Schools are noisy places.  Obviously when you throw together hundreds or even thousands of children or teenagers in one building, it’s going to be noisy.  And then there are those sheer numbers of children, all laughing, talking, and shouting, especially at this time of year. It doesn’t help that I teach one of two activity classes either.  I would love to say that I get some quiet during lunch, but with my room right next to the cafeteria, that doesn’t happen.  So, as the school week comes to an end, so does my tolerance for all the  noise.

I’ve always been sensitive to noise but it wasn’t until several years ago that I figured out that I needed to create quiet times, those deliberately chosen times to get away from everyone and everything.  It actually became more pronounced when I began traveling with colleagues to conferences where I just seemed to be with someone all the time.  I could feel my stress levels rising and even began getting migraines.  So I began to be a little anti-social, going to breakfast by myself, going to my hotel room to read or just saying no to social gatherings at the end of the day.  Fortunately these colleagues are great friends and after explaining, they were very understanding.  I don’t know if this is always the case with others.

So here is where the guilt comes in.  When I take needed time for myself, I can appear antisocial to people I really like and care about.  Today was one of those days.  I had three offers of things to do today after school.  One was a social occasion to honor some retirees, one was a staff gathering at a local establishment and the other was a concert where a former student was playing.  And the more I thought about them, the more stressed I became.  All I wanted was to go home and sit by myself for a while.

Like I said, I have always been sensitive to sounds/noise, and when I say sensitive to noise, I mean things like people chewing from across the room – it makes me want to hit something.  This actually has a name – Misophonia – so I tend to wonder it that doesn’t make me sensitive to other noises as well.  But it still doesn’t take away the guilt I feel when I skip out on events with friends.  I had a great discussion with myself on the way home, like how I needed to suck it up and go, that I would have a good time once I got there, and that I was just being rude to people I cared about.  But I drove home anyway and as I did, the guilt was was slowly replaced by some calm.

After a quick nap, we had dinner and watched some TV, but even the TV was too much noise, so we decided to sit out on the balcony with adult beverages and play cards.  Other than the birds and some traffic noise we sat and enjoyed some quiet conversation.  But how do I explain this kind of behavior to people who don’t understand?  Do others feel this too?  Is it just part of being an introvert?  Should I have challenged myself to work through it?

I question this behavior myself because I have dealt with depression and what I tend to do is retreat.  So there has to be this balance for me.  Am I taking legitimate time for myself or am I hiding from the world?

Can you tell I’m still feeling guilty?  I should have taken time to honor these friends and colleagues today and I just couldn’t. I’m sure that I have done this same things to others and I hope if they read this they now understand why.  I care a great deal for the  colleagues, friends and family in my life and I hope they know that.  And in the meantime, I’ll continue to work on balancing my life of noise and quiet.

 

I have never met anyone who didn’t like some kind of music.  Even my kids who may not love studying about music or sing in class have favorite music they listen and sing to at home.  Their parents and grandparents have an influence on that as well as I have 5th graders asking to listen to music from groups like Earth, Wind and Fire or AC/DC in class.  Around 90% of parents say they believe it is important to have the arts, including music, in public schools and in some cases, when parents are deciding where to send their children to school, having music can be more important than how strong the academics are.  Even with these kinds of research statistics, people continue to say things like, music is fluff, an extracurricular activity or entertainment as if it has no importance.  So let’s see if we could imagine a world where there is no music.

Well, let’s start with the big occasions.  No music at weddings, birthdays, or funerals.  No  music to walk down the aisle, favorite songs to dance to for the bride and groom, no favorite song of grandma’s to remember her by.  Can you even imagine going to your church or place of worship without music? No music to sing to on trips, nothing to listen to in the car, period. Unless you’re into sports and talk shows. But even then, there’s the theme music and music to get the crowd pumped up for whatever sport you’re watching.  No 7th inning stretch, pep band tunes, no marching bands, no parades, no school fight song, no National Anthem before the game.

