What makes Glee so special to me!

Tonight I was watching one of my new favorite shows. I have become addicted to the show GLEE. I know it is a huge hit right now and that the actors of the show are on every talk show these days. I just saw one of them on Ellen today and I saw the whole cast on Oprah not that long ago. I had a seen TON of people posting things about Glee in their status on Facebook and I had heard the show was really great.

I had really wanted to watch it for a while, but never got around to doing it. Plus, I was pretty sure Ben was going to veto the idea. One night, I guess I caught him in a particularly good mood and he agreed to watch it with me. I was HOOKED! and to my surprise Ben actually liked it too.This show puts me in the best mood and takes me to a place that I have missed for a long time. I too was a member of a group similar to this in high school.  We didn't call it Glee club, we were a SHOW CHOIR!

Show Choir gets some mixed reviews from people in the music education field. Some people think it teaches bad vocal techniques. Some people feel it puts too much emphasis on the SHOW part and forgets about the CHOIR part. When I began my teaching career, Show Choir was almost a dirty word in the county where  I was teaching. While there were a few of us who lived it and loved it, I felt a bit outnumbered by people who thought it was disgrace to teach such a thing. I always felt so bad for the kids at the schools with those anti-show choir thoughts. I felt they were missing out on something that provided me with some of the life skills I have today. Sounds silly, but its true.

My Show Choir experience taught me many life lessons, exposed me to new music, and gave me life long friends. In show choir I learned that hard work pays off. I learned that you have to give your all EVERY time because you might not get a second chance. I learned no matter what drama you have with the people you are working with, you have to leave it at the door to get the job done (There's always drama in high school!). I learned that practice and persistence only lead to better things. And I learned that everyone looks better with a few sequins on!

Without Show Choir I might not have ever grown to love such songs as Pinball Wizard and probably would still be wondering what's THE WHO. I would not have known that I can't be bothered now was from a musical called "Crazy for You." I may have never even cared that Billy Joel sang And So it Goes without hearing my brother sing it when he was in Show Choir! ( YES! there were LOTS of boys in Show Choir. Cute ones, and MOST of them were NOT gay! No offense to any that were.) Our teacher made us learn the classics too. Every year we learned a major work like Messiah or Requiem. I had some exposure to classical, jazz, musical, and everything else by the time I graduated.

My favorite part about Show Choir was the friends I made. There is a bond like no other when you sing together. It didn't matter that we all came from very different places, in that room, we were a family. Don't get me wrong, like any family there were arguments and struggles, but in the end we all worked together. I am still friends with many of these wonderful show choir alumni. While we are spread out all over the world doing our jobs, raising our families, and living our lives, we STILL have that bond. I'm willing to bet that all of us crank up the radio when we hear one of our show choir songs on the radio. I'm also willing to bet we all miss the roar of the crowd and the sense of accomplishment with a job well done. There's nothing quite like those lights being on you with your Show Choir family with you.

My husband talks about how glad he was to leave high school and how sick he was of being there. He doesn't have many fond memories of high school ( and we went to the same one). I on the other hand had a blast!!! I am positive that it was because of my show choir family and the relationships I built and the experiences I had with them.I got to take several trips to Disney and one to New York! That's not to shabby, right? All in all, it was the my show choir family that made those trips so fun.

I miss those days and Glee helps take me back! Thanks Glee for being so fun and creative. I wish we had thought of some of those songs when I was in show choir. I hope future show choir generations are inspired by what you are doing. I hope that it brings some pride to their hearts to know that they are not alone!

I do have one question for any of my former Show Choir peeps out there... Do you still have show choir dreams? Like for me, I am back in Capital Swing  or Touch of Swing and I can't remember what I am supposed to do next. Please tell me I am not alone in this. This is the only bad side effect of watching Glee. I have Show Choir nightmare, nightmares! Oh well! It's worth it!