How do you define the First Day of School?
It seems silly on the surface – the First Day of School is, you know, the first day of school.
But listen: our first school day is next Monday. My first day with students, making music, will be today, when we hold an all-day retreat for singers traveling this year. My first day of teacher work days was two days ago, and my first day preparing for this year was, gosh, well before the end of last year.
What’s the First Day?
(An aside: we like telling our students that part of our love for taking kids on international performance tours is because we started dating on one: our first date was in Paris on a tour with WMU Gold Company. But the truth is more complex: we evolved from friends to a couple over the three weeks of the tour and only afterwards did we decide that that day in Paris was the right day to call our first date.)
First Days can mean a lot of different things, but for me, it’s the first day doing the work with students. My first day at Rockford will be today, definitively. Because I hold auditions the first week of class for Shades of Blue, my first day with them won’t be until after Labor Day, sadly.
If you spend your first day covering syllabus and expectations, and not making music, maybe your first day is your second day of school. If you have a week’s retreat in the woods before school, maybe the first day of the school year is your seventh day of school! Until I’m doing the work with students, it doesn’t count for me. And as soon as I am, it does.