No music to eat by or shop by, no more musical chairs.  No concerts, indoor or outdoor, no more musicals or opera to attend with family and friends.  No music to accompany movies or TV shows. And well, who needs instruments if there’s no music?  No piano to sit at after a long day to play the stress away.  No piano for your toddler to experiment with the sound they can produce.  No learning the ABC’s with a song, only rote recitation.  All of us learned our ABC’s by singing them. No more lullabies for mothers to sing to their infants, no music boxes, no CD’s, Spotify or iTunes.

Imagining life without music is pretty bleak and depressing.  Music is that magical connection to memories and emotions that bring us together as families, communities and as a country.  It gets us through the hard times and celebrates the good times.  It is living, audible history that changes into something brand new each time it is performed.

In this country, we seem to have turned all music into some kind of “entertainment”, even in churches.  Entertainment is fine, and the entertainment industry contributes almost $700 billion to the U.S. economy.  But who prepares the people who will eventually become a part of the entertainment industry?  Well, let me see.  Could it be –  the public school system?  Oh sure, a lot of kids also take private lessons, but the foundation of their music education begins in the home and in the public schools, taught by teachers who believe in the power of music to change lives, to connect to those memories and emotions and to bring happiness and entertainment to people all over the world.

However, this training does not come cheap.  It costs money to provide music teachers with the resources and instruments, that in turn provide the quality music education that kids deserve.  Music can help kids find that niche where they feel that sense of belonging, it provides an outlet for creative expression, and it teaches life skills and dispositions too many to list.  No fluff,  not extracurricular, not just entertainment, but essential to our development as human beings.  Every time I see a toddler absent mindedly making up their own melody as they play, it tells me that this is innate and needs to be developed, again by qualified school teachers in the public school system.

What would life be like if there was no music?  Not any life I would want to be a part of.  Fortunately I don’t have to imagine it as I have that music in me and I get to share it with my kids on a daily basis. Whether they like it or not.

 

It’s like waiting for your birthday to arrive when you were a kid but in reverse – kind of.  My kids at school get so excited to celebrate their birthdays that they will tell me months in advance that it’s coming.  For instance, someone shares that their birthday is the day after tomorrow to which someone else replies “mine is in July!!” The excitement builds and builds until the actual day where it reaches its height and then slowly fades to relative calm.  For teachers, the countdown until the end of school is similar, the excitement building as we get closer to that last day, however, the day after, most teachers just collapse and sleep for a week.  Or get sick for a week.

Is it awful to say that we look forward to the end?  I think it’s truthful.  I have worked many different jobs in my life, from fast food rushes to an administrative assistant for an accountant, putting together book length quarterly reports, to working in a trust department handling large accounts to subbing for PE teachers  – me, the queen of non-coordination.  And while all of those can be stressful for periods of time, all of them rolled into one can’t compete with the stress of teaching.

But, you LOVE teaching, you say.  You have a passion for educating young people in the ways of music, you say.  All true.  I have never been a classroom teacher, but from what I understand, there is some time when students have seatwork or there is small group instruction to do and you’re not teaching everyone for every minute of the day.  For classes like music, art, and p.e., we are up and teaching from the moment the students walk in until they leave and preparing for the next class during the five minutes between classes – if one class doesn’t leave late and the next one comes early.  I can inhale my lunch in 15 minutes and use the other 15 minutes for going to the bathroom and setting up for the afternoon.  When I leave the building, I am usually in need of a nap, until I get home and see what needs to be done there.  So, forget the nap and try to get to bed on time – right.

And if it were just teaching all day, leading activities, giving assessments, guiding children, filling young minds with great knowledge, that would be enough, but NO.  On top of that, as I’ve spoken of before, there are surveys to fill out and required committee meetings and staff meetings, and required professional development and grading and planning. This list goes on and on and unfortunately doing all of this does not fit into the 50 minute plan or the required arrival time before class starts and the time has to come from somewhere.

