Greetings everyone, here is your weekly update for August the 22nd.
I hope everyone had an awesome weekend! THIS WEEK’S DATES: This week, we have our very first big performance at our home game at Turner stadium. This week's schedule is a little unique that we are having a Monday practice and a Thursday football game. So the rehearsal schedule is Monday Tuesday and Wednesday 3:15 to 5:45, and on Thursday we play Dickinson High School at Turner stadium. It’s going to be a whole lot of fun, and we are ready for Atascocita football! WEATHER: The weather this week is going to be all over the place, with some scattered thunderstorms all week long. Regardless of if it rains or not, we will always have band practice. If it is raining or lightning outside, we will be inside the band hall working on music. If the weather is clear for us, we will be outside working on drill this week. APPAREL FOR THIS WEEK: For the required apparel, this week you will need the blue band shirt, black shorts, and white marching shoes. We will not be wearing our marching band uniform this week due to the hot weather. If you ordered white marching shoes through TMF, they should be in the band hall ready to be dispersed this week. If you ordered on the late August run, those shoes should arrive either Wednesday or Thursday. If you ordered any items from TMF on the late August run, those items will not come in before the first few football games. However, thanks to the Boosters, we ordered an extra surplus of red colored shirts, blue band shirts, and black band shorts to help those who still need items. As far as apparel goes, we will make sure that all students have what they need. REQUIRED BAND SUPPLIES: For the required supplies, you should have a flip folder with all of your music in it. Most performers have one, and we thank the Boosters big time for their help with that. Now, all students just need to make sure that they have a LYRE to hold the flip folder on their instrument before Thursday. All music stores have them. If you are a woodwind player, please make sure to have an available box of reads on your own. If you're a brass player, having your own blue juice valve oil or trombone slide cream will help you. In all cases, all band students need a polishing cloth for their woodwind or brass instruments. ITINERARY: Attached to this message is the itinerary for Thursday's game. Every week, the football itinerary schedule will be posted on the updates tab of the band website. Always double check to make sure that you have the correct itinerary for the football game. WIDDYUP FUNDRAISER: This is the last week for the WiddyUp! fundraiser! Get those videos shared with as many family and friends as you possibly can! CONCESSION STANDS: Preparing the concession stands for our football games, I learned, is a big process. It is a lot of work to prepare, but it is the biggest money maker that the boosters have that helps the band program tremendously. We want to send a big thank you to the parents and students who helped out this Saturday with getting the concession stands set up with the items it needs. Also, we are thankful for the parents and volunteers who will help us at the concession stands for these next football games. WE STILL NEED HELP!: There are still so many more spots we need help with, however. If you could go to the www.atascocitaband.com website and sign up for as many spots as you possibly can. You most certainly can sign up for multiple spots if you are already at the stand and want to extend it longer. GRADES: Students, we are already in week 3 of the grading period. That means a progress report is coming next week. It is your responsibility to make sure that all school work is submitted properly and that you are making great grades and your academics. If you fail a course during the 6th week, you will become ineligible and unable to participate. That will result in your spot being lost, and we will have to go back and reteach new spots. We are calling for 100% eligibility from all band students! A common misconception for UIL eligibility is that it has to be a report card. If a school is on a nine week grading period, to keep fair with Athletics all across the school that have different grading. UIL has mandated for a statewide 6th week eligibility check. For a school like ours that is on a 9-week grading period, that means you can lose your eligibility twice during the 6th week and the 9th week. Therefore, your second progress report will determine your eligibility for band as well as your report card! It is so critical that you work really hard to make good on your school work so that you can participate at games and contests. 100% eligibility, ALL STUDENTS! WATER JUGS: My last message is about the water jugs. Band students have not been bringing water outside because they know that it is provided to them outside by our ops crew. The water containers outside are fulfilling up your water jugs only, and the little white cups were used for emergencies. However, we went through a whole entire marching season's worth of water cups in just one week! The little white cups do not provide nearly enough hydration that students need to be safe. Not bringing a container outside already filled with water in it is extremely unsafe, and we can't in good conscience allow our students outside without proper hydration. If you do not have a water container at practice, please go back inside and create a solution before you come outside. We will not allow anyone at practice outside without a container of water. And that wraps up this week’s updates!
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Here is your weekly update for 8/15/2022!
