Year 13: Week 26 - Taking Her Lead

I needed to do more than hold the door. 

I followed her out of the rehearsal space when one of the professors waved at me and told me that the door might be locked and she might not be able to get back into the room. I stood there holding the door for a couple of minutes. It seemed like this student should have come back in by now, so I checked to see that the door was unlocked, and it was, so I went out to the lobby. There she was, sitting on the floor, leaning against the wall with her head down.  

It was a joyous day. One of my colleagues had organized a trip to Northwestern University with one of our middle school choirs. The plan was to visit one of the choir pedagogy classes so the college students could experience a real choir to practice and develop their craft as choir teachers.  

It was a win-win situation. The students in this choir class got to have a great experience with teaching, and our students got to work with some different teachers, each lunch at the student center and got to run around campus. I was delighted to help chaperone this trip, as Northwestern University is my alma mater, and support my colleague and the students on this adventure.  

The students were in awe entering the music building, the professor was warm and welcoming, and the university students were gracious. Things were going great when that student raised her hand during a pause in the class. She gestured to my colleague that she wanted to leave, and I assumed she just needed to use the bathroom.  

When I found her in the lobby, I sat beside her. I wasn’t sure what to say, so I just sat there in silence, not wanting to intrude in her moment of solitude and wanting her to come to feel my presence unobtrusively.  

She told me that this was frustrating. She wanted to participate, but she couldn’t. She needed a break; her mind wasn’t letting her stay in the moment. She told me she was tired of her anxiety and mental health issues preventing her from doing what she wanted to do in life. She felt terrible that her problems made life more difficult for people who cared about her. She wished things could be different and didn’t like feeling alone.   

I sat there for a moment, not knowing what to say. I wanted to comfort her but didn’t want to give her false platitudes. She was expressing too much that was deep and venerable for me not to be honest with her.  

I told her that being your authentic self sometimes means feeling alone, but it’s better than pretending to be something you are not trying to fit in. I explained to her that she is processing at a high level, and some adults don’t know how to talk about their lives, their feelings, and their mental health as well as she does. I talked about how my children gave my life meaning by being people I love enough to care for and worry about. And I told her that her presence in the lives of people who care and worry about her is a blessing.  

She looked at me for the first time in our conversation, “thank you.” 

I nodded in response, and we sat silently for a few minutes. I told her it was okay and that we could hang out in the lobby for as long as she wanted.  

“Let’s go back in.” she sighed quietly and stood up. 

I took her lead and followed her back into the rehearsal room.

Year 13: Week 25 - Coming Back From A Hard Day

Thursday was a hard day. Things that students did, for some reason, affected me more than they should have. There were unforeseen situations and new challenges, and I had a lot on my mind.

This was a day where things that happened in school stayed with me into the evening, and it wasn’t until late after my children went to bed that I fully understood why I felt so deeply about the things that happened at school.

As I sat in the parking lot Friday morning, I thought, “How do I bounce back?” It felt a like a choice. Whether I had a good day was going to be up to me, and I thought about what I had been taught about teaching and what I knew about myself and remembered some keys to having a better day.

“Do one thing at a time.”

When the to-do list seems overwhelming, do one thing at a time. That’s all you can do. Think about what tasks you can do, write them out, and just get started. It’s a push like one step up a mountain, but each task that gets done makes things feel easier to handle, like looking down at the path and seeing how high you have climbed. Looking at a to-do list with tasks crossed out is a motivating feeling.

“Reboot”

One reason Thursday was challenging is that one class had many students having issues regulating their behavior. So when that class came into music on Friday, and they were not having to behave appropriately, I had the students leave the room and review classroom norms in the hallways.

Reestablishing expectations is great for the students and also teachers. Values expressed through norms of care, respect, and love should be present in all teachers; sometimes, we forget to remind our students and ourselves that our work comes out of love.

 

“Share Joy”

I love Motown music, and I’ve been fascinated by “I Heard It Through The Grapevine” recently. So I showed my students some video clips of performances of this song, and I geeked out in front of them. Because of my genuine enthusiasm, my students got really into the song, and we had some great conversations about why it was awesome.