Nobody ever really prepares you for how emotional teaching is going to be.  There is obviously that passion for children and for teaching, but you’re not prepared for children saying disrespectful things to you and about you.  You’re not prepared for the child who says “I hate music” when you’ve tried so hard to get them to like it.  Nobody prepares you for the parent that says that music is just not important.  But then again, nothing prepares you for seeing that kid that breaks down in tears because the musical was so much fun, or the joy you’ll feel when that one kid who wouldn’t sing all year joins the class in song on the next to the last day, or the kid that hugs you and tells you that music is their favorite class and they want to be a music teacher when they grow up.  It’s a roller coaster of emotions, intertwined with a crazy, non-stop work schedule for a grueling ten months.  Yes, I said ten months.  I begin at the beginning of August and end at the end of May.

So yes, I’m exhausted.  The kids are at that height of excitement and their energy is ridiculous.  Some kids are excited for all the fun they’re going to have and some kids are dreading being at home all summer and are acting out because of it.  And yet, we will continue in our professional manner for the next six days because, despite what some believe, we ARE professionals and we will finish the year, getting all of those little details accomplished, filling out paperwork, recording grades, storing materials, and choosing things for the next school year.

And as August approaches, just like our kids who get excited for their birthdays, we will get excited for another year of school so that we can use things we’ve learned over the summer with renewed energy and that professional attitude that gets us through year after year.  But in the meantime, it’s six more days.

 

In about a month, I will officially become the North Central Division President of the National Association for Music Education which makes me a voting member of the National Executive Board.  If you had told me ten years ago that I would have this opportunity, I would have laughed at you, but I’m beginning to understand that having a driving passion for something can get you into all kinds of places you never dreamed of.

I believe with all my heart that EVERY child should have access to a quality music education taught by qualified music educators.  I and my fellow music educators see on a daily basis what a quality music education can do for kids and how it can literally change their lives. One of the things I’m most excited about in this position is that I feel like I can speak for all of the general music teachers around the country, speaking within the board from a practitioners point of view and making sure we don’t get too lofty in our discussions.

The discussions are very different from my position as a state president where things were much more hands on.  This is more of what I would consider a think tank, working on policies, budgets, advocacy and reading position papers and many other things that only the extremely nerdy would find interesting – like me.  I’m learning SO much and yet figuring out that I do have things to contribute as well, mainly because I do look at things from that K-5 teacher perspective.

So much of what we discuss is what we can do for the membership and how we can get more kids involved in different kinds of music.  Some of this will involve a different way of thinking for those educators who have been doing things the same way, some for many, many years.  It will be necessary for us to not only think in terms of different kinds of ensembles and music making, but how can we move to a more student centered classroom, where we are not at the center of things, but they are, learning how to choose music for themselves, how to practice it and how to perform it, all without us instructing them on every little detail.

For most of us taught in what I would refer to traditional lessons and ensembles, this is going to be a difficult transition, but in the long run will fulfill our mission which is to advance music education by encouraging the study and making of music by all.  Pretty lofty, but it won’t even begin to happen unless we start to rethink how we’re doing things now.  Not every student fits neatly into our big three ensembles, so what can we do to fix this? This is the kind of discussion that gets my brain working.

Speaking of brains, this opportunity allows me to work beside some of the best “brains” in the educational field. This past meeting we had the assistant dean from the Yale School of Music come speak to us.  If I think too much about the position this person holds, it becomes intimidating, but because of the openness of the executive board and their encouragement to speak, speaking up for me isn’t nearly as difficult as it once was.  For an introvert, this is huge and I am grateful.

