Name: Nichole Graham
Years teaching in WPS: 4
Alumnus: Indiana University
Miss Graham came to us at a time of desperate need. Our band had been in a slump, patrially due to choice of music, I mean teenagers can only take so much death, war and hell. So after quitting MCBA and going into MSBOA, she was dropped onto our band camp scaffolding by a big white band stork. No, actually, truth be told (for real this time!) one of our other directors was her section leader at IU, they happened to be good friends and the person who she knew over here was quitting to work at the middle school full time. So he brought her in for us to chew on, i mean listen to. Well, alls well that ends well, right? Well sort of. See, A lot of people had a hard time adjusting to the change of directors, since the one who left had directed us since we started squeaking around on mouthpieces. After a few games of "fence, stands, tennis courts, school," we got into the new swing of things. She now resides up at the top of the directors fort, an engineering masterpeice at band camp where the directors climb up a 500 foot scaffolding and have their meals and pillow and aspirin wheleed up in a bucket. no, actually its just high enough so they can see that the entire 20 member low brass section is on the wrong side and that the drumline is spelling out naughty phrases on the field. Well, her trusty super power is the button on "doctor beat" (a shared child abuse weapon among the directors) that makes funny noises like "ee-ah, ee-ah and can change from feminine to masculine in a button push. Her little helper is a miniature "regal beagle" which makes hi-yah sounds into the mic every once in a while, expesssing it's like or dislike for what we're doing on the field. She takes very good control or the leadership in the band, setting up drum major and section leader dates on top of being in charge (or so it seems) or all of the summer camps/events that go on. Not only has she done a fine job adjusting to our band, but she has taken many duties upon her back as another great diretor. She heads up the marching department at band camp, and works with percussion during concert season. This summer though, her skills were SO good, that another band (with initials F, H, and C i presume) called her in to work with them only on marching! 4 hours of block, she was definitely needed there. She was caught at in an emotional moment after we had marched out last band camp show AT camp, not because she had to leave the vegetarian campus though. See, in this year's high school band, the senior class (02) was fresmen when she arrived, and the fresman class (05) was 6th graders (yeah she was at the middle school too) when she arrived, so this is a big year, and we're going to keep her proud!