Hello NAfME friends, I trust everyone had an excellent holiday break, and is back and ready for a brand new semester with new classes, new repertoire, and a new year. I wanted to send you all a note to let you know what is going on with NAfME and what to expect in the coming months. First of all, we will be keeping our meeting times from last semester; that is, Wednesdays at 6:30 PM in the lobby. If there are any scheduling conflicts, please let me know. We will, however, NOT be having a meeting this Wednesday, 1/15, and we will start next week instead. Secondly, we are working to bring some great workshops to benefit our club. To tentatively name a few, we will be having a Handbell workshop brought to you by the Northern Bronze handbell choir; a Teaching Techniques for Beginning Improvisation workshop, by Elizabeth Frascoia, a superstar jazz vocalist/trombonist with Vermont roots; another edition of the Orff workshop series, put on by the Northern Lights Orff-Schulwerk group, and run by local educator Betsy Greene; and a ukulele workshop, with more details on the way! And if that wasn't enough, your local NAfME cabinet is working on a trip to Northern New Jersey for later on in the semester, which would involve observing in the local schools (which will look much different than Vermont ones and provide great perspective), seeing a show in New York City, and enjoying the company of your Music Education peers on a road trip! Stay tuned to the emails and make sure to attend the meetings for more details! Please keep in mind that all of the above proposed activities are made possible by ushering concerts. We did a great job getting things ushered last semester, although near the end things were cut a little close. We are going to go through all the concerts that need ushering and figure out exactly how many ushers we will need for each, so we don't end up having 3 ushers for a concert that only needs 1, and only 1 usher for a concert that really needs 3. I hope that this will encourage people to usher more near the end of the semester, and that people won't get to the month of April feeling like they have put in their time ushering already. This semester, let us let no concert go un-ushered! That is my piece for today. Remember, no meeting this week, our first will be on January 22nd. Please feel free to email me, call me, or accost me in the hallways or in my practice room, if you have any questions, concerns or feedback. I'm looking forward to a great semester and I hope you are as well. Good luck on day 2 of classes! Best, -Kyle Washburn President, NAfME University of Vermont