So why write about this at all?  Yes, I am certainly proud and excited to have this opportunity, but moreover, I want to use it to encourage my colleagues who may not think they have what it takes.  I do not have a terminal degree and most of my music career has included tying shoes, giving hugs, applying bandaids, wiping up lunch tables and attempting to manage child behavior before major holidays.  So the only thing I can figure is that I get to do this because I believe in its importance, and I know many of my fellow music educators do as well.  Follow your heart, speak about the passion you have for what you do for kids, speak up about the issues that you and those students face and don’t be afraid to try innovative ways of teaching so that other students will have the opportunity to express themselves through the music THEY love.  And maybe some day, you’ll be hearing “Hail to the Chief” going through your head.

 

 

 

 

 

We did it to ourselves.  Years ago, elementary music teachers made themselves relevant, not because of what they taught but because they presented themselves as a way for classroom teachers to get their plan time.  It was survival in a time when school music programs were being eliminated. However, in the process, we also made ourselves irrelevant because now most just see us as – well – plan time for classroom teachers.

In some states, middle and high school music is considered an activity under the auspices of the state activities association.  It makes it difficult for those outside of music to take us seriously as an academic subject.  And yet, we have music educators who, for some reason, have no issue with remaining labeled an activity.

Recently I heard of specialists being labeled as “support staff”.  Supporting whom or what?  Are specialists supporting other subjects or teachers or are they a subject unto themselves?

I recently had a long term sub come to me who had a student who had been misbehaving in her class and she wanted to give him a consequence by taking him out of my class.  Can you even imagine if I suggested that same scenario to a reading or math teacher in my building?  First of all, I would never consider it as I would be perceived as not taking their class or subject matter seriously, and I absolutely do.  However, in the many years I have been teaching, I have had teachers who had no problem keeping or pulling a student out of my class to work on something they didn’t get finished or as a consequence of some kind, completely forgetting that I too have essential learning outcomes to cover and assessments to give during my class time.

Several years ago, I did some math to demonstrate just how much time I really have to get everything taught for retention and assessment for a single year.  A classroom teacher may have a two hour block every day to teach a particular subject.  In a particular year, say 176 days for students, that means 352 hours which is the equivalent of 50.3 days of school (based on a 7 hour day) spent just on that one subject.  Let’s say I’m on a 4 day rotation where I see a particular class for 50 minutes every 4 days.  So, I’m seeing them for 50 minutes for 44 days of the 176 days available.  This means I have roughly the equivalent of 5 school days to get an entire years worth of content in them, assess them and hopefully retain things from year to year in order to build upon what we’ve learned previously.

I must be one hell of a teacher, because somehow, I can make it work.  Most of my students can retain things well enough that it only takes a little bit of review to get them back on track, adding to the knowledge and skills they have learned previously.  The very thought of having them for the same amount of time that say, a reading teacher would have them is mind boggling.

The truth is, what I do with kids in my music class is not unusual as I know many, many music teachers do the same thing, some with even less time, dealing with 5 and 6 day rotations.  And within those 50 minutes periods within the subject of music, we teach science through acoustics, charts, graphs, frequencies, intensities, and volume changes.  We teach math when we subdivide rhythms into fractions to fit within beats as they move through time.  We speak in foreign languages and learn about those countries, their histories, and cultures using the songs we sing, the pieces we play and the instruments we use.  We teach large and small motor skills, working the coordination of fingers, hands, arms, lips, cheeks, facial muscles, together with diaphragmatic, back, stomach and chest muscles, all responding instantly to the sound the ear hears and mind interprets.

Today in my classes, we are learning about music during the turbulent history of the 1960’s, some that reflected the times, some that attempted to change the times.  We studied Rondo form in music and students then created their own original pieces  and performed them for the class.  We played recorder, working on finding patterns in the music to help them in the learning process.  Our little ones are working on motor skills, dancing to folk music, learning of the history behind it and how to work with a partner and group cooperatively.  And still others were working on moving their arms in tandem to play specific bars at specific times to add music to a story.