We did drum circle, and I enjoyed the experience myself and told my students how special it is to play instruments together and share in the unique experience of making music.

Friday ended up being a good day.

The best way to improve things is to “make them better.” Passivity doesn’t help. You must put in the effort to change how things feel for you and your students. In that effort, you find your way and power to make change.

Year 13: Week 24 - Why I Love Hiring

"I love this work."

This was the first thing that came to mind when I was recently asked why I wanted to be on a hiring committee. Working on hiring has been some of the most rewarding and challenging work I'veI've done at this school. Also, this work feels powerfully tied to DEIB work, which is central to my approach to education and life.

Seeing someone find success at my school that I picked out of an initial resume sift and supported throughout the hiring process is a beautiful feeling. Of course, I never remind people I helped hire that I did this work for them because their success is theirs. However, I feel particularly warm and pride in the success of these people at my school because of my work during their concerts, hearing studnets' laughter from great learning in their classes, and hearing parents talk about how much they like these teachers.

In many ways, my hiring success is my most incredible legacy at this school.

The challenge of hiring is real and ever-evolving. There is a feeling of pressure and anxiety that comes with every hire. You want to get it right. Mediocre people are difficult to fire in any workplace setting, as are people who are just awful. Over the years, I'veI's come to worry less and less that hiring committees that I'm on will not "get it right." The vast majority of committees I've been on have hired great people. I enter my hiring work this spring with great confidence, born out of a depth of experience, that my team will hire the "right" person.

One crucial thing that I've learned is that the person you hire is the "right" person is very much what you do with this person once they are hired. A "perfect candidate" can end up leaving a company if the onboarding isn't done well and the community doesn't rally around this person and measure their success in the success of this new hire. Also, a candidate that some people may have reservations about can raise these concerns with support, empathy, and care. Getting an effective new person in your community is only partially accomplished by a good "hire" a good amount of the work is done after that process is completed.

Over the past decade, I've been involved with hiring at my school. The process has changed dramatically, and I've learned that hiring can often be fraught with bias, including racism and sexism. After going through multiple trainings on hiring, I've realized bias within myself (e.g., showing a preference for who went to the same school I did) and recognizing bias in others. I have also learned about many hiring practices that can be inequitable. For example, sometimes people look down on people who have resumes that show a gap in work. The reality is that this practice can often be sexist as often women have to take time off from work to have children or care for a loved one.

I've been challenged to move past the language of "a good fit," which can sometimes be coded language for prejudicial judgments, and understand why not sharing interview questions with candidates isn'tisn't inclusive of diverse thinkers. Also, I've had my judgment called out and forced with each hiring to reconsider how I view candidates, my school, and myself.

One of the reasons I enjoy being part of hiring is because of the responsibility this work brings me; it also brings me the power to make my school more diverse and inclusive. I have earned my place at the hiring table with hard work. The resumes I have to look through feel daunting. But, I'm excited about the work, the conversations, and bringing someone new into my school community.

Healthy school communities bring new people into their buildings. Hiring is a feature, not a flaw. With the right person, we are challenged to grow and be better for our students and ourselves.

Year 13: Week 23 - Back To Beginning Band

Last week, my 6th-grade and 7th-grade band had their first performance. This was a big deal. Any first band performance is an event. Students start learning instruments at the beginning of the school year, making sounds that only a band teacher can tolerate. Then after only a couple of short months, they are making music. It’s a miraculous process that happens year after year worldwide, or at least it did. 

But these perfromances felt different.

The pandemic put a hold on band programs. When schools shut down in March 2020, bands went remote like all other school programs. Remote learning had different effects on different academic subjects, but it was devastating to concert bands. The primary way to learn how to play in a band is to play in a band in person; nothing online could replace this.

When the fall of 2020 came, many schools were remote. Some of these schools didn’t offer band, and ones that did had teachers struggling to begin instruments remotely. This was very difficult, and while some teachers found success, the progress in remote learning on the band was a shadow of what in-person instruction would be like.

