The music booms through the room filling everyone’s senses with an immense power unlike anything else. The articulations roll by with ease when suddenly the music stops. Click, click, click- the metronome is the only sound left; Mrs. Click soon ends the session with our homework for the week.
Mrs. Becky Click has been teaching band programs across Texas for 12 years and has now been appointed as CVMS’s newest band director.
“I grew up in a military family, actually, my dad was in the Air force up until I was 6th grader. So we traveled quite a bit. Moving around every 3 to 4 years,” Band Director Mrs. Becky Click, said. “My dad retired when I was in 6th grade and then we moved to Atlanta and that’s where I finished, middle school and through high school there. And then I went to college, at Southern Methodist University in the Dallas area. And, got my music degree there and then taught for a few years in Dallas for about eight years.”
“Everybody was so friendly and welcoming; students, parents and other teachers. There’s Mr. Hagy of course, he’s just a great partner in crime. Whenever I have silly questions about where’s this? Where’s that in the band hall? And he’s just always there to help out,” Click said.
Mrs. Click’s biggest influences to becoming a band director was her high school band director Randall Coleman who now directs the band of UT Tennessee in Chattanooga and her middle school band director Mrs. Laird.
“I had a really positive experience in my high school band program. I grew up in the Atlanta area and started band in the sixth grade, when it came time to decide whether I wanted to be in a high school band I did not want to. I was compelled to quit but my parents insisted I try atleast one year and so I did, I did color guard for two years and then marching band for two years. At the end of my first year of the end of the marching season I was just hooked and I loved it.” Click said.
She has also been through her fair share of trials and tribulations.
“I was at a school, I taught at a school for a year in California who had their school owned instruments. Everybody basically got an instrument from the school. It wasn’t where you went to rent an instrument from a shop, but we had the instruments at school. I didn’t have enough for everybody and they were of poor quality, unfortunately. I had to, like, turn kids away from being in a band, which is a thing that I don’t like. That’s a core principle that, like everybody, should have the opportunity to play an instrument that wants to,” Click said.
Select and symphonic bands have been winning UIL competitions since 2013. Mrs. Click believes that her select band is ahead of a normal high school band.
“The level of music that I’m looking at doing for UIL in the spring is way more advanced than I’ve ever done with a non varsity group because I think y’all [Select band] can do it. because what you’ve shown me in the fall and, and playing this Veterans Day music is, is not easy and you guys have really just exceeded,” Mrs. Click said.
One thing that she greatly enjoys about being a band director is seeing her students finally understand something they were very confused about.
“I love the aha moment when a student gets it. Like when they make their first sound all by themselves, when they figure out that tricky 16th note passage that’s been getting them so frustrated for the past few days they just nail it. The look on their face, the excitement, like it’s just like a light bulb goes out and you can just see it in your eyes too.”
Behind the scenes she and Mr. Hagy work hard to come up with different lesson plans, picking music to play, and deciding practice exercises.
“There is a lot that goes on behind the scenes that we put a lot of thought and effort and care into the decisions that we make and we tell and the plans we make you guys, we don’t just make it up two minutes before class starts. Like there is a lot of thought and careful planning that goes into what we do every day.” Click said.
