Tag Archives: celebrate

Happy Birthday!

I’ve never been much of a writer. I didn’t enjoy writing, in school or on my own. I could be doing other things than writing. Writing just didn’t strike me as something very fun. Of course, I’ve never particularly loved English either. Not that my teachers weren’t really good, they just never really got me to love the subject.

That, however, was before seventh grade.
Therefor, that was before my teacher was Mrs. Schoch.

Mrs. Schoch, honestly, had me into the subject from the second month of school, which was better than anyone else. I was still getting used to all the seventh grade classes. I was super happy to have her as a teacher; she was funny, nice, and could handle my rowdy class.

Today is Mrs. Schoch’s birthday, and this blog post is for her.

Mrs. Schoch is fantastic. She has good lessons and knows how we want to learn. She isn’t very strict, she wants respect, and deserves it. She has reasonable expectations for us: nothing too hard but everything is doable. She has fun lessons that she doesn’t have to do, like Phantom of the Opera and Les Misérables.

I was very worried, and prepared, for English not to be my favorite class, because Mrs. Schoch said she was a part-time teacher. That she left after our period. I was worried she’d be tired during our class, and that she wouldn’t want to do much with us at all. That she’d barely care. However, I was very quickly proven wrong. She liked our class just as much as she liked all her others (even though we can be quite loud and talkative).

Mrs. Schoch, I just want to say thank you for everything. You’re a great teacher that got me interested in something I never thought I’d be interested in. You taught me more about writing than I ever have learned before. You got me interested in a new musical that I LOVE. You’ve taught me about English and life, and I thank you for that.

Mrs. Schoch, don’t ever stop doing what you’re doing. You’re great at it and it’s fantastic. Thank you so much for being my teacher and believing in me throughout this year. You’re my favorite teacher. When I go onto eighth grade, I won’t have you anymore, and that’ll be really sad. I love you as a teacher and I wish I could have you for every year on.

Perfect Heart
Creative Commons License Photo Credit: Caro Wallis via Compfight

Choir UIL

Today, Wednesday April 16, 2014, three out of the four West Ridge choirs preformed at UIL. In UIL, University Interscholastic League, every choir in the region has to perform three pre-rehearsed songs from a specific list of songs all rated 1-5 (1 is easiest and 5 is hardest) and do sight reading. In sight reading, you get piece of music that you’ve never seen before and perform it in front of the judges. Thankfully, you do not have to say the words; our choirs just sing Do, Re, Mi, Fa, So, and so on. Let’s just say that’s the most boring part of UIL. 

Anyway, Concert and Honor Treble Choir (the choir I was in) performed three songs like everyone else. We are supposed to perform level 1 and level 2 songs only, but we performed two level 3 songs and (Ms. Snouffer says) one level 3,000 song. I’ll give you a quick run-down of all the songs:

  1. The first song we performed was Cantate Hodie, which means “Sing Today” in, I believe, Latin. The song continually flips between Latin and English. It’s fun, up beat, and exciting. I really like it (It’s my favorite).
  2. The next song we sing is a Russian Folk Song called Kalinka (kal-yeen-ka). It’s all in Russian AND it’s occapella, so it had no musical accompaniment. It’s the level 3,000 song. It’s super hard. We almost ditched it multiple times, but we didn’t. We stuck with it and we sounded FANTASTIC! It changes speed and volume about 20 million times, so it’s hard to remember when to do what. In this song, a man is leaning up against a kalinka bush and is singing about a girl. Whenever I sing it, I picture a big berry bush. It’s kinda creepy. 
  3. The last song we sang was a slower song called I Know Where I’m Going. This song’s about a rich girl who is in love with a poor boy, and she isn’t allowed to marry him. She’s willing to give up everything she has to stay with the boy (Johnny). Throughout the song, she’s singing about that. It’s really a beautiful song, even if it’s hard. The first few lines are as follows:

“I know where I’m going, but who knows who’s going with me.

I know who I love, but who knows who I’ll marry?”

After we sang these songs, we were brought out to the sight-reading room. We got a song and we sang it fabulously. I don’t want to talk too much about that, it’s very boring. Anyway, we got judged one a scale of 1-5 (1 being the best and 5 being the worst). The judges were really nice everywhere. After we were done, we were ushered outside to take a picture. I was thinking it was going to take a while to get our results (1 or 2 weeks, maybe). But not after a long time of being outside, Ms. Snouffer comes out with a trophy. She tells us we got the same score from every single judge (there were 6 total). She told us we got…


Glitter Text @ Glitterfy.com

Oh, we were all so happy! It was fantastic! Best thing EVER! I’m still really happy about it! I don’t think it could get any better than this. YAY! 

Now, I just have to figure out what scores were for Concert Tenor Bass (Boys), Varsity Tenor Bass, and Varsity Treble (girls). Hopefully West Ridge Middle School won the sweepstakes trophy again! Go WRMS!