What we do is academic, it is physical, it is cognitive and it is an art form.  And while my schedule may work well to help classroom teachers have their plan time, the truth is that they also provide a daily plan time for me.  While we may do activities to teach a concept,  we are NOT an extracurricular activity and should not be labeled as such.  Lastly, as music teachers, we are certainly not support staff as what we do prepares students to not only be well rounded individuals but also cooperative, collaborative, creative, critical thinkers and problem solvers.  Exactly what we need in our society.  Music is essential and I will continue to preach that message for the sake of our students.

I am a mother of three boys, the mother-in-law of two girls and the grandmother of one boy and tomorrow is Mother’s Day.  I, along with others who have been able to have children, and those who have adopted children will get cards, flowers and lunches out after church.  And all because of the commercialized idea of what Mother’s Day is supposed to be.

We use the word mother in many different ways on a daily basis, probably not even thinking about why.  Obviously things like “mother nature, mother earth, mother country or mother church come to mind, but then we have things like the mother lode, mother ship and mother boards.  We have stage mothers and soccer moms, mother hens, den and house mothers, and brothers from another mother.  Then we use phrases like “necessity is the mother of invention” or “mother knows best” or, if you’re a Ghostbusters fan, “mother puss bucket” or the more inappropriate reference to mother which probably needs no more than that.

If you search the definition of the word “mother”, it describes a woman in relation to her child or children, an elderly woman, the head of a female religious community, an institution or organization from which more recently founded institutions of the same type arrive or an extreme example or very large specimen of something, the latter’s synonyms including humdinger, dilly, doozy, lulu and whopper.  I sure I’ve been referred to a least one of those at some time during my life.

However, if you look at the verb form of mother, this is where it describes the people who exemplify the word “mother”.  To bring up a child with care and affection, or to look after kindly and protectively, sometimes excessively so.  To me, this describes so many women, whether they have children or not, who just care about children, period.  Like the moms who come in to help kids at lunch at school, the person who becomes a mentor to young people, someone who volunteers to work with needy children and anyone who works with children in our public schools. Some of them may have been birth mothers, but others may just love children and mother them like they were their own.  And all of them should be celebrated.

On this Mother’s Day there are mothers out there who are unable to have children and who have lost children, there are children who have lost mothers and there are mothers who never should have been mothers.  We tend to be uncomfortable for them when this day arrives because in our culture/society, motherhood is something that is still expected of women and it is a deeply emotional thing for all of us.  After all, all of us who are here had a mother. But this is really a pretty narrow viewpoint.  I know plenty of women who have never had children of their own and yet they have “raised” and mothered thousands of children in their lifetimes and they will never get recognized for that.

Anyone in the teaching profession at any grade level has been a mother.  We have comforted children, laughed and cried with them, bandaged their boo boos, given them hugs, disciplined them when they needed it, encouraged them when they were down and celebrated their victories with them.  We have attended their recitals, watched their concerts and plays and attended their athletic events to support them.  We have taught them not only academic subjects but life skills and life lessons to help them be the best human being they can be.  And we’re there when as adults, they come to us for advice and reassurance.  That in a nutshell is mothering.

So, on this Mother’s Day, let’s not get too caught up on the word mother in the literal sense and give thanks for every women who loves and cares for children regardless.

 

 

I’m sure that the first person who said, “hey, let’s let the kids wear pajamas to school!” was a wonderful person.  I’m sure they thought “won’t they be so cute,sitting on the floor, reading their little books?”.   Or while watching Polar Express perhaps?  I mean, how could there be a distraction?  It’s not like they’re wearing costumes or something, they’re just pajamas, right?  Wrong.

