TN Musician Vol. 69 No. 1 (proof 4)

directors in leadership positions on both
the state and national level. One of the
things I would like to see occur is a mentoring
program for minority teachers in each
region. I will talk with the regional presidents
to advocate for a mentoring program
that can be put into place to help us have a
more diversified state and national board.
Each year at the TMEA conference we
have our opening general assembly. You are
probably aware that the format of our general
assembly changes from year to year.
We want all music teachers to come to this
assembly, but there has been discussion on
moving the assembly to Saturday morning.
The rationale is that professional development
sessions could be offered that are
geared toward middle school general music
and choral directors. Also, moving the
general assembly to Saturday would solve
transportation issues for the TN Treble
Choir that performs during the session.
There are three more important topics
to address before I close. The first is a uniform
audition process for mid-state and
all-state chorus. Right now, each region
in Tennessee (West, Middle, East) has its
own process for judging, scoring, and having
auditions. For instance, some regions
have blind auditions, and other regions
do not. Having a unified audition process
will make the process throughout the state
more fair. In addition this uniform approach
will better ensure that the top students
are placed in each choir because the
process a student would go through to get
in a mid-state or all-state chorus would be
the same. This possibility of uniformity is
in the early stages. I have more research to
do, and I need to have numerous conversations
with each region before any new procedures
go into place.
Once students have auditioned, many
directors book their hotel rooms. I just
want to remind you that the hotel block
will not open until February 1st. Also, I
strongly encourage directors to stay at the
Opryland Hotel so that our association can
get the presidential ballroom. One way we
would like to encourage directors to stay at
Opryland is to have a rooming coordinator
for each region. A lot of times many schools
only have one or two in all-state. If this is
the case, the hotel room is much higher. If
we can match directors in the same region
with other directors, then we could room
share and cut down on cost. Let’s be honest,
the directors that do not stay at the
conference hotel don’t because of expense.
I want to help with this. More information
will be coming to directors about this later.
Finally, our music standards have not
been revised in many, many years. A revision
is being done. The standards that most
of us know and have taught for quite a while
-- sing, play, listen, improvise, etc. will be
complimented with new foundations like
relate, select, develop, interpret. This is all
in an effort to clean up our standards and
give music educators more specifics in
teaching the standards to our children.
Thank you for reading my column. I want
you to know that I am available to you if
you have questions, concerns, suggestions,
and comments. I have a lot to learn in transitioning
to this position, but I can assure
you that I will do my very best to keep you
informed and help in any way. Let me know
things you’d like to see at our conference.
Also, know it’s not too early to be thinking
about applying to present a session at our
conference. Again, the date of the 2017
TMEA Conference is April 5 – 8. Other important
dates include the National ACDA
Conference is March 8 -11, 2017 in Minneapolis,
MN. Mark these dates on your calendar.
Thank you for your time, and I wish
you a very successful school year!
Tennessee Music Education Assocation | www.tnmea.org | 27