Tri-M Honor Society Start a Tri-M Chapter in Your School Tri-M is a wonderful way to encourage your top students to become music teachers and it will strengthen your entire music program. Read on to learn about Tri-M and what it can do for you, your students and your school. What is Tri-M? The Tri-M Music Honor Society is an international honor society for junior high and high school music students. There are more than 3200 chapters and 15,000 members throughout the world. The requirements for student acceptance into Tri-M are three-fold: students must maintain a certain GPA (to be determined by each chapter), must be of high moral character, and must participate in a school music ensemble. Why Tri-M? Tri-M is a program whose main mission is to recognize and acknowledge the accomplishments of music students. Tri-M students initiate musical and community service activities such as performing in nursing homes and hospitals, generating awareness about Music In Our Schools Month, and collecting canned goods for food pantries. Based upon the activities that Tri-M students initiate and participate in, they have the opportunity to earn awards and scholarships from MENC. This gives students a wonderful opportunity to be recognized by our national music education association. All music groups at your school can participate in Tri-M. Band, choir, and orchestra students work together in this organization, thus, allowing your music program to become more cohesive and strengthened. In addition, due to the musical and community service activities that your students are involved in, the visibility of your music program will be increased. Tri-M is a student-run organization! Leadership development is one of the benefits of Tri-M. Your music students hold offices: President, Vice-President, Secretary, and Treasurer, etc. They also organize the Tri-M meetings, initiate activities, and devise action plans. Students determine how often the chapter meets and the number of activities that will be held during the year. The teacher serves as a liaison. Our most successful projects have been initiated, planned and executed entirely by the student leaders. There are so many different activities that you can do through Tri-M that every member who wants to lead in some manner has an opportunity. One of the benefits of Tri-M is that the top students from the various disciplines can meet together. At each meeting, one student from each area performs on their major instrument. It is very important for students to hear each other play or sing. Bring in leaders from the community to talk to these special students. Ask them to tell how music has affected their lives in their various occupations. As a teacher, share with your students why you became a music teacher. Tell who influenced your decision to become a teacher and encourage these bright young people to become teachers and lead other young people down the same path. Select only the top people from your various ensembles. Make being a member of Tri-M truly special and a great honor. Tell them why they were chosen for this special group. At their graduation ceremony, Tri-M members proudly wear the pink cord on their graduation gown. This chord symbolizes that they are one of the top music students in their class. Visit the MENC website at www.menc.org. for more information.