Our amazing clarinet player

Erin is a very talented clarinet player who likes to play for fun and not necessarily to be "the best". This week we have had a couple of reminders of that. First, during her private lesson, her teacher told Erin she really frustrated her. Erin asked why and the response was "because you could be amazing if you wanted, but you just don't care". This comment just rolled of Erin's back. We have had issues with this private lesson teacher's attitude in the past, but have stuck with her because she is a good teacher and because Erin doesn't let her comments get to her. When Erin told me about this incident, I told her that her teacher was probably right--that if she practiced more she could probably get a scholarship. Her response was "I don't want to study music, so why would they give me a scholarship". Good point. Later that same week, Rachel came home to tell us that her high school band director had called her into his office. He started off with small talk about the new tuba they are getting next year, and then asked about Erin. He said he heard that she is a really good clarinet player. Rachel confirmed this. He than said that he had heard that Erin was thinking about quitting band. Rachel said no, that we had talked her into giving marching band a try and that she planned to take band next year. He was very relieved, told Rachel how much the band needs Erin and then told her to let Erin know they are getting some new Bass Clarinets next year and that she might get to play on a brand new instrument. Too funny!
















On Saturday, Feb 2, Erin had her Solo and Ensemble competition. She had been working on this for quite a while, and I hadn't realized how much it was stressing her out. Friday night we took some brownies over to Sarah Richardson for her birthday. We sat in their living room talking, and S & E came up. Erin said she was so stressed out she could wait until it was over. I looked over at her and she had tears in her eyes. I asked her what was wrong and she said she knew she was going to do bad, would get a bad grade and then get grounded. Let me explain this by saying that Rachel did get grounded once for getting a B in band--not because a B is a bad grade but because she got it simply because she wouldn't turn in her practice records. We do expect our kids to do well in school--however, the standard is that we expect you to do your best. In this case, Rachel got a B simply because she would not bother to turn in her practice sheets. The grounding was an attempt to get Rachel to be more responsible. I assured Erin that no matter how she did at competition, she would not get grounded. That I knew she had prepared her pieces well, and that I wanted her just to go and enjoy playing them. This seemed to calm her down a little. The next day she went to competition and seemed pretty calm. When we picked her up, she announced that she had earned a 1 on both her solo and ensemble. She said she lucked out and got the easy judge, so even though she messed up on her solo she still earned her medal. She also said she would have been happy with a 2 on her solo. It was good to see that she had taken our talk to heart and would have been ok with not being perfect.