This week, I did what I always do during the first week of October — walk alongside high school marching bands as they practice for this weekend’s Harvest of Harmony parade and field show in Grand Island. Each year since 2004, the Independent has run three profiles of bands in the area that will be marching at Harvest of Harmony, and as the area reporter, I get to do a lot of them.*

*In case you were wondering (and you probably weren’t), here they are: Hastings, Ord, Central City, Grand Island Northwest, Chambers, Doniphan-Trumbull, Loup City and Arcadia, plus articles from other times of the year about the Grand Island Senior High, Adams Central and St. Cecilia marching bands. (For some reason, the online version of my 2008 article on the Heartland Community Schools band has disappeared.)

This week, I saw the Loup City and Arcadia marching bands, and I was struck by how completely different their styles were. Both are small schools with small bands (41 in Arcadia, 27 in Loup City) doing big things: Loup City is doing a field show for the second time in school history, and Arcadia has built a strong band program out of a 7-12 student body of just 61 students.

But after just a few minutes with each band — or even just walking into each band’s room — you can immediately see the night-and-day difference between the two. Arcadia thrives on discipline, precision and structure. Loup City is laid-back, freewheeling and talkative. Arcadia’s practice was characterized by repeating drills, with their director urging them to make it just a little bit sharper each time. Loup City repeated their marching drills, too, but their rehearsal was marked by playful back-and-forth banter with their director.

Students in both bands made it overwhelmingly clear to me that they love their directors, and their practices made it equally clear how much they take after their directors, too. It was a remarkable object lesson in the amazing responsibility teachers (and particularly directors and coaches) have — they all start with the same raw material (14- to 18-year-olds) and try to mold them into a single unit, capable of producing something much greater together than they could have separately.

And the best ones, like Mr. Warner at Arcadia and Mr. Knaub at Loup City, end up molding a band that takes on their best qualities. Mr. Warner’s students at Arcadia over the years have probably not been innately more musically talented than their peers at other schools; the difference is his influence and their willingness to buy in to his program (the support of the administration and community plays a big role, too).

That’s what I love most about watching Harvest of Harmony: The chance to see so many students pushed beyond what they thought they could do by teachers who’ve dedicated their lives to doing just that. It’s a neat sight to see.