Worry Wart

You know, I would say that of all the activities I do during a school day, the thing that takes up the most energy is something that isn't even on my (many) to-do lists. I do it every day. I WORRY. As a first year teacher, I find that I am constantly considering the "what ifs." What if I don't have any kids who want to play tuba? What if my soloist is sick? What if the buses don't show up? Sometimes, this helps me realize something important I am forgetting, but usually this uncertainty just makes me cranky. What if my worst fears come true??

Story: So, second home football game was coming up: Friday night lights, the usual. The band is a bit behind where we'd like to be with our field show, but we're adding our closer anyway as a park and blow. It was going to be a nail-biter as far as holding together. Well, to top things off, on Wednesday, I start to see rain in the forecast for Friday night. And not just showers, but a full on drenching. With visions of waterlogged saxophones and mildewed band uniforms rolling through my mind, I asked my boosters president offhandedly "So, do we have any raingear in case of a storm?" She laughed, "Of course not. That would be too easy." How silly of me.

It's Thursday. Doom and gloom still predicted for Friday night. Great. One day to come up with enough raingear to outfit my band (like I don't have other things to do). So, I went on the search for cheap plastic ponchos. I called every Dollar General in two counties with the request "Hi, could you please hold all of the clear plastic ponchos you have in stock? Thanks so much, I'll get them tonight!"

I was at school from 7 a.m. to 7:45 p.m. Thursday (beginning band recruitment, don'tcha know?). I was exhausted and just about to crack. So, I was just thrilled at the thought of collecting my poncho bounty before I could go home and crawl into bed. Dollar Generals close at 9 p.m. Once I left school, I had just over an hour to get to all four stores within a 40 mile radius. (Am I on a reality show challenge that I don't know about??). I managed to buy forty ponchos. HUZZAH! I AM THE GREATEST BAND DIRECTOR IN THE UNIVERSE!! MY BAND WILL BE DRY. I AM A HERO!! And I am going. to. bed. Amen!

Of course, after all that worrying, it didn't rain. Not one drop. Not that I'm complaining!! But, if I hadn't bought the ponchos, I have a feeling it would have poured. That's just how these things go. So, what's the lesson? Hard to say. I'm just glad that things worked out. I guess I'll always worry, but I'm realizing that most of my worries don't actually come true. I hope that helps me to stress less as I gain experience. Week 3 in the bag. Phew!

Sousaphone Hero

In case you needed a little chuckle today.... check out this article from The Onion.

(This one's for all you mega band nerds out there!)

http://www.theonion.com/articles/activision-reports-sluggish-sales-for-sousaphone-h,2246/

Labor Day Weekend

Changed the blog background in honor of the new season (almost): Fall! Brings good cheer, hopefully. Football, marching band season, beautiful trees, cooler weather, apple cider, etc.

Labor Day weekend was simply awesome. It's amazing how one extra day off can bring so much refreshment and relaxation! Hope everyone else enjoyed the weekend as well - congrats to Glenn & Nick who got through their first parade & football game, respectively. :)

The next best thing about labor day? It makes for only a four-day week. yahoo! Here's to another crazy busy week!

double trouble

Tonight I am blogging about two separate things... so, I guess the long title of this post should be "Things I should have figured out a long time ago and freaky fridays"

A continual gripe through my collegiate and now professional life has been the inability of most people to read music. By the time people came to me, wanting to join my church choir at the U of I, they had forgotten (or never learned) basic notes and rhythms. My usual complaint is " ALL KIDS TAKE AT LEAST 5 YEARS OF MUSIC. WHY CAN THEY NOT READ EGBDF and FACE????? HOW CAN A QUARTER NOTE BE SO HARD?????!!!!" With this in mind, I figured that one of the main things I would work on in my music classes was music literacy. Basics. Whole notes, quarter notes, half notes, eighth notes. one octave treble and bass. Student teaching helped me become more patient with this quasi quest of mine... usually music teachers only see kids once/twice a week.. Imagine teaching a child to read english only once a week. It would take FOREVER. So, I understand that it would take time... however, It took my 5th graders this week to help me understand that it takes a lot MORE than just a long time... I figured i was starting basic. steady beat vs. rhythm. Ta and ti ti .. stuff that my 2nd graders last year could do quite nicely... My 5th graders were so confused. They just didn't get it. I tried several different ways and they still didn't get it... so I did some thinking, and then it hit me... teaching kids to read music really IS like teaching a kid to read english (and most of my 5th graders only learned how to do that 4 years ago!). I completely take reading music for granted (I learned when I was about 7), but most of my students have close to zero prior knowledge with notation. They really DO need to experience it first. A kid couldn't READ the word "book" if he had never SAID the word "book". Do you get my drift? I was totally trying to jump into it too fast! (and I should have known that... I did know that...) Of course, that doesn't mean that I should stop trying get them to learn how to read music.. It's totally possible by 5th grade, and I really think that most 3rd graders could do it by May, but when teaching kids to read, you really really really really have to go slow. They need to DO music, and then the teacher needs to guide them, step by painfully slow step, until they understand the relationship between when they already know how to do and how it looks.

