Year 10: Week 23 – The Independent Study

She moves through the band room as the only girl in class.

It wasn’t always this way. In 6th grade and 7th grade there were other girls in the band class. The attrition that happened through the years left her as the only girl  in the 8th grade band.

There has always been a gender issue in my band classes. Our students elect to take band or choir, and because of many factors, some known and some I have yet to figure out, more boys join band than girls.

This is an issue that I continue to address in different ways. When I show examples of musicians playing instruments, I am conscientious of the gender identity of the musicians. I have helped create a women in music program that includes an assembly that features women musicians and classroom visits. I’m also very careful to choose repertoire that is composed by women, which in the band world is a challenge. Yes, there are great band music written by women but the vast majority of music is written by men.

After winter break in 8th grade band, we had an elective unit. During this time we allowed students to choose, some with my guidance, from a selection of musical activities. The choices included chamber music, solo work, and Garage Band on the iPads. When I introduce this unit, I mentioned that if someone had an idea of something that they really wanted to do, we could talk and do personalized independent study during this unit.

She asked me to do an independent study. Her plan was to spend this time writing a song and accompany herself on the ukulele. She had always been someone in the class who worked well independently so I so no reason to not let her work on a project of her own design.

During the work time in class, I checked in on her. She was working hard, so I decided to give her space to work. We had some conversations about chords and the form of her song but I didn’t really dive into the subject of her song.

When she volunteered to share her song in class today I felt nervous. I told her that she could share from her chair if she wanted to but she opted to come up in front of the class and perform from the conductor’s podium.

She introduced this song as being about one of her best friends that recently passed away. Then she started playing a simple strumming pattern through on a chord progression, and sang this beautiful song about this friend that was no longer with her.

I’ve seen hundreds of performances in my life and this was one the best. It was honest, it was powerful, and it was beautiful. The song expressed venerability, longing, and love. This girl performed in front of an all male audience, and I was proud of that audience for being respectful and giving her space to be honored and to be valued as an artist

Sometimes when you give students space, like with this girl, they will impress you with artistry beyond your imagination. 

Parenthood: Week 359 – Ollie's Presidental Endorsement

Ollie's pick for the President of The United States is Diana.

I have told Ollie that this is indeed a great choice.

Ollie’s awareness of politics has grown over the past couple years. He knows who trump is, and he also knows that he is scared, and sad, which is why he is so mean. Every once in a while, he will confirm his knowledge and ask me why trump is so sad. I will tell him about why trump is lonely, how he doesn’t have any friends and how he tries to interact with people by being mean because he doesn’t know how else to be. Ollie usually confirms “he is sad he is mean to people.”

I loved that in Ollie’s younger years I could show him videos of President Obama I knew this President would give him a great model of dignity, intelligence, and empathy.

I have never let Ollie watch footage of trump speaking because more often than not he uses language that is inappropriate for Ollie to hear. He often says things that are sexist, and insulting, without warning. I don’t let my children watch professional wrestling with me, or R-rated film, and I don’t let my children watch trump speak.  It's irresponsible for me as a parent to do so.

When I was a child, the person I knew the most as President was Ronald Reagan. I heard him give speeches and I knew him generally as a grandfatherly nice guy. He was the person that I first conceived of as being “presidential.” As a child I was completely unaware of his disastrous economic policies, his homophobic response to the AIDs crisis, and the racist coded language that was sprinkled throughout his speeches.

Knowing all of this now when I see footage of him, I get why I was allowed to see footage of him talking as child at home and at school. The lack of explicit rudeness, derogatory language, and generally acting like a reasonable human being in public made him okay for children to see.

There are so many things that are horrible about this current president and his administration, and the fact that I cannot in good conscious show one of his speeches at school to my students or my children because of very real concerns of hate speech has robbed American children of well, an actual president.  Let that sink in for a second.  Our current president regularly uses language that inappropriate for children to hear. 

When I think about which candidate on the Democratic side I’m supporting in the primary, one of the things that I’m considering is how this will affect my sons.

I want a President that can inspire my child to a positive citizen who fights for social justice. I want a President who speaks with language that inspires and I am proud to have my son replicate. And I want a President that my son can look up, that we all can be proud to call our President.

