One thing that always irritates me is when people say “Must be nice to have summers off.” First off, it’s not our fault that our schedule works that way. If you want summers off, become a teacher!! Second, I like to compare teaching to a “regular job” that doesn’t involve summers off. I don’t know how many clients the average person deals with on one day or how much time is spent with these clients over the course of a year. I would be willing, however, to match up my hours spent working with my “clients” up against any non-teacher. In order to give you an idea of what I mean I’m going to throw a few numbers at you.

I have eight periods in the day where I have students in my classroom. I average around 15 students in my classroom for eight periods a day. That’s 15 clients for 8 - 42 minute periods (336 minutes in total). For a little over five ½ hours a day I deal with 120 clients at the same time! How many businesses deal with multiple clients at the same time and trying to meet their individual needs? Not too many I would argue although I’m sure there are some. If I would teach each individual separately based on what I already do, over the course of the year I would be teaching for 736 days. There are only 365 days in a normal year. I understand the math is weird and that it may not be 100% accurate, but my point it that, yes, we get summers off, but non-teachers don’t have to deal with 15-20 energetic and moody kids for the whole work day minus a lunch break.

I know that many people don’t really mean anything by saying “it must be nice….” most people probably don’t even think about it because the truly wish they had summers off too. We live in two different work worlds and it’s a lot harder for a non-teacher to understand the life of a teacher than it is for a teacher to understand the life of a non-teacher. Maybe I’m wrong…it’s been known to happen…what do you think????

It’s about 3:36 pm on the final day of school. Most teachers are heading home knowing that they only have one more 1/2 day of school to finish up everything and call it a year. Many will go home and take on second jobs: painting, landscaping, etc. and many will go on vacation. Most won’t have to return until the end of August when teacher in-service days come back but not many stay away the whole summer. These teachers will be coming in and getting classrooms ready for the next school year, creating lesson plans and researching new and better ways to present material to their students in exciting ways.

What’s it like having summer’s off? It’s exciting, relaxing, enjoyable…and boring. Things are so crazy during the school year that teachers are trapped in a whirlwind of activity from which they cannot escape until that final bell rings in June. Most teachers I know take a couple weeks entirely off where they don’t do anything related to school, but then they start at least thinking about the next school year. We need some time to relax, distress, and get refreshed. After that happens many are ready to go for another year again.

If this is your first summer break, enjoy it. Relax, but reflect on your experiences thus far. Discover some things that you can do improve yourself and try to come up with a plan to succeed in doing so. Don’t worry too much about what happened, it was your first year. Just pick yourself up and gear up for another school year. Happy summer!!!

It’s the final week of school…finally. Kids are mentally checked out, teachers are burnt out, and everyone just wants the end of the week to come. Does this sound familiar? I’m experiencing it on all levels and I have to admit that it’s frustrating. As a band director, I don’t have the luxury of showing videos or movies to my classes the final week of school since we have a parade on the second to last day. We have to continue practicing our music and preparing for the parade. My students come in to class not wanting to do anything (since they haven’t been in any other class) and it’s like pulling teeth to get anything accomplished. If you find yourself in this situation you may, like me, find yourself short-tempered and wishing for the end of the year to come. There is no easy solution to this problem but I would like to share with you what I do with my classes.

I tell my kids the truth (I can just hear the hypothetical air getting sucked out of this blog page) and let them know that I’m excited for the end of the school year too! It actually comes as a shock to some students that teachers want the time off too and look forward to summer break. I tell them that I’m human and don’t want to anything sometimes, but despite feeling like that, we still have to do some work. I let them know what we are working on that day, I purposely plan less than the time we have, and I put it in their hands.

“This is what we need to accomplish today. If it takes us the whole time to do it, then we play the whole period. If you can put it together playing the correct notes, rhythms and being musically expressive, we will be able to end soon.”

Now the ball is in their court. Sometimes we do end up taking the whole period, but more often than not we get done a little early and so the students not only get some time to think about summer, but they also feel accomplishment knowing that they had a good, productive rehearsal. I know it may not be the best solution, but it seems to work well for my students. What other thoughts/ideas/methods do you have to help overcome the “End of School”-itis??

The great thing about being a teacher is that when the summer months roll around I can be soaking up the sun and enjoying some time to myself. Now I can already hear what you’re saying if you’re not a teacher (if you are you are probably not even going to read this until the fall since you’re enjoying your break already) “Must be nice to have the summers off.” I hear this constantly and it does get annoying after a while. I’d like to throw this little bit of information out. Some people think that we teachers should get paid for just babysitting and guess what…I’m okay with that! I found this post in the Omaha Newsstand:

“Since school teachers are really just glorified babysitters, let’s just pay teachers the going rate for babysitting.

Read the rest…

As a first-year teacher I was very nervous about entering the classroom on my own. Up to this point I had always been observed by other teachers and supervisors. I was never allowed to be teaching on my own without the presence of at least one of these individuals, but now it was just me. There were many mistakes I made but there were many successes as well, here is some advice that I would give to you beginning teachers, no matter what your subject area is:

1. Be confident in what you’ve learned. You have spent countless hours studying, attending class, taking tests (Praxis II anyone?). You have done the time and you know a lot. Just trust what information your brain has stored. No matter what you think you do or do not remember, you can be sure that you know more about your subject than the top student in the class.