Fundraiser! The WiddyUp! Fundraiser is underway! Make sure to hit that share button of your videos and get those funds raised for your Disney trip and our program. If you still have not submitted your pitch and final video, it’s not too late. You can still join in on the fun - we are expecting everyone to participate, because it’s super ultra easy to do! Private Lessons: We will be sending out a form during class for students who are interested in private lessons tomorrow during class. They are GUARANTEED to make you a better player, because you will receive private individualized instruction on your instrument tailored to your needs to become an outstanding musician. Each private lesson teacher will have different days, times, and weekly prices. If you are interested in taking private lessons with our staff, sign up tomorrow, and we will put everything together for you once the time comes. Have a discussion tonight as a family and see if it’s something that you would be able to do. Concession Stands: Eagle Football season is here!! It’s all hands on deck for concession stands! Please understand that concession stand sales are our biggest money maker for the year. Our fair share fees remain low due to that income. If we don’t have enough concession stand workers, then we must forfeit the stand and give it to another Humble ISD High School, who is more than happy to make the extra income. It’s a big deal. For those who are maybe new to the program, working just at least one concession stand day is usually an expectation of our band parents . We will never ask very much of our band family, but to keep our operations going, we are calling on ALL help possible.
This week’s practice schedule is Tuesday Wednesday and Thursday 3:15 to 5:45. BUT NEXT WEEK’S PRACTICE SCHEDULE IS DIFFERENT. Because we have a Thursday football game next week, we will do our three practice days on Mon, Tues, and Wed. Ohh, by the way… OUR FIRST FOOTBALL GAME IS NEXT WEEK! And it’s a THURSDAY football game, against Dickinson High School on August 25th. It will be a home game at our own Turner stadium. An itinerary of the day will be sent to the students and parents on the BAND app and on the website. Student attire for the first game will be a summer uniform - the navy blue band shirt, black band shorts, and white marching shoes. The shoes should be arriving this week, and the round 3 orders on the webstore should be arriving this week as well. GRADES! Make sure you are keeping up with your class work. In order for us to be competitive this year for band, we need every student to be eligible to play. We will be helping our students every single day, but we need our parent’s help as well with logging in to the classroom gradebook situation and helping your kiddos with their classwork. And that’s all for this week! Let’s have an AMAZING week together! CHAMPIONSHIP MINDSET! GREETINGS, EAGLE FAMILY! I hope that you all had a really restful weekend! You all deserve it! We had a tremendously successful summer band camp, and I'm so excited for what we will be doing together as a team this year! FIRST DAY: The first official day of school is August 9th Tuesday! The bell schedule is below: AFTER-SCHOOL PRACTICE: This week kicks off our regular practice schedule, which will be Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday from 3:15 to 5:45. Parents, we definitely need volunteers to be there with us to help our kids stay safe. Please refer to our Booster president's email sent out just recently. If you did not receive a Booster email, reach out to me at rxbest@humbleisd.net and we can take a look. ONE PRACTICE EXCEPTION... Be sure to look at the calendar, because there is only one exception - the week of August 22. We have a MONDAY practice, because it is our very first football game of the year, and... it's a Thursday. We need the three days. However, we will be giving that Friday off to enjoy the rest of the weekend. SCHEDULES: If your schedule is incorrect, be patient. We will be working with a whole brand new counseling team this year, and they are all work very hard to make sure that 3950 high school students have the correct places they need to go. We will need to give grace and patience as that time goes on. GEAR: The gear store is open again, and will close this Friday. Make sure that you get on there and get your required appareal, shoes, and fair share fees paid before it's too late! THE FIRST FOOTBALL GAME IS....... AUGUST 25TH!! Thursday Game vs. Dickinson, a home game! Summer Camp Schedule
Pictures are on Thursday morning! We will go over uniforms and go to the gym to take the photo. Fish camp is Friday! We will be playing at that, and 9th graders are allowed to go to this. Flight school are staggered throughout the week. If you are an early flight school, try to go at 7:30 to make it on time for 8am practice. If you are a late flight school, go to flight school after camp is over. IT WILL BE HOT. BRING WATER JUGS!! If you ordered one on the first round of TMF purchases, they are in the band hall and will be distributed to the kiddos on Monday. Stay hydrated! We will take LOTS of water breaks. YOUR SUMMER BAND SUPPLIES CHECKLIST: Pencil: We'd like for all band students to have a supply of pencils. We use them a lot in band, as we make lots of music notes to get you best prepared for the marching show. Your Summer Band Music (if you have it) Sunglasses: depending on when we are outside, the sun can get in your eyes. We recommend all students bring sunglasses to protect your eyes from the sun. Sunscreen: sunburns are no fun! Use sunblock regularly while we are outside to protect your skin from the sun. Athletic shoes: Tennis shoes are our highest recommendation. Toms, Chucks, Vans, will cause your feet to be sore. SANDALS can cause real injury. Athletic shorts: if a child goes to outdoor rehearsal with jeans or leggings, they will more than likely overheat and could get sick. This is a safety requirement. Hat or hair ties: keeps more sun or long hair out of your eyes and helps with comfort and makes the rehearsal more enjoyable. Towel: you can use the towel to place your instrument down when we are on the practice field. Also helps for sweating during outdoor exercises. Water jug: students will be required to purchase the TMF water jug from the website. But you MUST HAVE WATER for outside hydration! Dehydration, no no no! Pencil: ...ohh, sorry, I already said that. But bring a pencil. Instrument: so you can you know.... play music. Pencil: oooop, there it is again.... You got your pencil, right? PHYSICALS UIL and Humble ISD require all band students enrolled in the marching band to obtain a physical before participating in any marching band activities. This is a non-negotiable. If you do not have a physical with us by Monday, you will not be allowed to participate. Go to the link above and look for Physicals and Rankone to learn more info! The Calendar was last updated: 7/4/2022The calendar has been updated to include UIL Area Marching Contest on October 29th, and a dress rehearsal the day before that. Press the Yearly Calendar button on the atascocita band website to view the updated calendar, and the Google Calendar has been updated to reflect that addition live for everyone. Drum major training is Wednesday June 1 at 3:30 to 4:30.