Ollie's wants Diana as President but she's not going to be on the ballot.  So instead I'll vote for the candidate who is the closet to Diana, Senator Warren. 

Senator Warren and Diana have faced people their entire lives who think less of them because of their gender, however have never given up and become complacent.  They both see the best in all of us while also having a keen understanding of systems of oppression and intersectionality.  Better than any other candidate, Warren and Diana understand that creating affordable child care and universal preschool will positivity effect every single facet of our society. 

Ollie knows trump as the President and has no problem imagining Diana in that role.  So take a second and just imagine Senator Warren as the President...or Diana.  Think of how great that would be. 

I would be the best First Man.  Weekly concerts...Bruce, Yola, Lin Manuel, Brandi all on the same stage.

Senator Warren - The Leader I Want To Be

I’ve always wanted to be a leader.

My favorite Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle was Leonardo, because he was the leader. He gave the order, and he knew what was going on. I figured that if I could become leader in some way it would make me feel better about myself. Through music I found a way to lead, as a concert master in middle school and high school orchestra. It felt good to have a title, and a position, but I didn’t really understand how to wield this power.

One of my jobs as concert master was to set the bowings for the rest of the violins. Instead of taking this opportunity to help others, I would arrogantly change the bowings on the fly. It felt good to be better than others and to have a way that I could feel power, because in most other measures of power in our society, through friend groups, through success as sports, I had no power.

In high school, the seeds of leadership as a position of service were planted in my mind through my fascination of Gandhi. This combined with the stories of the oppressed through the voices of John Steinbeck, and Maya Angelou helped me begin to see that there was injustice that needed to be addressed.

Over the years, I continued to be a leader in my college fraternity, as a conductor, as a teacher, and now as a department chair. Each position, each step on this journey, I begin to see the flaws in our traditional ideas of leadership.

We think of our leaders as needing to be the “best” at something, the kind of person who can consolidate power by proving strength through acts of personal achievement. Leaders are supposed to be flawless. And leaders are supposed men, older, white, and taller than me.

I came to realize that I can’t be that kind of leader, and now I know that now this is actually a good thing. Every leader I’ve met who has broken the mold, who has pushed against our traditional paradigms of leaderships has slowly created a different model for leadership in my mind.

A leader is not the “best” at a certain skill. They see the best in others. They are wise for being open about what they do not know, and seek to learn to from others. These leaders create power by empowering others and through the devotion of those they have served create a place where they can continue help others fulfill their potential. Leaders apologize, see flaws as areas to grow. And leaders can look like all of us.

Senator Elizabeth Warren is this leader, and is the most qualified candidate to defeat the current occupant of the White House, and help our country grow through this current moment of tension and strife into a greater America.

Yes, there are policies of hers that I like but my support of Senator Warren is about what those policies and her actions prove about her leadership. It’s about bringing a leader into power who sees the flaws in all of us, but believes that we can do better. It’s about being a leader who speaks the truth, not through anger but as a way to force us to see things more clearly. It’s about changing who we see as leaders so that we can better see the strength in those who have so much to give. but are do not get a seat at a table because they don’t look like leaders of the past.

It's about a leader who truly sees all of us as being human and deserving of dignity and respect. 

I was drawn in watching her holding bankers accountable, inspired when she persisted and would not stop talking, and made hopeful through her campaign that we will see our way to bring back dignity, true strength, kindness, and empathy to the White House.



I want to be a leader like Senator Warren, and I'm looking forward to be led by President Warren. 

Parenthood: Week 358 – Chess

Earlier this afternoon, I was sitting on the floor playing chess with Ollie. This was the only the second time we had played, and he was catching on really quickly. The first time we played I had to walk him through almost every move.  This game, I was impressed to see that he remembered how all the pieces moved and only need a couple reminders.
At one point he successfully cornered my bishop. He had strategically placed two other pieces near it, and the only way for the bishop to get out would lead to his immediate take down by one of Ollie’s pawn. In that moment I looked up at Ollie and saw him thinking about the next move and I was suddenly stunned with a mind-blowing realization. I was playing chess with my son.