Then there were the schools like my school that were in-person but did not allow band as part of COVID-19 mitigations. This meant that the 6th graders that year didn’t have a band. Then in the fall of 2021, 7th graders were allowed to start a band, but 6th graders weren’t. And finally, this year, we had a band for all middle school students, meaning we had a beginning 6th-grade and a beginning 7th-grade band.

Starting two beginning bands this year has been exciting, but it’s also been challenging. Not surprisingly, less 7th graders wanted to try something new and different and be in a band more than 6th graders. The fact that the band was perceived as dangerous during the early parts of the pandemic cast a shadow in some people’s minds about band instruments which hurt enthusiasm.

We have had a lot of success, and it’s really important that they can perform for the community, however people in the community really needs to watch two beginning band performances. So I planned two daytime afternoon presentations, one for the 6th-grade band and one for the 7th-grade band. I invited our elementary school classes for each presentation, had a couple of classes come, and then band student families were invited.

Each band played a couple of pieces together, and I also was able to feature students playing solos and doing small ensemble work. This was an excellent way to differentiate and give students the opportunity to perform differently.

Like so many things coming out of the pandemic, these presentations felt like doing something for the first time, even though I had done these performances before the pandemic. There was a feeling of uncertainty. Maybe something changed because of the pandemic; perhaps something broke that we couldn’t fix. However, things went great and proved that music persists, and there are some things the pandemic could not take away from us.

Year 13: Week 21 - Calm & Peace

I was borderline. 

I got a cold from my youngest son earlier in the week. I took a day off when it first hit me. I’m glad I did. My symptoms weren’t debilitating, but they were significant. I was better the next day, so I did go to school.

I was feeling a lot better, but I was tired, and I didn’t have much of a speaking voice. I considered doing a less active lesson with my 3rd graders that day. They have independent work they can do, which I don’t have to teach as actively.

Part of growing as a teacher is how I create more space for my students to explore independently. More traditional music teaching has the teacher actively leading the students for the entire class. On the other hand, more progressive and innovative teaching has the students do more projects. In the early parts of the pandemic, this teaching became necessary as we weren’t allowed to have students sing or play instruments. I found that aspects of this type of instruction and curriculum were rewarding for the students and me.

As my 3rd graders came into my classroom, they were so excited about music, and I figured I’d lean in and do more active teaching. I figured I could always pull back and switch gears if I wasn’t feeling it.

So I taught a recorder lesson. It was only our second or third week on the recorder, and it was going well. Teaching the recorder is tricky. It can be a lot of fun, but the classroom management piece of it is really hard. Students want to explore the instrument, which is great; however, they can’t effectively do this when other students are playing because it can be really hard to hear themselves. So students will try to play in quieter moments, like during instruction, which leads to me constantly feeling like I’m playing “whack-a-mole,” telling students to stop playing.

I haven’t been mean in the last few classes, but I’ve been very direct and quick about giving students feedback so they understand how to work when doing a recorder lesson. At times this may have come off as a little harsh, but I did remind my students that I was doing that to help them by being very clear about my expectations.

I didn’t have that energy today, but I decided to go for it. I passed out the recorders, I gave them some reminders, and we got to work. I sat back in my chair and looked at them playing, and then I put my hand up, they stopped playing, and we got to work. All I felt I could be was calm. I smiled softly at them while we worked; they matched my mood and energy. I was surprised at how well things worked with me being so chill. For some reason, I expected them to need me to be louder and more energetic, but they were fine. So I did the same thing for the following two classes and had a great morning teaching.

Sometimes things click with a group of children. It’s not always clear why, but when it does, teaching is a lot of fun. Being more calm invites students to do the same, think carefully, and create a moment with me where we can all learn in peace.

Year 13: Week 20 - Pride

Maybe the solution was that I just needed to say it out loud. 

Sometimes I feel like I'm underappreciated at my school. I put on a performance and sit there after waiting and hoping for something to validate my work. Logically I know this is silly since the focus is on the students, and without fail, someone will email me and tell me I did a good job. However, the feeling persists.

My school, like other communities, needs to work on showing appreciation for each other and not taking its members' talents, hard work, and commitment for granted. At the same time, I know that I can't wait and hope for other people's approval. I need to be doing work and making choices that make me feel proud regardless of what others think or say. And I think I've figured out a way to get there.

