Sizing Up Small Schools: WACO/Wayland

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Sizing Up Small Schools: WACO/Wayland

By Josh Hinkle, Reporter

By Becky Ogann

WAYLAND - It takes a lot of fine tuning to teach tone and perfect pitch, but WACO High School’s orchestra needed a different kind of director – a commanding conductor, but also someone who could save the strings program.

Director Denise Freyenberger says, "When I took over about ten years ago, it was down to about 16 students. It's up to 75 total students now."

Faced with dwindling numbers in the orchestra and the school, Freyenberger's talent and teaching not only prompted more students here to play. But it also spurred students from other districts - even home school kids - to enroll at WACO.

Senior Jill Graber says, "I've been playing the violin since the before I started fourth grade."

From college to careers, a string of those students have gone on to make music after graduation.

Senior Isaac Stauffer says, "Whatever I do, I'm probably going to minor or possibly even major in music."

"The orchestra program here has a rich history starting back in the 1950s so many of the students' parents were actually in orchestra themselves."

Freyenberger says parental pride and a cultured community helped her garner support. But most say it was her determined direction that kept this orchestra alive a decade beyond its near demise.

She says, "Usually, we're the only school with strings our size in this area, maybe even in the state."

Stauffer says, "The people in the small schools, they just don't get that experience, unless you're privileged like we are to have a strings program with a strings instructor."

It took a lot of fine tuning, but the extra effort to mold a mini-philharmonic will keep WACO from facing the music and losing its student specialty for years to come.

Click here to view Josh's full blog.

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