Parents, students, and teachers have started to ease back into the routines and rituals of the school year, for the most part. Inevitably, someone’s already missing a lunch box and at least one parent has had to negotiate their child’s complaint of general malaise and the predictable request to stay home that follows it.

Arts teachers, too, are getting back into the swing of things and they spend a good portion of the summer preparing for the year ahead.

“It’s like getting ready, to get ready, to get ready,” said Megan Sahely, Raa Middle School’s orchestra teacher. Though classroom initiatives are top of mind for many teachers allsummer long, in the week preceding the students’ return, teachers and administrators really buckle down.

“You have 40 hours of work to do in your own classroom but you also have district meetings and faculty meetings and, and, and.”

Sahely is beginning her second year at Raa and, though she has an additional year of experience teaching in Kentucky, she’s still getting used to the complexities and the logistics that go along with being an arts educator. “The sheer amount of paperwork that we have to do to do our jobs can be overwhelming to me.

The mountain of behind the scenes work to get our kids playing is staggering.”

Timotheus Harper took on the role of band director at Godby High School midway

through last school year. With just a few months of classroom experience, he is actively defining his instructional style and methods. He’s been busy teaching a beginning band camp at Godby all summer and his to-do list is long. It includes classroom management planning and the revision of the physical learning environment.

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