Importing CDs and Percussion Ensemble

I had our first strictly drumline rehearsal for percussion ensemble. We were missing 2 people, and that really hurt us though we did manage to get work done. I'm always amazed at how much a rehearsal is affected by having anyone missing. When any of my ensembles is full everything goes SOOOOO much better no matter what. And it doesn't matter if it's concert band, jazz ensemble, steel band or percussion ensemble. As soon as even one person is missing, things just are never quite so good. I'm sure the students feel it, too, and I hope anyone of them that might be reading this blog will think about it a little more next time a friend might be talking about ditching rehearsal for, ya know, a trip to Denny's. Not that ANY of my students would EVER skip school!!!

After rehearsal let out, I started looking for listening material for after tomorrow's test in History & Theory. Some of the songs I was looking at on iTunes I realized I had on a CD already somewhere. And then it occurred to me: I have most of my CD's here at school when I brought them in after Christmas break. So, I imported a good 4 hours of music from old CD's onto my school computer. Tomorrow morning I will have to remember my iPod since I use iTunes to put all my music on my school computer onto my iPod and then plug that into the sound system in the band room for the listening. It's a good system, though it does risk me losing my iPod to a student with sticky fingers if I do something stupid and put it down somewhere unsafe. Are there any teachers out there that have a good way of protecting a small valuable like an mp3 player in school so it doesn't get stolen? Though, I have indeed managed to keep my personal Dell laptop from too much harm after 2.5 years of working here at Glasgow.