So, I'm back to the drawing board with 5th grade. I'm basically scrapping the stuff I started with them and am starting over a bit. I'm not sure how to get them to literacy yet. I think that's one of the hardest things about teaching music... but I really do think it is one of the most important. I'm excited for the new directions. I'm still going to work with them on reading music and soon, but I need to balance it and start with experience. Duh. (it took ME an experience before I finally got what people had been telling me... what do you know?)


In other news, my friday was the most eventful day of my student teaching or teaching this year. The whole day was absolutely insane. The morning was filled with everything from having to keep a 5th grade student after class to discuss respect (or his lack there of...) to a picture PERFECT second grade class. For my afternoon, those of you who teach elementary general music will not need much more of an explanation than "friday afternoon... recess duty for preschool and kindergarten on the blacktop only because of rain followed by two kindergarten classes and two preschool classes to end the day. And it was "beach day" for on of the K classes.. they spent all day outside playing." For the rest of you, a few highlights include: a recess crier who wouldn't let go of my hand, a skinned up knee, a cut and bleeding finger after a kindergartener found glass in the parking lot, a COMPLETELY out of control Kindergarten class (beach day.. I tried everything I had ever learned), cutting a kindergartener's lei and name tag off from around her neck because they had gotten tangled too close to her neck...just as the principal walks in with a perspective parent, another kid wetting his pants on my new rug, and about 20 MILLION unrelated comments from 4 year olds. At several points in the afternoon, i just stopped and laughed while I was teaching, because it was just one of those days....


whew, this was long. sorry.

Firsts, etc.

If you don't want to be humbled, don't be a first year teacher. Every day, situations come up that I've never faced before, so I can't fall back on prior knowledge and experience. Sometimes I feel like I handle the situations like a pro, and other times I totally blow it. This post will address some of these issues where I've felt bewildered in a sort of scatter-gun fashion.

-My students are incredibly far behind in terms of their ability to read (music, that is). I found out on day one of band camp that the students were just largely unable to read even basic quarter note/half note rhythms. To give you a picture of it, when we read out of Essential Elements 2000, it sounds more like Atmospheres by Ligeti and less like When the Saints Go Marching In. And after about two bars of musical nothingness, the students give up, quit playing, and just look at me.

What do I do? The junior high band is composed of 6th-8th graders, about 45 all together. The jazz band, about 12 kids, faces the same problems (which reminds me, I'll update my post about improvisation in jazz band class in a later post). I am currently in the first stage of David Newell's teaching rhythm with both groups. The sequence begins with performing rhythms in a call and response format, which even proves difficult right now. Next, I will use rhythm flashcards to show them what they are playing translates to in terms of notation. But even this system only teaches one "type" of rhythm at a time. For example, right now, we're only doing call and response with quarter notes, eighths, and half notes. But we have to start there, right? We can't just jump into sixteenth note rhythms, syncopations, and hemiolas?

The problem is that the kids are getting restless. All this work on fundamentals and not enough fun playing is tuckering them out. The ironic thing is that what they want is what we have been taught NOT to do. They want me to put a piece of music in front of them and just tell them how it goes. They want to memorize their parts and play just a few tunes all year using this format. They don't want to learn. They want to be completely dependent on me. I'm trying to convince them that our fundamental work will pay off to the tune of playing way more music and student independence. Right now, they aren't buying it. but it's only been 2 weeks in.

What I must do, however, is make sure that I pound rhythm reading into my beginning band kids' heads like crazy. Which leads me to another thing.

-Beginning band is bonkers. There are so many logistical pitfalls. I had about 35 kids interested in starting band this year, which is great! The problem is many students come from pretty poor families, and they are just unable to rent instruments. Some were turned away from our provider because of bad credit. I've loaned out almost all of our school instruments. What's going to happen for next year?

