Last year, band and choir classes were a far cry from normal, with students practicing outside or over Zoom. But with students back in school this fall, many are overjoyed to take part in almost normal music classes. That includes senior tenor sax player Frank Papetti.
“Oh my God, I’m super excited,” he says. “I love playing my instrument,” Papetti is a member of the wind ensemble at Westwood High School, about 24 miles south of Boston.
He says last year was tough. The school’s hybrid schedule meant that about half the time, he attended class remotely. In music classes, students had to mute their microphones and play along at home.
“Yeah, you kind of feel isolated,” says Papetti. “It kind of turns you off in a sense. You don’t really want to play. No one can hear you.”
His teacher, Heather Cote, who directs the Westwood High School wind ensemble, says the group was able to practice outside last year, but it got harder as the weather cooled off. And the hybrid schedule wasn’t great for a music class. Her students were split into two cohorts that came to school in-person on different days.
“You didn’t have the whole group together, so sometimes the balance was weird and you had too many of one instrument because all the other ones were in the other cohort,” Cote says.