This person sitting across from my strategically playing one of the complicated and intricate board game was my son. This was the same person who once upon a time needed help with everything just to survive. Only a couple short years ago, Ollie couldn’t stand. He couldn’t talk. He needed help be fed, dressed, and to go to the bathroom. He used to not fully understand that his hand was connected to his body. There was a time when numbers meant nothing to Ollie, and putting a square piece into a shape sorter was far too difficult for him. Now this person can read, can compute, and can play chess.

As Tanya Tucker sings, “The days are long but the years are lightning.” It’s easy to forget how much our children grown up and changed in such a small amount of time. One of the wonderful things about having multiple children is that the younger children are a constant reminder how long the older children have come.

So much of our focus as parents are on the future, the next milestone. As soon as a baby is born, we are thinking about when the baby is going to roll over, and as soon as the baby rolls over we are looking ahead to crawling. We encourage our children to move past babbling into talking, and make sure that new toys and books present new challenges. This is not a bad thing at all. One of the most important parts of parenting is helping our children grow and creating an environment that they can move on to the next stage of their lives with confidence.

In the same way I take for granted all that is wonderful in our lives in our desire for more, sometimes I forget to appreciate how far my children have grown. Giving the space for reflection and loving who we are, more than we are focusing on who we are to become brings our lives center, meaning, and joy.

With babies and toddlers the milestones feel more concrete. Walking, and talking are very noticeable and notable. The slow but powerful development of reading skills in first grade doesn’t not appear as dramatic as taking first steps, however they are also meaningful and should be celebrated.

Diana is really good at this. She’s great at pointing out to Ollie places where he has grown that me and Ollie both have overlooked. In the daily grind, it’s easy to move through live doing what’s ahead and not take a moment to think of our journey.

We can celebrate our past, and we can look forward to our future. Being reflective does not mean that we are complacent. Telling a child that they have accomplished great things is essential in helping children to learn to love themselves. Children can never hear too much that their journey is valued, that we are proud and who they are right now, and that we love them.

I’m really excited to see the joy that Ollie gets out of chess. I am so proud to be part of the journey that has led to his intellectual ability to play this game. As I guided him into a checkmate, cornering my king, I told myself to save this moment. One day, Ollie will beat me without my help, and I will need to remind him of this second game that we played, the first board game we ever played, and the first time as a baby I truly felt his eyes focus on mine and gaze into my eyes with wonder.

Year 10: Week 22 – The Weirdness Of January

I was back this week after being out last week with the flu. I mistakenly came in one day thinking I was better…and I wasn’t. We have a week off next week. Instead of one day for President’s day we get a week. This creates an interesting span of time between Winter Break and next week, which we call Mid-Winter break. With conferences, Martin Luther King Jr. Day, and me taking a week off because of my paternity week, it was well, a very weird chunk of time. When we get back from this upcoming break, it’s our push to prepare for the concerts after Spring Break.  We need to be close to ready to go after Spring Break as performances come up quickly.  There's a lot to do.

I’ve had some nice moments with my students this year, and like the other years I’ve have time away for paternity leave, things feel a little disconnected. Moving through the stream of a year with a group of students is a great bonding experience. You experience the ups and down through the rhythm of the year, and it’s quite an experience. When you are away from a chunk of time, the students continue to move through the year without you, and you can’t help but feel the loss of the pieces that you weren’t there for.
 
This is one of those things that I knew was going to happen, and that I tried to mentally prepare for, but at the same time, it is still difficult. It feels like being a visitor in your own classroom, and trying to hold onto something but not quite being able to get a good grasp of what you are trying to hold.

Another part of this is also all the other stuff I have going on in my life. I have a little one at home and even though he’s my third baby. It is still a lot of time, energy, and emotional work to be partner in taking care of him with my wife. It’s easy to forget that the tank isn’t endless, and that you can’t just simply expect that you always got something left. This is where patience, patience for yourself is essential.

Teaching is a practice where confidence sometimes wains and self-doubt is a feature. It’s a professional that is always changing, an activity that you can never fully prepare for, and a job that requires a oneself to work to genuinely be a better person. Students can spot a phony, so if you are trying to help your students be more kind, and you aren’t doing that work yourself to be kind as well, you words and actions will be ineffective.

