Extra Opportunities for Rigor, Challenge, & Competition

Some students enjoy the challenge of extracurricular, competitive opportunities. They like to work hard and push themselves to their full potential. Competitions allow students to work toward personal goals, and to stretch their abilities. Honor ensembles allow musicians to participate in ensembles with advanced players and performers. Here are some of the competitions our visual and performing arts students participated in this year.

PTA Reflections

The PTA Reflections program is a national program, run and administered by the PTA Council. They support a multi-arts competition for K-12 students. This year we have four state level winners in visual art.

Scholastic Art & Writing Awards

This is a long-standing and rigorous competition for visual art and writing. It is highly competitive, with over 340,000 entries. This year we have an all-national winner, and six state level winners, all from East Chapel Hill High School.

Governor's School of North Carolina

The Governor's School is a residential summer program for gifted students. It includes programming for a wide variety of subjects, interdisciplinary topics, special interests, and the arts. Students from across the state are competitively selected, and participate an intensive summer residential program. This program is administered through our district Gifted Education services. This year we had twelve students selected in the arts.

Music Honor Ensembles

The professional music educators organizations sponsor a series of honor ensembles in band, jazz band, orchestra, and chorus, so that students can perform more challenging and complex music with advanced players and singers. The students work very hard to audition for these spots, and if they are chosen, they participate in an honor ensemble clinic and concert. The teachers play major administrative roles and spend many weekends with students at auditions, clinics, and concerts. This year we have all national students in band and orchestra. We also have a southern regional winner in chorus.

Triangle Rising Stars

The Triangle Rising Stars showcase and awards ceremony is held at the Durham Performing Arts Center each May. It is part of the national Jimmy Awards, that recognize excellence in high school music theatre. The showcase was cancelled this year.