Past President's Page

Vivian Ferchill, KET Past President

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Greetings and best wishes for a restful and relaxing summer!

I spent the first few weeks of summer resting up from all the fun of having our entire house painted inside and out, one daughter graduating from college, and another daughter getting married!  Then I focused my attention on organizing all “the stuff” in order to pass on the KET torch to our new President. I am excited about the leadership qualities and vision that Ann Burbridge will bring to our organization. At our summer board meeting we shared a lot of great ideas, formed committees and developed a vision for the year to come.

I unveiled our new KET banner that I finally completed. Thank goodness we had a good picture of the original banner before it was lost! Since I am no artist, I made a transparency of the picture and put it on an overhead projector to trace the outline of the banner and make a pattern on paper. Sewing together the large sections was easy. The time consuming part was tracing each of the smaller pieces onto fabric and ironing “Wonder Under” onto the pieces and then cutting them out and ironing them into place. It was a labor of love and I was inspired to keep working on it as I thought proudly of all of you Texas Kodály teachers who will be represented each time we display it. Please let us know if you would like to display it at a workshop or other function. It is larger than life as are all things in Texas!

These last few weeks I have spent some time organizing and analyzing Hispanic songs so that I can incorporate more of them in my lessons. My school has changed over the 28 years I have been there from 40% to 85% Hispanic. So it is time for me to change, too! I am exploring the possibilities of starting with Mi Re Do instead of So and Mi this next year and I also just found out that both my principal and assistant principal are leaving. So this will be a year of many changes!

Enjoy the few weeks we have left of summer! I’m going to New York City to get charged up! Broadway here I come!

Your Past President,

Vivian Ferchill