put in as a 7th grade representative (because not enough students ran for that position and there were vacancies to fill) so she's pretty thrilled about that.
She's a good kid!
I'm glad she's doing so well! That does sound like a big high school - wow! I'm curious now about the area high schools here.
ReplyDeleteI looked at the local public schools and the highest in my county according to 2016-17 stats looks to be about 1,500 (we have 5 or 6 public high schools). The school Zach and Sophie may attend if they still live in the same area years from now, has about 600 - and that's the only high school in the whole county, I think. Except for an early college type place.
ReplyDeleteSo, yeah, those schools in your county are pretty huge!