The bright side...

So that Friday ended up being not as bad (although to be sure, I did end up with a fair amount of alcohol)  I took a deep breath and realized that I was allowing myself to see the worst in the situation - and ultimately the worst in people.  I mean granted, I do have a few genuine attitude problems that I may not be able to fix, but not as many as I thought.  Or at least - I wasn't allowing myself to see kids as multidimensional entities capable of being more than just a single attitude or behavior.  One of my shortcomings.

So I looked around my classroom each period and refocused my perspective around the kids who were trying their best - who were trying to give me the leadership I wanted, and who are and have been loyal and dedicated.  Even the jazz kids who were frustrating me - there were redeeming qualities I was overlooking.

And I felt much better.

Just one day this week.....

..... I would like to come home not wanting alcohol.  Given that tomorrow is the last day, and I already know how that is going to go..... I do not have high hopes.

What do you do when it's your jazz band giving you the blues?.....

There's a truth about high school jazz bands that took me years to recognize:  They're cliques.  All of the other performing groups in the music program are communities, with people constantly coming and going, and there's always room for new students.  But jazz bands?  They're one on a part.  Once you fill up the slots, you *don't* take more players, because jazz groups are supposed to operate on a distilled sound.  Too much of any one thing and you lose the clarity.  Once you lose clarity, you might as well stop pretending that you can teach music.  But see, the problem is that once you get a half-way decent kid in the group, they can lock a position up for years.  When you have a number of people who have been doing that for half of their high school careers (or more) they can get pretty tight with each other.  Ordinarily that's a good thing.  Except when it's not.
My jazz group seems to teeter on the edge of mutiny every now and then.  (I feel a 'now' creeping up on me again.)  It usually happens when the members get comfortable and complacent, and start to resent being pushed to do basic things like practice, show up on time or wear the right clothes to gigs.  In a small program like mine, some of them feel secure in the knowledge that they're the best (instrument) player in the school, if not the only (instrument) player in the school.  If there was a line of kids willing to give each member some competition on (instrument) things would be different.  Alas, such a plethora of players to chose from exists only in my dreams.
A lot of that is garden variety high school student attitude - which is something I am not unfamiliar with.  Truth be told, I even have a considerable tolerance for it.  But what gets under my skin is the way some of them don't seem to care an inch beyond their clique.  They want to use the music room as their hang out spot, but they don't want to help me take care of it.  They don't really feel an urgency to maintain a sense of professionalism, during the rehearsals or on gigs.  They want to sound amazing, but they don't want to work for it.  Oh... and I'm a big dolt who doesn't know what I'm talking about half the time.  Never mind that the only reason they sound polished is because I nag the shit out of them - which I hate doing.
Most of the problem is graduating this year.  Maybe I should just relax and spoon feed them everything and let them believe that it's all them.  Here's hoping that the next generation will be better.

This month just keeps getting better....

Big concert tonight.  Choir and orchestra.  Had dress rehearsal just now. Choir sounds great.  Orchestra sounds okay.  There are places where the orchestra falls apart.  Hiring last minute ringers to cover.
Choir Teacher Buzz isn't laying into me, but it's probably coming.  No getting around it - some of the movements just weren't prepared.  The words "I didn't know it was that bad" sound really wrong coming out of my mouth.  But that's how it kind of felt.  I did run-throughs of the work, and there were parts that were a bit shaky, but my memory was that it was holding together.  We get to today's rehearsal and it just tanks.  Badly.  Like they were reading it for the first time.  Makes me wonder if he'll want to do a joint piece with me ever again.  Fuck.

A Painful Cut

Once upon a time two men from a successful local business group came to NRHS to offer financial assistance to Buzz the choir teacher, and Woody the band teacher.  They wanted to know what Woody and Buzz would do with the money.  "Shoot for the moon!" they said.   Proposals were written.  Meetings were attended.  Things looked very promising.  But in the end, Buzz was funded, and Woody wasn't.
Woody is very sad.  It's not that Woody feels as if he deserves the money.  Woody feels like he had an opportunity to do something amazing for his students, and failed to give a clear vision of what he would do.  Woody doesn't know how to write proposals.  Woody doesn't know how to talk to businessmen - all bottom lines, short term goals, long term goals and timetables.  These are things that Buzz is much better at doing, and Woody can't shake the feeling that had he consulted people who were better at that kind of thing, things may have been different.
Woody is genuinely happy for Buzz, and Buzz is sympathetic towards Woody - to the point of suggesting to redirect existing funding towards Woody so that Woody can acquire *some* of the things he was hoping for.  It was very generous, and Woody appreciates the gesture, as well as the concern.
It's not just the lost opportunity.  It's not just the hit to the ego.  Woody is trying to face down the nagging notion that the biggest obstacle holding back the NRHS Instrumental Music Dept. Is Woody.

Woody is tired now and wants to take a nap.

The Bending Tree

"My English teacher doesn't teach" the student says "She gives us the handout and expects us to figure it out on our own."