   Read the rest…

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Here is an article I wrote a year ago for another blog. I thought I’d pull it out again because it was something I struggled with when I first starting teaching…

As a music teacher, I am often bombarded with questions regarding the purpose of general music often to the tune of “when am I ever going to use this in life; I don’t want to be a musician?” At first, I didn’t know how to answer that question appropriately. Sure, I had heard it asked about other subjects before but as a music lover, it had never crossed my mind that someone would think the same thing about my precious subject. So in a pinch, my usual response was either to ignore them or to create some dumb answer regarding how they need it to graduate. It wasn’t until recently that I figured out a good way to answer them.

Read the rest…

Taking a new job can be overwhelming from the start, but nothing is more overwhelming than walking into an unorganized mess. When I had taken the grand tour during my interview, I noticed that the band room needed some major reorganization and so one of the first things I did when I was hired was to grab a friend of mine and head up for some major house cleaning: the first stop was the music library. Just to give you an idea of what I was working with, the music library consists of a small 9′ x 6’ room that holds seven filing cabinets that are full of music. At this point, the tops of the filing cabinets were nowhere to be seen and there were piles of miscellaneous music that was left lying around. The music folder racks for the students were full of music, and, throughout the room, music was haphazardly tossed. So I did what any normal person would do and I pulled EVERYTHING out of the room and began sorting it.

Read the rest…

Funding is a big issue as a first year teacher and can often be an intimidating process. When I first walked into my first teaching job, I was thrown a budget analysis form that I had to fill out the following items: purpose of the budget proposal, what expenses I was going to have, what fund-raising I would be doing, and what my current account already had in it. I just stared at this proposal wondering what I was really supposed to do with it and so I set it aside. I had no idea what I wanted to do for fund-raising, let alone knowing how much things would cost or what kind of money the fund-raisers would make! As I was getting things organized around the band room, I discovered some old budget forms and decided to use them as templates. In order to better prepare you for such an event here are some suggestions that I have for getting through more gracefully than I did.

Read the rest…

Teaching is an interesting profession. We are responsible for the education and development of our students; we see them every day from the hours of 7:30 am until 2:30 pm or later, while trying to maintain discipline and fostering a learning environment. What prepares us for such an undertaking? Many think that college prepares us for teaching, and it does to some degree, but a lot of it is trial and error. During my first year of teaching, I walked into my new office with several crates full of textbooks and notebooks full of information on various aspects of being a music teacher. I had high expectations and lofty goals. I created a checklist of things I needed to accomplish before marching band season began.

Armed with my clipboard and checklist I marched towards the goals set forth. I met secretaries, administrators, janitors, coaches, the athletic director; I reorganized the music library, inventoried the marching band uniforms and instruments, selected the music for the marching show, compiled a list of band students, sent out letters and called a seniors-only meeting to get a feel for the traditions of the program…and then it happened. The first day of summer band rehearsals had finally arrived and in walked my…13 students?!?! Talk about a shock to the system! I knew when I accepted the job that it was a small program, but I was expecting around 20 students. Now it may not seem like a big difference but when a group is that small to begin with, a drop of seven musicians is a big deal. It was then I realized that not everything I was planning was going to happen this year.

It has been two years later and my high school band currently has six students. They are the hardest working students I have ever met and strive to excel on their individual parts and despite the small high school numbers, the future of this program looks bright. Four of the six students are freshman; I have two eighth graders, five seventh graders, 14 sixth graders and nine 5th graders! If things continue to work as they currently are, we will have around 20 students in marching band at two more years and around 30 students at three more years! Things never work as quite as we expect, but we usually turn out for the better because of it!

Summer is here and I’ve been doing a lot of landscaping work and thinking about everything that needs to be done before the beginning of the school year. I was going through my old e-mails and I found this little gem. Since football season is approaching and NCLB is a pretty big issue in the educational realm I thought it would be appropriate:

This is football version of what is going on in education right now. For all educators in and out of the education system:

1. All teams must make the state playoffs and all MUST win the championship If a team does not win the championship, they will be on probation until they are the champions, and coaches will be held accountable. If after two years they have not won the championship their footballs and equipment will be taken away UNTIL they do win the championship.
2. All kids will be expected to have the same football skills at the same time, even if they do not have the same conditions or opportunities to practice on their own. NO exceptions will be made for lack of interest in football, a desire to perform athletically, or genetic abilities or disabilities of themselves or their parents. ALL KIDS WILL PLAY FOOTBALL AT A PROFICIENT LEVEL!
3. Talented players will be asked to workout on their own, without instruction. This is because the coaches will be using all their instructional time with the athletes who aren’t interested in football, have limited athletic ability or whose parents don’t like football.
4. Games will be played year round, but statistics will only be kept in the 4th, 8th, and 11th game. This will create a New Age of Sports where every school is expected to have the same level of talent and all teams will reach the same minimum goals. If no child gets ahead, then no child gets left behind. If parents do not like this new law, they are encouraged to vote for vouchers and support private schools that can screen out the non-athletes and prevent their children from having to go to school with bad football players.