Drum major auditons Friday 3:30 to 4:30 or 5:00, depending on how long it goes. Leadership positions will be announced on Friday after drum majors have been selected. If you make the leadership team, we will see you at our training on June 7 and 8. Class placement isn't going to be posted anywhere online with names - there's privacy stuff with laws and things that I really don't want to get into.. But if you are interested in what band you will be playing in, you can always email us and we can tell you where you will be. June 1 is the LAST day to make your deposit towards the disney trip. If you need further time to make the deposit, just let me know and I can reach out to TMF. The TMF webstore has CLOSED. If you made an order, it will be delivered to the band hall and items will be ready to pick up on the day of summer camp. But, we need absolutely as many people as possible to get on buying your marching shoes, that fair share fee, all the required gear. So I'm going to ask for TMF to re-open the store for an additional week coming up so that if you weren't able to get online and make those payments, you will have another week. If you are unable to make any payments until a later date, that is fine. We will have another week in July during the summer camp where the store will re-open and you can make your purchases before the first football game. Please practice your instrument over the summer! Music will be made available over the summer time for those interested in having it to work on. DATES FOR THE WEEK: May 23-24: Leadership Interviews May 23: Drum Major Training 3:30-4:30 May 23: Make Up Class Hearing 4:30-5:30 May 25: Drum Major Training 3:30 -4:30 May 28: HS Graduation! Greetings everyone this is Brian Best the band director Atascocita High School for the next school year. Coming at you with this next week's update for May 23. First, some quick shout outs! Congratulations to everyone on an amazing spring concert! And I also heard that the band bash was super fun, so that's awesome. I'd also like to thank everyone who has filled out registration paperwork for next year's marching band. It is shaping up to be a super exciting marching year and I can't wait to get started with you all officially. We are now down to only a small handful of kiddos who have band as a class for next year but have not turned in the online registration paperwork yet. Please let us know if there's anything we can do to help. Also a quick shout out to Miss Cook who organized the Jose Diaz Institute to host a Humble ISD Jazz camp and concert in June. Be sure to check the website and the calendar for more information on this event. Another quick shout out to the percussion section for assisting over the weekend to help out your fine arts director with all things percussion for our inventory. Thank you to everyone involved in that. DRUM MAJOR TRAININGS: Okay, so this upcoming May 23rd week is slowly wrapping things up. On Monday and Wednesday at 3:30, we will have drum major trainings again. So for anyone applying to be next year's drum major, I will need to see you there. MAKE UP PLACEMENT HEARINGS: Also for any student who registered but hasn't gotten a chance to play for us for class placement, we need you to do that for our makeup Day on May 23rd Monday at 4:30 p.m. This will take place at the Atascocita High School band hall. If you need help on how to get to the band hall, reach out to a band director and we will help you. And remember please do not stress out; we just want to hear you play. LEADERSHIP TEAM INTERVIEWS: Any student who is applying to be on next year's leadership team, you need to do an interview with the band directors. And that has to happen this week. Now I learned just recently that there's class instruction only on Monday and Tuesday, so let's try to see if we can get as many interviews done on those two days during class or after school. If you're not able to get it done on either Monday or Tuesday either during class or after school, you will need to stop by the band hall for a quick 5 minutes on either Wednesday, Thursday or Friday. If there's a conflict, just make sure to reach out to the band directors and notify them. GRADUATION: May 28th, the Atascocita High School band will be participating in performing at the high school graduation. To what I understand, a group of students were selected to perform for this. (NEED MORE) PHYSICALS AND RANKONE: If you have registered for band and you intend on participating with us in the high school band for the next year, as most of you already know, an athletic physical is required for any outdoor participation. When it is complete, you can turn it into the band office, and a band director will take it from there. Please go to www.atascocitaband.com and click on physicals for more information. The rank one online applications can be found there as well, as well as step by step instructions on how to get them done. If I have left anything out for the week, please do not hesitate to message back and we will respond as quickly as possibly. My new friends, you are almost to the finish line! You have almost completed the year of 2021-2022. With that being said, the directors would like to extend their congratulations to the graduating senior class of the Atascocita High School band of 2022! Way to go guys!! And as always for all things band, please visit us at www.atascocitaband.com for all things Atascocita band related. We will see you on the next update, and we hope you have a great week! This week's things:
