Our one bass drum is at the left. Then I count 5 snare drums all set up and ready for rehearsal. Yep ... five. Hard to get precision when you have 5 middle school kids playing the same snare part at once. But, this is middle school, they can't learn if they don't get to play, and playing along with the more motivated kids helps the kids who struggle.

Luckily, Ms. Vasco and I had Señor Jerry Nobile as our drum instructor. He did the bulk of the lessons and was invaluable in keeping all this drum equipment in shape.

The rugs. Ah yes … the rugs. We have 4 of the red rugs and the big green one. The green one was in my basement when I moved into my house in 1988. I brought it to ITMS when I arrived in 2004.

The red ones are commercerial rubber backed rugs that are used at doorways to outdoors. These came from the garbage. My pals the custodians would alert me whenever useful items were being tossed. It had been determined that these were too worn out. It looked to me like they still had some meat on them.

For the first 20 years of my adult life I made my living playing bass in a rock band. As a music teacher I wanted to put these skills to work.

The chorus teachers sometimes asked me to "put together a little combo" to accompany their group on a song or two. That meant she wanted bass and drums to add to her piano. I needed a drummer. Occasionally, a percussion student had not only the skills, but the temperament to do such important work.

During my first year at Island Trees there were 15 percussionists in Grade 7/8 Band. Fortunately, one of them fit my criteria to serve as my designated drummer. Not only did Patrick, at 12 years old, have

Student

excellent drum set skills and musical sense, he was more mature than I was.

The first time the chorus teacher made her request for a "combo," I checked the computer to see where Patrick was, stuck my head in the classroom door and asked to speak to him. He was in 7th grade. In the hallway I said:"The chorus teacher needs us to back

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