You see, you can’t just wear pajamas.  You have to wear slippers.  And maybe a robe.  With a belt.  And as a teacher, if you don’t wear pajamas, you have kids asking you all day why you didn’t.  Literally.  Most of the teachers are wearing what I call “happy pants” and a t-shirt.  Some actually go out and buy a pair of jammies just to wear at school pajama days because what they wear to bed at home might not be appropriate at school.  Oh, I tried it once about 15 years ago.  I bought the little matching pajamas top and bottoms with big lady bug slippers, so cute for my Kindergartners.  That was the last time I ever did that.

You know, there’s a reason that pajamas are comfy for adults and that’s because we don’t have to wear all the undergarments with them.  At school, I might as well be wearing what I usually wear since I’m pretty sure my administration might frown upon not wearing undergarments under the pj’s.  One little first grade boy shared with me that he didn’t wear pajamas today because all he does at home is just take off his shirt and pants and sleep in his underwear (the final portion of this tale whispered so nobody could hear him) and he didn’t think he should do that at school.

And can we talk slippers?  They’re not appropriate to play outside for recess, they slide on linoleum floors and they’re just really distracting.  Like the boy with the wolf slippers with the claws?  He and several boys around him had a grand old time playing with them instead of listening to directions today.  No, it’s not distracting.

As adults, we are under the mistaken impression that if we just reveal to the students that we are aware of the potential distraction of the bedtime attire and we know they’ll do their best despite this potential distraction and all will be well.  It’s a lot like that definition of insanity – doing the same thing over and over again but hoping for different results.  Look, some of them don’t behave in jeans and t-shirts, and we think wearing pajamas is not going to be a problem?  Just because we say it doesn’t mean they’re going to behave the way we think they should and honestly, we’re not helping them by allowing them to wear them in the first place.

It’s not like casual Friday for the adults.  I can still do my job while wearing jeans and a t-shirt.  Today I saw a little girl who had taken her robe, in a very creative way and turned it into some kind of couture cape to drape behind her pj’s.  Something like Amal Clooney wore to the Met Gala this year.  (Look it up – you’ll see what I mean).  Really creative but my mind goes to things like, what is it picking up from the cafeteria and bathroom floors?

Of course, pajamas make it easier for us to see the real child or lack of in all of them.  Like the 5th grader who wouldn’t be caught dead in pj’s outside of his bedroom to the girl who wore a complete, zip up the front with ears on top the hood animal suit of some kind.  Those are the ones where you realize, they’re still little kids, still having fun being a kid and not being afraid to share what they like, no matter how silly.  It’s actually a bit refreshing.  And yet still distracting.

I will have to admit, however, that this morning at our end of year doughnut and juice extravaganza for my choir kids, they were pretty cute.  Sitting on the floor, munching on doughnut holes and giggling at Alvin and Chipmunks on the screen – in their pajamas.

 

 

My back was killing me yesterday, upper and lower, one of those things that no matter what position I was in, sitting or standing, it hurt.  I was trying to figure out what I had done for it to hurt so much.  Sure, I was actually teaching this week instead of sitting at my desk and watching someone else do it, but I’m not in THAT bad of shape.  I hadn’t needed to move any chairs or risers or large instruments, so that wasn’t it.  Maybe I was just stressed and a bit tense and, well, getting older I suppose.

I woke up this morning, still a bit sore but better.  Same old stuff, meeting, teaching, lunch duty, lunch. Then Kindergarten came in.  After reviewing the school song, we began a poem called “Froggies”, the purpose being that we would recite it while playing a beanbag game on the steady beat.  Sounds like fun, right?

Have you ever played toss with a six year old?  We first worked on just tossing underhanded and I told them I would aim for their hands and they should aim for mine. So far so good.  We did a practice run around the circle just to make sure everyone understood what “underhand” meant.  I was informed by a young lady that indeed, the PE teacher had been working on it with them as well.  Then we began playing the game.

