You may remember my ups and downs with my Chorus teacher in the 9th grade. She decided not to teach the next year. The new choir teacher was someone who had taught elementary music before. She originally came to Artesia in 1974 and taught at Hermosa and Abo. She would have been my music teacher in the 5th grade if I hadn't been forced against my will to go to Central Elementary. At the time, she and her daughter lived in one of the apartments my father owned. I know she taught music in the elementary schools the next year, but sometime after that, she moved to Roswell.
I don't know what circumstances brought her back to Artesia three years later, but she had gotten re-married. Her arrival had an immediate impact. When she first met with school officials, they told her that it was going to be really rough to have a good choir as there were only two boys who signed up. (Remember, I was one of those two.) Even though none of the upper classmen had her in elementary school, she had a good enough reputation that several of the boys who hadn't signed up from the end of the previous year came back.
I should also take this opportunity to talk about the rivalry that took place between the choir and the school band. Everybody in choir really disliked how the band seemed to get all the accolades and travel all over to the football games. Even though there was one booster organization for the entire music department, most of the energy and funds were used on the band. The parents who ran the booster club mostly all had their children in the band.
This rivalry reached a fever pitch during my sophomore year. At the beginning of the year, there were no students who were both in band and chorus. (However, a few weeks into the year, one of our new choir members decided to switch to band after getting frustrated with being on the football team and not getting to play during the games.)
This wasn't the kind of rivalry in which we played pranks on each other. It was the kind in which chorus members would give band members dirty looks from time to time. It was all attitude. However, I don't think the band members ever noticed. At the end of the year banquet, one of the senior bandmembers gave a tearful speech. Everybody in the room gave her a standing ovation except for the upper classmen chorus members, but I don't think anybody really paid attention.
Another part was that the band would go to competitions and got the highest scores. Our choir was rather mediocre and always got the second best possible score. Of course, we'd had four different choir teachers in four years while the band got to maintain its teacher that whole time. Lack of consistency probably hurt the choir more than a lack of actual talent. (I was considered one of the best singers in the choir. That should tell you the level of talent in the pool.)
I stayed in the choir all three years. It was always during 5th period and we kept the same teacher. Things definitely improved over that time. My senior year, we got to a competition at Six Flags Over Texas and came in first place in our category.
However, to this day, I still wonder what it would have been like to be only one of two boys in the choir had Ms F from the 9th grade stuck around.
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