I can’t believe March is suddenly more than half over (and that 2007 marks my 16th Music In Our Schools Month as a staff member at MENC)! March is always very busy for the MENC PR/Marketing staff. We get a lot of inquiries from the press about MIOSM, and this year, there was the Music In Our Schools Showcase to promote. We also released our Why Music? PSAs in a new format – online instead of on CD. The National Anthem Project Road Show won a hugely prestigious public relations award – PR Week’s nonprofit campaign of the year. Tomorrow night we have another installment of our Webinar series – this one called “Getting Mileage Out of the Media”. I attended the Eastern Division Conference in Hartford week before last. There’s a podcast in the works featuring an interview with NSBA executive director Anne Bryant. There’s also membership promotion, Centennial celebration planning, news pages being written, Web site updating. And oh yes, we launched this blog!
There are other things going on to distract us from all this. American Idol has finally gotten serious -- down to the last eleven contestants. (I like Blake and Melinda … and have been joyfully revisiting my Pat Benatar LPs since Jordin sang “Heartbreaker” a few weeks ago.) Also, some of us are following the NCAA tournament. (So far, I’m not doing too well in my predictions. Possibly something to do with not knowing much about basketball. I did pick Georgetown to win, and they’re still in it. I think.)
Thought I’d mention that HBO is featuring an interesting program right now called “The Music In Me: Children’s Recitals from Classical to Latin, Jazz to Zydeco.” They asked young musicians to send in videotapes of the music they play, and it looks like what’s airing throughout this month is the first of three documentaries that will be made from the videotapes. The kids are amazing. There’s not much about teachers, but it was still lots of fun to watch.
Happy MIOSM! -- EWL
