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.

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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.

Let's pay them $3 an hour per kid, and they work 8-4, with a half-hour lunch. After all, why should we pay them for 'planning' or to eat?

So that's 7.5 working hours a day, and an elementary teacher works with about 20 kids a day.

So $3 X 7.5 hours a day X 20 kids = $450.00.

And I'm sure not paying them for weekends (more 'planning') and I'm sure not paying them for summers off for 'training' or advanced 'education,' so really, we are only going to pay them for 180 days a year.

So $450.00 X 180 = $81,000.

And just to be nice, if you have a master's degree, I'll give you $4.00 an hour.

That means we are going to pay teachers/babysitters $81,000 to $108,000 a year and not a penny more!"

According to the Columbus Dispatch, the average teacher in Columbus makes $59,713. This figure is still $21,287 less than a babysitter would make for the amount of work s/he would be doing!! If you ask my opinion, I'll let you pay me as a babysitter and I'll educate your kids too! The moral of this story..."Don't walk up to an educator and say that it must be nice to have summers off."

I hope that each of you had a happy and safe summer!

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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.
2. Admit when you don’t know something. This is hard for many of us. We want to make the students think we have it all together and we know everything about our subject matter. This simply isn’t true because we are only human after all, we can’t always have photographic memory (I have photographic memory, I just ran out of film long ago).  If don’t admit you don’t know and try to fudge your way through, students will find out; there will always be a student who doesn’t believe you and looks it up himself. Rather, just admit that you’re not sure but tell them you’ll find out and make sure you do it! You’ll learn something you didn’t know and your students will be able to rely on you when they want to know something.
3. Ask for help from other teachers in the building. Let’s face it, it is your first year and there is much to do outside of planning for your lessons and teaching your classes. Asking for help is not a sign of weakness, but it is a sign of strength. It tells other teachers that you admit you don’t know it all and can’t do it all, but that you’re not afraid to ask for help when you need it. The other teachers in the building are your allies. The better of a relationship you create with them, the easier your time at that school will be.
4. Seek advice from your out-of-school colleagues. Whether you recognize it or not, the teachers you did your student-teaching with, your collegiate academic advisors and your buddies that you graduated with are all your colleagues. Talk to those people who have been in the field longer than you and seek advice in whatever situation you find yourself. They did it when they were in your shoes, and your students will call you when they begin to teach. Here again, seeking advice is a sign of strength because it means you are actively seeking ways to be better at what you do.

I know there is much more that I have learned, but these are just some simple things that apply to everyone. Just be confident in what you know, admit when you don’t know and seek help from others. Are there any other quick tips that you would include with these four?

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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.

To students, general music class is a required class that has no purpose outside of the classroom, but many don’t see the underlying life-application to the subject matter. Some students may have a small interest in music but don’t really care about the intricate details while some don’t care to learn anything about it. What these students don’t understand is that there is much more to learning about music than the superficial. Previously, I had stumbled across a PDF of a document stating why we (music teachers) teach music. It had many interesting concepts on there that while I knew it, I didn’t know how to put it into words. Today, I found the document on the PMEA website. While those reasons are solid, I cannot give those as an answer to those annoying questions of “why.” Those reasons are argued too easily and result in discussions off-topic, but there is one concept cannot be argued easily.

The answer I give the students is that while they may never need to know what a triad is, or the scientific reasons why sound works the way it does, we study music because it allows us to take something that is abstract and build structure around it and gain a certain mastery of it. Music is more than just notes on a page, it is more than just an outlet for creativity and expression, but it is a course in hard work and learning about something that is out of the ordinary. Students respond to this answer in a variety of ways, but the most common response is neither they, nor anyone in the class, asks that question again.

In life, we as adults have to do things we don’t like to do or haven't any interest. Some approach those things with reluctance, and some try their best. Sometimes the experiences we have only result in the knowledge that we have no interest in that area, but sometimes, the result is that we find something that we never knew about and become better because of it.

**Update: It has been one year since I was asked this question. It seems that the students didn't like the fact that I actually had an answer.

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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.

I made a database program (with a lot of help) to inventory the music and then began the process of reading the composition information to my friend, who typed it into the database. Once the information was in the computer, we assigned it a number and put it back into the filing cabinets. 536 files later and we were done with the concert band music but still had the jazz and marching music left. Several long 8-hour days later, we were done. As I stood staring at how nice the music library looked, I thought I heard a noise...I turned around and looming before me was the (cue scary music) instrument room. Oh boy...

Using a different database, I began to inventory the instruments (serial number, make, model, and condition) and put them back into storage. Those instruments that needed repair were set aside so I could take to the music store. When the instrument room was finished, I went and tackled the uniform room. I was busy for weeks just reorganizing what I had but it was well worth it.

Reorganizing can be a time-consuming process and it may get frustrating at times, but it is very much worth it. Since I took the time to do all that before any rehearsals began, I was able to find music, instruments, and uniforms very quickly to be distributed. I was able to keep track of what was going where or to whom it was going. The music library initially had two different systems going on (maybe the result of two previous directors?) numerically and then alphabetically, while the uniform and instrument storage rooms has no apparent organizational structure. Structure is different for every individual, but here is how I organized the different areas and why:

1. Music Library - I adopted a numerical filing system. Trying to keep things alphabetically can hypothetically work, but you'll be moving files from one cabinet to the next when you happen to get just a few more A's than the B's in the cabinet can handle. The idea of moving files around when I purchased new music wasn't very exciting. By using a numerical system, new music is filed with the next number and you never have to move files around. How do you find music if you're looking for a certain title? That's what the database is for! Information I would include in the database is Band (concert, jazz, marching, etc.), the assigned number, Title, Composer, Arranger, Publisher, Copyright, and Difficulty Level.
2. Uniforms - Once again, I used a numerical system for the same reasons. I could organize by size but the database inventory would be a lot harder to keep and what happens if a uniform gets moved two places down the rack accidentally? I organized each uniform part separately and gave each a number; the jackets, the pants, the sash, and the hats each had a number 1 - 59. In the database I included the Item (jacket, hat, etc.) the number, size, and condition. I also created a column for assignments when I handed them out to students. This made it easier to find the right uniform and size for the students and during my second year, they were able to try on their previous uniform to see if it still fit.
3. Instruments - I didn't structure these numerically or anything of the sort, but I did take an inventory of the Serial Number, Make, Model, and condition of each instrument. When I passed them out to the students, I also had a checkout form that the students and parents had to sign that contained all this information for record purposes.

Everyone is different and there is no right or wrong way to organize your music and equipment, so make sure you organize according to your own preferences. Even though it may get frustrating and you want to just leave it for later DON'T. You will never have as much time as you have during the summer before your band rehearsals begin; just get it done, you'll thank yourself later!

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