Band Director Blog

First of all, I want to THANK every single one of the BC Bandos for an amazing surprise today – - the 3rd Annual Porter Appreciation Day. I really was caught off guard and truly appreciate the sincerity and generosity. I’m completely blown away. THANK YOU.

For those of you not in class today, here’s what happened . . .

As I was starting class, a bunch of kids wearing homemade “Porter Appreciation Day” t-shirts wheeled in a large cart that was completely wrapped with wrapping paper with a huge bow and card on top. The card is HILARIOUS, and on the cart were 96 Krispy Kremes (assorted and plain), enough Super Chill soda for everyone (all 70 of us!), a 12-pack of Diet Dewski for me only (which they promptly put in my fridge so no one took it from me), and best of all . . . a freaking GAME CUBE, 4 Donkey Konga controllers and the Donkey Konga Game itself.

That card is seriously HILARIOUS. It has a creepy looking guy on the front wearing a gold chain. The gold chain is an actual chain that is attached the card. It rules. It made me laugh. I love it. I should scan it.  

They got up VERY EARLY to drive to Maple Grove to pick these up for everyone! Thank you Ethan and Dani!

Diet Dewski, and a plethora of Super Chill. Mmm . . . Super Chill is SUPERCHARGED!!

And then I saw it . . . the Game Cube, the 4 controllers and the Donkey Konga. It was truly a beautiful sight to see!

Obviously in shock here. I have a Game Cube.

They gave all of that to me – including the Game Cube!! They spent way too much money and I feel guilty, but they assured me that with all the discounts from people that work at various places and the large number of people in the band, it wasn’t much. But COME ON . . . it had to be.

Here are some of the shirts from this year. They make new ones every year. That’s awesome!

This shirt is amazing. If you look carefully at the red, white and blue “Porter Appreciation Day”, you can see an outline of the Norwegian flag. I am Norwegian (obviously) and enjoy wearing a shirt with a Norwegian flag on it from time to time and by “time to time” I mean, when I’m being made fun of for my Norwegian accent (oh ya . . . start at the cOda. . Thank you for including my culture.

They are too nice and I can’t believe how lucky I am to have such awesome kids! Seriously. It’s especially cool because last year, I was talking about how Donkey Konga is actually a very good educational game for band with counting, timing, looking ahead, and working on the whole concept of trying to line everything up perfectly, and I mentioned that I wanted to buy one for the bandos – that’s so cool they remembered. Such a thoughtful gift!! As is everything else they gave me.

We obviously didn’t play today.  

Thank you BC Bandos. I love you all very, very much. Thank you. I am seriously the luckiest teacher ever to have such a great group of kids.