It's a complaint I've heard in passing before.  A few times a year.  Sometimes from some of my most academically capable students.  I used to take it at face value, especially when said complaint applied to a teacher that I was not too familiar with.  I never added to those conversations (I was usually eavesdropping to be honest) but I would store those conversations away.

This year I'm teaching AP Music Theory for the first time in several years - an actual sit-down-open-your-book-and-do-the-problems-on-page-twenty kind of class.  Whatever I may have thought or said about said colleagues as a result of those statements... I take it back.  I know why you all refuse to 'teach'  Well, it's not that you refuse to teach... it's that you know damn well that even the brightest adolescents would rather the tree bend down and deliver the fruits of wisdom, rather than having to climb the branches and retrieve it themselves.  It's because you know that if you lecture on what's in the book, they won't read the book.  At all.  They'll continue to rely on you for every scrap of knowledge that goes into their head.  They won't work for it.  At all.  Oh they'll do what you tell them, but you have to tell them *everything*. I have a 7 year old at home who sometimes folds his arms at the dinner table and expects to be spoon-fed.  This feels exactly the same.

It's like teaching a cooking class and trying to teach them how to poach eggs, but first you have to specifically tell them to go to the refrigerator, pull the handle, locate the eggs within, retrieve them....  If you are lucky in twenty minutes you'll get to the boiling water.

Sigh.

I don't know why I'm taking this as some kind of revelation - band kids will forget how to read music if you don't demand that they sight read for you now and then.  They won't learn any of their parts unless someone sings it for them first,  or they'll listen to the kid next to them.  It's the same process  in a different format.


But you know this.  Everyone knows this.  This is why we're hearing the word 'rigor' thrown around.  Here's the funny thing though - I actually do have some hard working, dedicated kids who will read ahead in the book, take notes and all that.  And for being a 'high performance' school, it seems to me that the percentage of genuinely motivated students that we have is... probably about the same as other places.  I don't know that we have a culture of excellence.  We certainly have a culture of expectations of results... call it entitlement if you will.  You can see plenty of 'high achieving kids' who know how to work the system and get the grades they want without having to commit to the kind of self-reliance that they're supposed to be developing.  They also get accepted to schools that they are not prepared to succeed in.  And they'll blame us because we threw up our hands and did exactly what they wanted us to.

This year I was suckered into being the bending tree... next year.  I don't know, I certainly don't want to be 'the teacher who doesn't teach' - but I have to make sure they get their asses up into the branches.

The Uncomfortable Stretch

I don't get many 'firsts' these days.  A couple days ago I had one - an actual professional gig playing my instrument.  At first I didn't think anything of it, but a day or two before the event I got my hands on the music and went into a panic.  The truth is  that I don't quite have professional chops - more like really strong community band of chops.  I'm not a complete hack - I've got top notch tone and phrasing, which makes me a good conductor to boot.  But complex rhythms and high register stuff knock me around, and this gig had plenty of both.  The other thing about this gig was that I was playing alto sax, which means that not only were my parts more complex, they tended to be exposed.  As in solo. 
The guy that recruited me was a mentor/friend, and I've done work for him before.  Even some paid stuff.  But it was far more relaxed - playing with other teachers and students.  Nothing like the heavyweight crowd that I found myself sitting next to a couple nights ago.  It turns out that I knew a lot of the people in the orchestra - some of them *very* good friends.  I'm not sure if their presence eased embarrassment over my skills better or made it worse.  I was also worried that if I had made any major flubs, I would end up causing trouble for the contractor.  That's how the business goes.
How did I do?  I survived. I didn't do as well as I would have liked, but not as bad as the worst case scenario. All my solo stuff  came off fine (thank God)  The funny thing is that the first performance went well enough that I was almost too relaxed for the second, and ended up making a few more mistakes.  Nothing catastrophic though.  I was very aware, however, that there were two people in the room who I was certain heard every flub I made: the conductor, and the veteran pit player sitting next to me.  They were nice, neither said anything, although I wouldn't expect to be getting any calls from either of them.
The victory of the night, however, was that I made it through - and like the well worn educational euphemism says:  You gain nothing by staying in your comfort zone.  And while I am still a bit embarrassed at the mistakes I made, I came away motivated to practice and play more.  That and I made $300.

I also have a list of observations to take back to my students regarding this gig:

* NO ONE showed up late - not even the student performers.

* NO ONE showed up with only a partially complete concert outfit.

* We had ONE rehearsal.  Half the stuff I was playing, I was sight-reading.  Some of the stuff didn't get rehearsed at all.  I was one of the few people that the conductor had to stop and work with, and I was the ONLY one that he had to explain a rhythm to. (Not necessary, actually, but I was nervous)

* I can't say that there were no personal electronics, however it was drastically minimized in comparison with what you would get in a high school setting. No more than five people in a group of 30 had their phones out at any time.

* There was NO noodling (showing off) among the players on stage.  The brass warmed up off stage in the dressing room.  The strings and woodwinds tuned quietly.  The first real noise we heard was the tuning note - and then off we went on the charts.