You know, little kids get excited when they play games, especially when there’s the possibility that you’ll get “out”.  The closer we got to “unless, they land, on YOU!”, the more excited they  became, jumping up and down and squealing as little ones tend to do.  My underhand tosses were of course, perfect (ha), however,their excited,slightly out of control tosses were, well – challenging to catch.  I felt much like a batter swinging at balls from a crazed pitching machine, bending down, reaching to the right, reaching to the left, jumping up high as the beanbag flew over my head, getting hit in the chest, face and everywhere else.  This game was supposed to get the kids moving and I was the one doing all the work.  It then dawned on me why I was so sore as one particular stretch pulled all those same muscles that had bothered me yesterday.  When in the world had I gotten so old?

I used to be able to dance and play all day with these kids and now all it takes is a beanbag to bring me down?  A sad state of affairs for sure.  But the kids didn’t seem to notice and they laughed loudly when the beanbag would hit me or I would miss it or drop it because the wind up LOOKED like it was going one way and it was actually went the opposite direction.

Of course, you can’t just stop in the middle of the game, you have to go through the poem/game times the number of children you have in the room.  So, 20 times we said the poem, I tossed the beanbag eight times for every time we said the poem for each phrase, so 160 tosses and 160 near catches during each class.  Well, no wonder I was sore!!

That’s one thing that classroom teachers really don’t understand – the repetition that is teaching in an elementary specialist class.  I have 5 kindergarten classes per week.  That’s 800 tosses and 800 catches this week for one of six or seven activities during the class time and that’s only going through the game with each class once.  Beat that, Mr. PE teacher!  What I have to remember is that for these kids, there is only that one turn, those few tosses during the game that involve them and it’s always fun and exciting.  Much like an actor who does the same show 6 times a week, the elementary general music teacher must treat each class as though it’s their first time and so the energy and focus must remain the same.  It’s not about me, it’s about them.

So tonight, I’ll bring out the Tylenol and maybe the heating pad because I have one more day of wild tosses to catch.  Unless they ask to play it again next week….

Tears welled up as I read the Facebook post during lunch today.  I was just sitting down to begin eating and had several notifications, one of them from a former student who tagged me in a post.  She wrote about several teachers who had made a difference in her life and I was blown away by the things she said and remembered about our time together as teacher and student.

The beginning of my career was pretty lackluster.  I had subbed for a couple of years, unable to find a job.  I was finally given the opportunity to teach by a man who provided music teachers to parochial schools in the Cincinnati area.  My first job was a disaster and I was pretty certain that I has chosen the wrong career but then I was offered a second part time job at a wonderful little school where I was able to do some fun things with the kids.  Then came the best job ever at another wonderful little school in Loveland Ohio where I met this remarkable student.

I now had 800 students, some classes as large as 32 in a little meeting room in the basement of the school/church.  It was a nice sun filled room next to the cafeteria with doors to the outside where we occasionally had class.  The PTA and the parish were kind to provide instruments and books for us and we had a great time.  Each grade level was responsible for some little program during the year.  I remember one performance in particular where we were asked to sing for a childhood friend of Anne Frank who was coming to speak to the students.  I chose a song in one of our books, a Hebrew folk song and hoped it would be okay.  She teared up as she heard it and began to sing along.  It was a song from her childhood and she told me how much she enjoyed it.  I had many opportunities like this with my students, but the most fun I had was doing choir and theater.

It was in these smaller groups that I really got to know my kids.  The choir sang around the community and competed at several contests.  We were asked to sing for opening of  the National Catholic Educators Conference.  My girls worked hard and sang beautifully and we had a great time together.  However, it was putting together our plays that was the most fun.  Great little 3rd grade musicals during Christmas time and junior high musicals in the spring where these kids discovered talents they didn’t know they had.  Parents got involved creating wonderful costumes and we had a team of teachers who handled all of the peripheral needs like sets, make-up, programs, tickets, etc.  It was a ball and a great way for the school community to work together to provide musical entertainment for the parish community.  And it was a blast.