The cycle between confidence and self-doubt is a feature of teaching. The more challenging feelings come and go, and like other feelings they aren’t always based in facts. Honestly, I have been feeling more self-doubt than confidence in the past week, but that’s okay. If we can’t question our own actions, and think about how we can better our work than we aren’t growing, and if this happens than we aren’t really teaching anymore.

I’m looking forward to the rest of the school year. There’s a lot to do, and also a lot to enjoy. I may have missed a lot but I’m still in it, and I’m excited to keep on the work. 

Parenthood: Week 357 – Why Are They So Loud?

Ethan is REALLY loud.

He is wonderful, special, beautiful, charming, inspiring, and loving. But my goodness, he is loud.

Ethan current morning routine is waking up and then screaming, VERY loudly. If I’m around, I will pick him up out of his crib and he will actually calm down pretty quickly, until I put him down. Then he will start screaming for me to hold him some more. It’s all good. I believe that physical contact is essential to healthy emotional and physical development. However, when it’s like this morning and I cuddled literally an hour between 5am and 6am, and then put him down. I have less patience for his demands of cuddling.

There’s different strategies that I’ve tried to calm him when he screams at me. I’ve tried being stern, and raising my own voice. This doesn’t really work. It’s like yelling at a dog when it’s barking. The dog just think you are joining in with the fun. Yes, I’m comparing my son to a dog. In my view, there’s a ton of parallels between dog-rearing and child-rearing. Am I saying that I treat my son like my dog, no, but there are times the way I’ve handled Buffy has informed in a positive way I interact with my human children.

This morning I just let him scream. He wanted me to carry him the down stairs, I wanted him to walk, so he screamed. I didn’t want him to wake everyone up in the house, so I just carried him unceremoniously down the stairs. I got him a pouch of food, which he ate between screams. Then I got him a book that I knew he would like, and he settled down and look at it while I made breakfast.

I’m really glad that Ethan is so vocal. Children should exercise their vocal folds and use the whole range of their voices from whispers to screams.  One of the important things that we have been encouraging is for him to use speech to communicate. This is something is sometimes an issue with children like Ethan with unilateral hearing loss. Also, children who scream, and cry out, and “good” children. This way of interacting means that they are exploring different ways of social interaction, and have a healthy expectation that someone will at some point come and help if they cry out. Children who do get any kind of feedback when they cry eventually stop crying (e.g. babies is abusive orphanage situations). This leads to developmental problems.

One of the most wonderful things I hear I when Ethan talks to himself, or sings to himself. This too can get loud, but for the most part, it’s all good.

Especially early in the morning or during the stress of dinnertime, the loudness of my little ones, can be hard to handle. You combine Ethan’s exuberance with Ollie sing-along to “Into The Unknown,” in a borderline scream, would test any human being’s tolerance for sound.  Yes, it's a lot of sound, but it's loudness generally is more than sad and I'm glad that we live in a situation where I can give my children the space to be loud...and be themselves.

Year 10: Week 21 – Ferdinand And Toxic Masculinity

“Is Ferdinand a cow or a bull?”

The whole class of 5th graders were rowdy as they entered the classroom. They had clearly been discussing the difference between cows and bulls and were looking at me as the teacher to settle the conversation. I was about to just start class and not address this non-sequitur, but I decided to address it. We are going to start a song “Sumer Is Icumen In,” soon that features the different names for animals based on biological sex, so I figured this could plant some seeds for later discussions.

Well Ferdinand’s biological sex is male, so he would be a bull. Even though cows have the biological sex of females, sometimes people misuse this term to describe bulls. Ferdinand is a male, therefore he is a bull. John Cena voiced him in the cartoon.

I was ready to get started with some solfege warm-ups when one boy interrupt my thoughts asked “well, that doesn’t make sense. Why would such a strong guy like John Cena be the voice?

Again, I had to make a call to address this student’s misinterpretation of this story, or move on with my lesson. But I decided not to. I had something more important to address in this moment.

