Band
The Parrottsville Band includes students in the sixth, seventh and eighth grades. Students begin their adventures in band in sixth grade, learning the basics of playing their chosen instrument and learning to read music.
The Parrottsville Advanced Band is made up of seventh and eighth grade students. The advanced band members continue to improve their playing skills as they branch out into more complicated music.
Advanced band members are eligible to audition for honor bands in the East Tennessee area. At the auditions, the students must perform scales from memory, perform a fairly difficult prepared etude, and sight read music they have never seen before. The top audition scores denote the very best band students in all of East Tennessee.
Another fun event that is open to band members of all levels is the annual Solo & Ensemble Festival held at Chuckey-Doak High School. Cocke County is always one of the school systems with the most representation at Solo & Ensemble.
All the band members participate in two concerts every school year, one at Christmas and one in the spring. The spring concert involves performing at other elementary schools in the county to help build interest in the band program. Our band members here at Parrottsville are intelligent, talented, and truly a pleasure to teach. Through their involvement in band, the students are learning the value of teamwork, increasing brain skills as they multi-task to read music and play an instrument at the same time, and building memories with their friends that will last a lifetime
First Priority
First Priority is a Christian but non-denominational organization for elementary students in grades 5-12 which meets weekly before school on each Friday here at PES. The organization is national, and its original founder is a Cocke County native, Benny Proffitt. The purpose of First Priority is to help students have an outlet at school to meet with other students to grow spiritually in prayer, study of the Bible, and learning to witness to others who do not know God. The group is student led with trained adult leaders speaking occasionally. Parrottsville First Priority is also involved in mission outreach through projects such as See You at the Pole and Operation Christmas Child.
Junior Beta Club
The Parrottsville Junior Beta Club is part of the National Junior Beta Club. The mission of the Beta Club is to promote the ideals of academic, achievement, character, service, and leadership among elementary and secondary school students. The Beta Club believes that exemplary student effort and achievement should be encouraged and rewarded, and seek to cultivate the leadership and service skills in our citizens of tomorrow. It also encourages the continuation of higher education after high school.
Students are required to remain on the honor roll throughout the year in order to remain in good standing in the club.
Our club at Parrottsville participates in events at school and many of our members volunteer in the community in various ways. We do fund raisers to be able to do projects to improve our school and community, and to aid in assistance for those in need.
The club also takes trips during the year. We attend a dinner show, a baseball game, and a hockey game. Each spring, our club travels on a trip to various locations for a few days. We have traveled to New York City, Pennsylvania, Washington, D.C., Charleston, and many other locations.
Newsletter Club
Parrottsville Elementary School publishes a monthly newsletter known as the Parrott Press. Students in grades five through eight are invited to participate as ‘staff reporters’. In addition, many students, regardless of grade, choose to write occasional articles as guest reporters. The Newsletter Club meets in the morning, before school, on Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday.
Scholar’s Bowl
The Scholar’s Bowl is an academic team competition for all the school in Cocke County. It is similar to Jeopardy, where students compete by answering trivia-type questions from all subject areas. Each spring, 7th and 8th graders are chosen by their teachers to take the qualification test, and the team is chosen based on the test scores. Parrottsville’s team won the county championship in 2016 and 2017.
Student Ambassadors
The Parrottsville Student Ambassadors is a leadership program. It is for students in grades 5, 6, 7 and 8, and currently has 24 members. The teacher sponsors are Mrs. Amanda Gregg, Mr. Jason Knight, and Mrs. Stephanie Hill.
There are several requirements that ambassadors must meet: first, they must have at least a 3.0 grade point average and have been present at least 90% of the school year. They must also not have any discipline reports, office referrals or suspensions. Each student in the eligible grades who wishes to join completes an application, writes and essay, and asks two teachers (current or former) to recommend them for the program. If all of the requirements are met, the applying student will have an interview with school staff, ambassadors’ sponsors, and community members. The students with the best scores are chosen for the program.
The ambassadors have helped in several important projects, including planning the pep rally for homecoming week, helping with nominations and votes for homecoming, and planning reward activities for our schoolwide positive behavior system.