By: Jamari Saint Cyr
Many teachers at Apopka High School are extremely motivated for the new school year with goals that they hope to achieve for their students. Like many other teachers, Mrs. Shafer is just as motivated for where she plans to take the school choir in the new semester.
Mrs. Shafer has taught chorus for six years and is returning for her third year teaching here at Apopka. She grew up in the community and was a student at Apopka Middle School and Apopka High School and graduated in 2007. It was through influence from her middle school chorus teacher, who she also worked with last year, that made her want to fulfill teaching choir. After Ms. Boot, the previous chorus teacher, resigned, Mrs. Shafer stepped up to head the chorus department and work alongside Mr. Powers. “She made me want to continue it,” Shafer acknowledged. “Pretty much since sixth grade I knew [teaching chorus was] what I was gonna do.”
Mrs. Shafer shared some of the upcoming events that are planned for the chorus department. “So we have our annual chorus night, which is our night for chorus students and parents, and the students all sing at that for the parents. So we’re singing in class and we’ve pretty much been singing every day since we got here, including the first day of school. And then we’ve got a concert in October that we’ll be preparing for, Candlelight auditions which are at Disney [World] and that’s with our older students, and then we’ve got a winter concert, spring concert, and we’re going on a trip out of state once we get it approved. So, yeah, we’ve got a lot going on!”
She also expressed her excitement about her classes for this year. While some of her classes this year contrast from last year, and now she is welcoming a new class of freshmen, she feels sure that there’s been no change in the potential this year from last year. “They are still great,” Mrs. Shafer shared. “They were great last year, they’re great this year, we’ve been really lucky to get amazing students year after year and their potential is through the roof. We’re gonna do some amazing things this year and really toss the bar, jump over it, and destroy any expectations that people have for us.”
Chorus isn’t the only performing arts class at Apopka High School. Down the hall from the choir room lies Mr. Langford’s classroom which is home to the school band. Given that the band and chorus are both within the music department, naturally, we asked if there’s ever any interactions between the two. Mrs. Shafer commented on this responding, “Yeah, we try to collaborate as often as possible. We don’t do joint concerts, but if he needs a vocalist or we need an instrumentalist we try to share.”
Multiple times in the school year, the chorus department represents our school by traveling out to MPA (stands for “Music Performance Assessments”), a competition where school choirs in Florida compete against one another. Each year of participation AHS has managed to be among the highest-rated. “It’s not a win or lose for the competitions, it’s more like the rating that we get,” Shafer explained. “And we have consistently been the highest rated. And each choir from any school can be the highest rated. There’s not necessarily a first place or second place for us, but we were consistently getting the highest rating [which is ‘Superior’] with every group every year.”
Mrs. Shafer has a lot of exciting things set in store for her students this year. There are many things that she hopes to accomplish before the end of the school year with her students, including the goal that she already has set ahead for this school year. “My goal is to make beautiful music with my students and for them to grow as musicians,” she expressed with optimistic enthusiasm. “I am so excited! We’ve got great kids who are already singing amazingly well. So it’s gonna be a very musical year!”