Just as I felt like I was really creating something there, it became necessary for my family to move and my heart was broken.  I went to visit about a year later when the principal was retiring and as I walked onto the playground during the school day, I was swarmed by literally classes of children, all wanting a hug.  It was a bittersweet day for sure.  It took about two years before I began to get over leaving that great little school with my wonderful colleagues and students.

Since then, as it tends to be when God has a bigger picture in mind for you than you do, life has become a great adventure in directions I would never have imagined had I stayed where I was.  However, this post, for a little while, took me back to a sweet time with a once in a lifetime group of kids who helped me grow as a teacher and as a person.  And while teachers, especially elementary teachers, may never know what kind of influence they had on their students, I was blessed today with the knowledge that maybe I made a real difference in the lives of those kids almost 20 years ago.  In a day and age where teachers can feel very unappreciated by those outside of the profession, this gave me an indescribable emotional boost.  So grateful.

 

 

 

For the last 37 years, my husband has referred to himself as a band coach.  This man, who has an undergraduate and a master’s degree in music education and who has taught literally thousands of young people, tends to introduce me as the real educator in the family, but this is not true.  And on this Teacher Appreciation Day, I would like to introduce you to the REAL music educator in the family.

This is a guy who decided at a very early age that he wanted to be a band director and from that point on, all of his energies were pointed in that direction.  A lifelong learner, he has always looked for opportunities to work with other music educators of any level of experience to see what he could pick up.  His ego was never too big to invite someone in to critique what he was doing with his kids and he applied things that he learned and has passed those things on to the next generations.

While going to conferences can be a bit of a social thing, he has always made it a point to find sessions and concerts to go to to learn more about his craft.  He has attended and participated in workshops with some of the finest wind conductors in the country. Even at his level of experience, he is still doing things like participating in webinars to learn something new and different, all of which he takes to his students.  Believe it or not, he has just recently begun to submit sessions of his own for conferences, mainly because he doesn’t believe he has a lot to contribute.  But as amazing as it is that he still works to improve his teaching, the greatest thing he does is to build relationships with young people.

He is still in contact with students he taught during his first year out of college and if he runs into you somewhere, chances are he’ll remember your name and the instrument you play. Even if it’s something like a summer camp, he’ll remember what school you went to.  He makes it a point to get to know kids, finding out about their families, and what they like to do.  He has no problem learning all the latest trends and fads so that he can communicate with them and somehow they never treat him like some old person trying to be cool : )  He joins them in games and dances and games of football during breaks in rehearsals, he does silly things for the big screen in the arena during basketball and teaches the kids the finer points of the game.  It does scare me a little bit when the tuba section picks him up and carries him around on occasion, but he’s having fun, so whatever, right?

He can be a father figure to the students as well, as some will confide in him about issues going on their lives or if they have questions about their future careers.  When away on pep band trips, the small group of students will literally follow him on some of his adventures or invite him to go out to dinner with them.  He has taken kids on trips who have never been on a plane or ever seen the ocean.  He has taken care of sick kids and admonished kids who try to get away with things, not realizing that he too may have tried some of these things before.

He brings wisdom and experience to his student supervision that brings a practicality to to what students learn in the classroom, away from the theoretical and peer teaching.  He shares strategies and different ways of looking at things that encourage those who hope to one day be a music educator as well.

And while not all of his students have made the choice to go into music, those who have have proven to be very successful.  Not that he would say he had anything to do with their success – he gives all the kudos to them and their hard work. However, I believe it says a great deal when those students who did NOT choose to go into music as a career choose to get their kids involved in band because their band experience was so important to them.  So now he has many band “grandkids” as a result of his influence.

This fall, as he begins yet another year of teaching, he will enthusiastically rise at the crack of dawn to stand in the seats of Memorial Stadium and teach marching band drill.  He will continue to mentor students, answer questions from former students, and recruit new students to participate in the magic that is band because, after all – he is a band coach and my favorite teacher on this Teacher Appreciation Day.