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by Belinda Wright
Perhaps a once in a lifetime event for many high school students will be taking place this Thanksgiving day. What is the event? It is none other than the oldest Thanksgiving Day Parade in the Country!!!!! The location is Philadelphia, Pennsylvania on November 27, 2008.
The parade was created by Gimbel Brothers Department Store President, Ellis Gimbel in 1920. Since that glorious day in 1920, the parade has also signified the official arrival of Santa Claus in the City of Brotherly Love. The Philadelphia Thanksgiving Day Parade is now named the 6 ABC/Boscov’s Thanksgiving Day Parade.
The award winning Reeltown Band has earned the privilege of marching in this prestigious parade by the many years of high standard performances including 23 consecutive years of superior ratings at both concert and marching band festivals. Often the rules of such parades require larger bands than Reeltowns 75 members, therefore the Reeltown and Tallassee high school bands will be combining for this fabulous adventure. The name of the combined bands will be the “Tallapoosa River All-Star Band”.
As many know, band already involves a commitment of many extra hours of practices. Day to day life will continue as the band supports regular school activities, however, this earned privilege will require an additional 15-20 hours of practice. The band will practice on Tuesdays and Thursdays starting on October 21, working on music and marching fundamentals. What an amazing commitment from a group of young people. This is also a great opportunity for the students of both schools to get to know each other.
Not only will the Reeltown students be marching in the Thanksgiving Day Parade, they will also visit New York City for two days. The Reeltown band will attend the broadway play “Phantom of the Opera”, see the Radio City Music Hall “Rockettes”, ride a ferry to Ellis Island to see the Statue of Liberty, participate in a guided tour of downtown Manhattan, have the opportunity to see “ground zero”, have a group photo taken in Times Square and visit the Rockefeller Center. In historic Philadelphia, the students will visit Independence Hall where the Constitution, the Declaration of Independence and the Bill of Rights were adopted. They will also have the opportunity to see the Liberty bell.
Each Reeltown band student has had the opportunity to earn money toward the cost of the trip. Fundraisers such as a rock-a-thon, Boston Butt sale, doughnut sale, cookie dough sale and a golf tournament have been held. Many businesses have contributed to the cost of the two chartered buses that will take Reeltown to the parade.
Click here to see the Opelika-Auburn News Band Feature of the Reeltown High School Band!
What a wonderful opportunity for a trip of a lifetime. Way to go Reeltown Band!!
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By David Owens
My students look forward to reading the OA News each day and make use of it to stay abreast of the news. The OA News has proved a valuable tool in our studies of the current Presidential election concerning each parties conventions, the selection of Vice-Presidential candidates, polls in contested swing states, and the breakdown of election issues. The OA News has also proven to be a valuable tool in our focus on the economy here in the USA and abroad. Our students have been able to study the fluctuating prices of oil and gold and how these commodities have changed prices in the volatile stock market in the last two months. Today we were able to examine the meltdown in the stock market and how it might effect consumers. We have looked at how the powers of the National government were recently used to take over Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to prevent a collapse of two of America’s biggest home mortgage institutions. Students have also used the OA News as a tool to study how our US foreign policy is carried out abroad in terms of diplomacy, economic aid, military aid, and as part of humanitarian missions. This was most recently seen in the USA’s response Russia’s intervention into the sovereign nation of Georgia. From reading the OA News our students develop an improved awareness of physical geography in terms of locating the sources of news articles and where they originated from. Furthermore, students are better able to develop a cultural awareness for differences among world societies in how people are governed in the nations in which they live. One recent activity assigned to my classes called for students to make use of the OA news to construct a weekly current events scrapbook highlighting the weeks news in international world events,
national news, state news and local happenings.
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In 1914, this 11 year-old boy delivered meat for a meat market here in Opelika, AL. Look at the phone number on the window!
Do you know this boy? Is he your grandfather? Do you think he went to school? How much money do you think he earned riding his bike to deliver meat?
This photo is from the Library of Congress Archives. It was taken by Lewis Wickes Hines. You can see more pictures like this and even purchase them at http://www.loc.gov/rr/print/catalog.html
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