-Classroom management is a tough art. Thank God for Harry Wong, as his work has helped me tons. My band kids are used to coming into the band room and raising hell, so we've spent two weeks reforming bad habits. Like everything else, we're making improvements, but we have a lot of room for improvement. I've had to resort to handing out demerits, which is a school-wide penalty system. It stinks being the bad guy, but I believe in the concept of sticking to your guns and being firm, 'cause Harry Wong says that kids will respect you and your system more because of it. Hopefully that proves to be true.

-Other bewildering things include purchase orders, transportation requests, Teachers Retirement System, insurance, all sorts of bills. Growing up is tough.

-Among all these things that are frustrating and mind-buzzing, I am loving it all. It's probably still the honeymoon stage, but I am relishing the role of teacher. I love being able to talk with students who need a strong male presence in their levels. I love getting the chance to teach music. Today we had our first parade (yeah, middle schoolers marching....) and it went as well as I think it could have. The busses showed up, I didn't lose any kids, and we played pretty well! These kind of events build so much team spirit and pride. They're awesome. It was so rewarding being on the other side of that this time and facilitating that for my students.

Quick funny story: In between our parade songs, the drumline was playing a simple cadence, which predominantly features the quads at the beginning of it. During one of the cadences, the quad player dropped out unexpectedly, and I was originally irked with him. He got back on, and later I asked him what happened. The poor kid told me his pants became unbuttoned. Haha. He had to get readjusted, then just kept on marching like a trooper!

So the first parade is down, we have a little bit of time to spend on fundamentals, and I'm super excited. There are many pearls to take away from the first few weeks, even amongst the rampant confusion.

An example of what the post below is getting at

Oh, the whimsy! This unique and innovative selection will inspire strangers to giggle and hug each other as they take a trip down memory lane. Replete with lush harmonies, an old-fashioned sensibility, and more than a few zany gimmicks, you’ll want to program this on every concert! And don’t worry about technical or instrumentation issues - LemonadeTown in the 1950s is safely scored to bolster confidence and contains no sharps, flats, ties, or nuance. Enjoy this cooky blast to the past!

Corporate Irresponsibility

Good evening everyone. I am going to step back from current situations for a little while, and pontificate upon the state of one aspect of music education in this country. (Mounts the soap box).

I never realized how much junk mail music teachers receive. It's amazing. Marching band and colorguard apparel and accessory catalogs are probably the worst of it (who poses for those pictures? Where do they find these people?) But in a close, close second is music publisher catalogs. Not only is most of the music they are hawking complete garbage, but the little description paragraphs they provide are even more offensive. But like all marketing, it must work, right? Or else they wouldn't do it. It scares me that music teachers must purchase music due to descriptors like "incredibly expressive" or "sweeping melodic lines". Yes, I do have a publisher's catalog in front of me. Ooh, this one is "heart wrenching". It must be good. I feel like I am trying to order from an Applebee's menu. Everything is a "zesty, tangy combination sure to keep you coming back for more".

I saw this one at the end of a long day and it proved to be too much. "Good King Wence-SALSA!", is a "salsa-style arrangement of Good King Wenceslas" which includes "a wealth of Latin percussion, authentic harmonies, and a ton of fun! With opportunities for the band to sing, a Latin-style flute solo, and a mesmerizing orchestration, this arrangement is sure to be the highlight of your next program!" This publisher describes this as "absolutely stunning!". More like, absolutely disgusting.

It is too bad that someone even thinks to write stuff like this. Even more disheartening is that many publishers actually print and hawk it. In my book, this puts them on par with other corporate scum like BP, Halliburton, Enron, and Apple. But the most revolting thing of all is that music teachers everywhere must purchase garbage, and purchase it by the truckload. It really makes me sad, because the students are losing out. Yes, music should be comprehensive, multicultural, and fun. Music is all of those things naturally, but it must be brought out by creative and intelligent teachers who demand quality content. Those things should not be injected like flavors and hormones into cheesy melodies, boring structures, and cheap cliche titles.

I feel that music education preparation programs (at least mine, for sure!) should include much more coursework on appropriate and quality repertoire for all levels of ensembles. Having a major clue beforehand may help the situation. I have great respect for composers like John Mackey and Steven Bryant who do their own publishing. Bravo. I also admire certain publishers for their integrity, such as the Windipendence series offered by Boosey and Hawkes. Thank you to those editors for only permitting quality. But at the end of the day, you, as a music teacher, should have standards. End of story. I know that there are limitless "real-world challanges", but please have standards. There is no problem that cannot be solved through creativity and hard work.

Here's my counter proposal to the piece described above. Play a real arrangement of a real 'Latin' piece - maybe actually teach your students something truly authentic; like what rhumba, tango, or Son rhythms actually are and where they come from. Then, you can play your Christmas song.