May 16
Thank you to everyone who auditioned AND came to registration night! We got a lot of items taken care of on those nights, and it was really nice to meet everyone and their families. If you didn't register yet, please click on the REGISTER button up there and let's get that proccess started. We would like to have all online forms submitted to us no later than the last day of school! Let me know if you have any questions on the BAND app, or reach out to the current AHS staff for questions. Hope everyone has a great week!!! All the Best! This week, we have:
Class Placement Hearings! Monday, May 9th: Flutes, Bass Clarinets, Euphoniums, Tubas 3:00 PM: 9th, 10th, 11th Graders 4:30 PM: 8th Graders Tuesday, May 10th: All Saxophones, F Horns, Trombones, (Percussion During Class: 9th, 10th, 11th Grade) Percussionists 3:00 PM: 9th, 10th, 11th Graders 4:30 PM: 8th Graders Wednesday, May 11th Oboe, Bassoon, Bb Clarinets, Trumpets 3:00 PM: 9th, 10th, 11th Grade 4:30 PM: 8th Graders (If you have a conflict with any of these dates, be sure to CONTACT US and we will work something out for you.) CLICK HERE FOR MORE INFORMATION ON THE HEARING PROCESS. High School Band Registration! May 12: High School Band Registration Night (for returning members) May 13: High School Band Registration Night (for incoming 9th graders [or anyone that missed]) Located in the HS Band Hall at Atascocita High School! It is important for all students who will be signed up for band to attend registration! A lot of information will go out that day, including:
Hey, Eagle fam! I want to take this opportunity to thank all of the parents and students who met with me on Meet the Director nights on both Monday and Tuesday. I absolutely enjoyed meeting you all so much, and I can't wait to take these next steps with you in our journey together. I'm really thankful for this opportunity to serve the Atascocita community and the Humble ISD school district. Website: This week, we unveiled the new band website - which you're on right now! We are going to be posting a TON of information on here all the time, so please make sure to come back and check often for new information pertaining to the program. You can tell everyone about www.atascocitaband.com! Band Registration Night: Be sure to check back here for all the things that we have going on for the next week. The biggest thing we have coming up is Band Registration Night on May 12th (for current HS kids) and May 13th (for current 8th graders going into band). On these nights, you will receive everything you will need for the next year. Items include:
You can choose to come any time between 5pm and 8pm. For more information on registration, go to the registration page and should only take about 20-30 mins to go through if you have everything set from last year. Also, if you already have the registration forms filled out before you come, that will dramatically decrease your wait time. We will discuss soon about Leadership Applicant Interviews and Band Placement Auditions as that time draws closer. I look forward to seeing you all next week! To my new Eagle family:
My name is Brian Best, and I am delighted to introduce myself to you as the new director of bands for Atascocita High School. I am thrilled to serve as the new leader of this fine band program - one that contains rich tradition and exceptional standards for pride and excellence. My family and I understand the enormous shoes that I will fill, and I am motivated more than ever to make Atascocita High School my life's greatest work. I was raised in the Huffman area not too far from Atascocita, and I remember the daily drive through the area for groceries when there was nothing on FM 1960 except for trees and a Kroger. Almost 30 years later, the Atascocita community looks a lot different than it did back then. Our great town is constantly growing and forever changing. Change is an inevitable part of life, but one aspect of Atascocita that has never changed is the PRIDE in our community. We love Atascocita, as do many of our family members, as we have had family members graduate from Atascocita High School. The opportunity to teach in the area where I am originally from and currently call my home is simply a dream come true. My students and parents will learn quickly that I operate on a vehicle of positive energy. Band should be a lot of fun, and our kids will be receiving a leader who greets them every day with a smile and a high-five. It is my hope that all of us together - band members, staff, community members - will join me on board this great vehicle of positive energy as we strive for the highest excellence. We are so much more than a military marching band - we are an award-winning concert band, jazz band, percussion ensemble, and chamber music soloists and ensembles. There is so much to celebrate with the Atascocita High School band program, and it is my greatest pleasure to join the Eagle family and work with you all. PRIDE is 100% motivation, dedication, and self discipline in everything we do. I am so proud to be a new member of the Eagle family, and I can’t wait to meet you all at Meet the Director Night. All the Best, Brian Best |
BRIAN BESTDirector of Bands, Atascocita High School Archives
May 2024
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