Happy 2008 everyone!!What an exciting year we have in front of us! An MENC National Conference in Milwaukee to look forward to! A presidential election steamrolling down the tracks! Arts Advocacy Day on Capitol Hill JUST around the corner! And a million exciting projects coming down the pipeline! Ah yes, I can feel it... 2008 will be a GOOD year for music education. Plus, I just really like even numbers much better than odd ;-)
My new year kick started off in an interesting fashion. For starters, I've been sick as a dog for about two weeks now (finally starting to get better!), but alas, music education advocacy breaks for NO one -- and so, I have continued my visits to Capitol Hill (hopefully not infecting anyone in the process) on behalf of our great cause!
It's been a really exciting week, actually. On Tuesday I attended the Education Sector's "Missing Link in the Teacher Quality Debate" event at the National Press Club , on Wednesday I sat in on Education Week's release of the "2008 Quality Counts Report" addressing state level educational performance (also at the National Press Club), and on Thursday, I attended Secretary of Education Margaret Spellings' address on NCLB and federal education policy generally, at... you guessed it -- the National Press Club AGAIN. I practically could be considered a member at this point! (see upcoming Legislative ALERT for more details on ALL of these exciting events!!)
In the meantime, SKJ and HLS have been hard at work on a relaunch of MusicFriends Challenge, a really cool MENC corporate support program that we've decided to bring back! They're also working on a number of other great projects, so stay tuned for more info on that soon enough!
Here at MENC, we're all keeping a close eye on the upcoming election (and watching the primaries because GOSH they're fun!!), but all that matters to us is that which ever candidate ultimately wins the general makes music education a TOP priority! That's our most important job. To make CERTAIN that Congress understands the importance of increasing its support for MUSIC MUSIC MUSIC!
...Until next time music fans! :-)
