Now, as I write this, take it all with a grain of salt, yet, think about what you may have seen as a teacher, parent, relative or community member.

 

As a teacher, you get to go to your fair share of concert.  Christmas concerts I’m sure would rank up there with the excited kids and parents, the music that’s been practiced for months, and the anticiaption of the break coming soon.  At our school, these are usually noisy affairs with kids crying, parents waving like crazy, grandparents smiling and greeting those they know.  It’s just a coming together of the community under a common love of children, music, and the holidays.

 

Me, I’m not a big Christmas concert fan, I prefer our jr. high concerts that we have.  One is a Christmas concert in a roundabout sort of way, and one is a spring concert.  Since my oldest daughter is a freshman, we’ve attended a number of high school concerts for the first time as parents, and those have been marvolous as well.  The music teachers, both vocal and instrutrument, are second to none here.  You think, “yeah whatever”, but our school was one of two in our class who received Division I ratings on men’s choir, women’s choir, mixed choir, and concert band.  Yeah, we are that good.

 

Anyway, I started picking up on this a little bit last year, but it was a big eye opener this year: parents just getting up and leaving during the concert.  We’ve harped and scolded and praised and done all sorts of things to get our students to realize that during a public performance, you watch, enjoy the performance, and when it is done, you leave.  My goodness, at the last high school concert, while the band was playing, there go a half dozen parents and their kids!  Today, during our jr. high concert, a parent gets up and leaves in the middle of a piece being played!  Are you kidding me??  How in the world can we expect our students to respect the arts when their parents show an utter disrespect of them by acting that way!?!

 

Before you think I’m too much of a snob, I understand, work needs to be done, things have to happen, and especially on concerts like today, which started at 1:30, exceptions can be made.  But yet, being in the community as long as I’ve been, you know people, what they do and don’t do, and I just have to shake my head as I watch them leave.  And night time concerts, don’t even get me started!

 

Anyway, as I said above, take all this with a grain of salt, but yet, do we need to be teaching our parents how to act at a public performance?  Am I asking too much of you to give up an hour of your time and support those who’ve worked hard, but yet aren’t related to you? I don’t know, it just disappoints me to see this kind of behavior taking place, because their kids, other kids, and other parents watch, taking note.

 

In the end, I should be glad they are there supporting their son or daughter, but don’t my kids, the kids next to you deserve that same support? And how would you feel if I got up and left during their performance?  We just need to think a little more, and in this day and age, that’s a hard commodity to come by. 😦