Reflection: A Note From the Editor
be creative, one of the areas in the standards! WMEA is reforming as well. We didn’t come out of the last 33 months unscathed, but we made it through still standing. Familiar faces in the office retired or found new work, we moved, leadership happened virtually, we canceled our live events in 2021. The 2020-22 Board of Directors met once in person other than after the conference in 2022. It was so different from other board experiences where we bonded at the summer meetings and had 6 to 8 hour long in person meetings four times a year. During breaks and lunch time we used to hang out and talk shop or life, and eat and drink together. Those are special times that may be on their way home. I have filled plenty of space in this magazine talking about what has happened to WMEA over the last two years. It is time to acknowledge what has happened to all of us. How many of you know someone who passed on from COVID? What an odd enemy it has been. Some barely feel it and others suffocate to death. I know a few of the latter variety. As we approach the mid-year craziness don’t forget our shared experience and where it left us. Without taking sides politics have been in our face as well, and it has been stressful. Many of us are glad to be rehearsing groups, singing in class, and for some even playing a gig or two. In those settings we become whole, individually and as a community. Music is about being together, surrender - ing to a composition, a style, an era, to the group, to the event and pouring our hearts out. It is not in vain but, we should never forget the cost inflicted on us in recent years through this moment. We suffered and changed. Through it all, music has endured.
C an we take a moment here to recognize what we have been through over the last several years? The news cycle likes to move on but sometimes all you can do is stop for a moment to reflect on what has been taken from us and what has been given or learned. There is not a person alive today who has not been affected by our times and especially by the ruthless pandemic. People paired up either as deniers or as compliers righteously hurling their positions like hand grenades at the opposite viewpoint. Our communities and our civility took on heavy casualties. Teachers had to deal with all perspectives often in the same room, day in and day out. Some of us are angry and discouraged seeing our culture weaponized as we tiptoe through life hoping that we are not literally in the line of fire of yet another disturbed person that has fallen into a dark place. But you showed up anyway. This year we are back in person. Some have shadows of the programs they once had, others have found their pace and groove again, but we are changed. Some students missed nearly two years of social growth in a live classroom. We lost track of some of the students in our zoom rooms. But we are back, and the music is playing. For many we are acknowledging things that have been import - ant all a long, maybe on the back burner, but not anymore. Now we see the hole that was left where there was once a musical gathering of ensembles and communities now gradually reforming. And we are reevaluating the structure of that gathering to be a more inclusive (loving) space. (Perspective and atmosphere) “Reforming,” describes what’s happening well. In virtual learning we discovered that by not having performance deadlines to meet there were opportunities to teach…to learn new lessons. So many music teachers we heard from found ways to Attempted rescue of Jerry the Crab from a hungy sea gull
US Capitol Rotundra, NAfME Hill Day 2019
Voice of Washington Music Educators Association January 2023
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