Ferdinand isn’t weak. He just doesn’t want to do what the other bulls want to do and that’s okay. A boy who doesn’t like to play sports isn’t weaker than a boy who does. A boy isn’t any more or less of a boy based on what activities that he enjoys.

As I was explaining this, what was interesting was that the girls in the class were nodding and smiling. The boy who brought this up was not. He had a slight snicker on his face and was looking around to the other boys for some kind of smile so he could laugh to break out of his discomfort. Instead he found the other boys were looking at me, with very serious, and slightly confused expressions on their face. And then I continued.

Look, I identify as a man. While I enjoy working out and running, I don’t love sports generally, and I didn’t watch the Super Bowl. This doesn’t make me a better man or less of a man than a person who is into sports. We need to have conversations as boys about how we can embrace different ways of being boys, the same way we have conversations about how girls can and should do what they want and not be limited by gender roles.

This whole exchange took almost ten minutes out of my forty minutes music class. Turning this interruption into a teachable moment had its cost. In my view it was worth it. Not saying anything in the face of racism, is racist. And being quiet in the face of sexist and misogynistic ideas of gender, reinforces sexism, and feeds into toxic masculinity.

You have to speak up. If you don’t, then students who don’t fit stereotypes will feel less comfortable with you, and feel less safe in your classroom.

Interrupt. It can be hard, it can take time and it can be uncomfortable, but the regret of doing nothing is far worse.

Parenthood: Week 356 – The Unseen Work of Parenting

When we think of parenting, we think about how we feed our children, how we manage their need for boundaries, and how we play with them. So much of the thought we put into parenting has to do with the time when we are actually with them face to face, and actively sharing time and space. However, there is a side of parenting that is just as important that has to do with all of the things we do for our children when we are not with them.

There are the daily chores that fill up the times when our children are asleep or away from us: laundry, cleaning up the house, washing dishes, and packing lunches. It’s an expression of love to clean humidifiers, scrub stains out of clothing, and pick up toys. These things are never fully done, need to be done every day, and are important in how we care for our children.

Beyond general chores, there’s the whole mental part of parenting that children are unaware of and for most, do not understand until they have children of their own. There is all of this work parents have to do mentally all of the time. Some of it has to do with how we enrich our students’ lives through creating schedules, managing activities, and planning for special occasions and trips.

Then there are things that parents worry about that are harder to manage, more difficult to work through. There are parents who are trying to figure out how to manage a school that isn’t serving their children’s needs. Parents stay up late trying to figure out how to win the next battle with the insurance company so that their child gets the treatment they need. And there are parents who spend their days thinking about how they can guide their child, a person of color, to learn to love themselves, in a society that too often sees this child as less then, simply because of their perceived racial identity.

Diana and I took a parenting class at the hospital before Ollie was born. They went over diapering, general feeding guidelines, and what to expect when raising newborns. Almost every single time I’ve been involved with parenting advice conversations they have been focused on things you do when you are with your child. I’ve not been involved in conversations with other parents talking about how we manage the other part of parenting. The time we spend apart from our children, and most importantly how we manage, the constant mental work of parenting.

For me, a big part of getting through all of this is having a good partner. Diana can do half of the chores, that’s great. Even more helpful is that fact that we can share the mental load. We don’t always have to make parenting decisions alone. Sometimes we can make these decisions together or defer them to the other person. Even more than the physical work with children, the mental work away from children, done unsupported, can be the most difficult part of parenting.

It’s important to note that in many situations, women take on a disproportionate amount of this work, even if both partners in different sex couples work full time. Which parent knows the size clothing the children were? Which parent emails the teacher with a question? Which parent knows what’s in the refrigerator? For most different sex couples, it’s the woman who keeps this information in her head as a sign of the mental parenting work.

You can be amazing with a child when you are with them, but if you can’t manage all of the work that needs to be done away from the child, there’s a lot that will be left undone. Coming to a place when you accept this constant unending thankless work as a new feature in your life is difficult. At times I get frustrated at this labor, but I push through knowing that this work will make the time I spend with my children be more enjoyable and more meaningful.

The parenting work away from children is real. Recognize it, name it, share it, and be proud of it.