I've started telling people lately that I'm good at specific parts of my job. At first, I felt unsure of expressing confidence about my work to others but knowing that they backed it up with concrete examples made them think more about sharing their pride and less about being braggadocious. When I tell people I'm good at something, it sometimes gets them to lean into what I say. At other times, I find that my confidence puts people at ease and lowers anxiety.

Something else is happening as I've been vocalizing things about my work that I'm good at and bringing up examples of my success to others: I'm feeling more proud of myself.

People's words of support and their affirmations have felt insufficient because they aren't paired with my voice telling me I'm doing a good job. There's a gap between people's kind words and my feeling for them. The way to bridge this gap is to say these things out loud. Because now that I'm being more kind and supportive to myself, the affirmations of others feel more real and more valid.

In the past, I felt I needed to be humble. This may be a cultural value or my insecurities taking over, but I'm humble enough. And I'm not going to become the type of guy I don't want to be who spends time expressing their insecurities by bragging about every part of their life, revealing their shallowness more than their accomplishments.

I wonder about my students. They have so much to be proud of, and I tell them I am proud of them, but I wonder if it's sinking in. Do they feel they are proud of themselves? Are they saying to others out loud things that they are good at? I'll help them work on this.

Something is shifting.

The problems and crises I faced this week felt more like adventures than burdens because I've told myself that I can handle this. I kept my department strong and contributed directly to the success of my school during the early COVID-19 pandemic, one of the greatest challenges in education in American history. I did a great job as a leader through that crisis.

I'm good at my job, and now that I'm starting to tell other people this, I'm beginning to believe it and feel proud of that fact.

Year 13: Week 19 - Getting Back To Recorder

This time I tried something a little different. 

I split my fourth graders into two groups. For half the class, one group would work on a Garage Band assignment on their iPads while the other students did a recorder lesson with me. Then halfway through the class, we would switch.

I started recorder with the whole class in the past, and I'm not sure why it never occurred to me to start them up in small groups. Also, something I did in the past was a lot of teaching about the recorder and expectations around playing before we got to play the instrument. But this time, I just jumped in and got them playing, which worked well.

One of the hardest things about teaching the recorder is classroom management. When a class is doing a really good job with norms about not speaking over each other, this doesn't necessarily carry over to the recorder. Students are eager to play, unaware of how playing out of turn is disruptive, and have the potential to create loud, headache-inducing songs without a lot of effort.

Before I handed them the recorders, we would watch videos of people playing the recorder with the idea that they would take the work seriously and get a tone model in their head about how a recorder should sound like. Then I would lecture them about how to play the recorder and give them a quiz based on my lecture. They needed to answer critical questions about setting up their hands and basic techniques and troubleshooting when their instruments didn't sound right.

This did create a level of interest and investment in the instrument. Also, I would incentivize students' by choosing well-behaved students to play an iPad recorder game in front o the class at the end of a recorder lesson. However, with all of this, it was still a challenge to manage the class.

I did none of these things this time. Instead, I told them how to label their recorder bag, and once they did this, I put a recorder in their hands. We got to work quickly, and I had them play and play and play and play. If a student was out of turn, I corrected them immediately without subtlety. I gave them clear and direct positive and constructive feedback and helped them see their improvement.

It was fast-paced work with a higher level of intensity than I usually teach, but it worked. The kids seemed to feel good after we were done, and I heard a lot of positive comments as students left the class. Part of this work was that I only worked with each half-class on the recorder for about twelve minutes once we got going. Some of my students would have struggled with the work much longer than that.

While I'll spend some time later showing my students videos of recorder playing, getting to the instrument first was a good idea. Students like music classes for many reasons, but the main reason is that they want to play music. The most motivating thing to keep students engaged and interested in music class is creating good music and improving during the course.

I taught many different lessons during the early pandemic during music class. Still, most of it wasn't engaging students in the art of creating music and performing music by singing or playing an instrument. This was because we were limited because of safety mitigations, and now that we have moved past them, it's time to get back to the most fun part of music class: making music.

Year 13: Week 18 - Back To Normal-ish

This week we came back from winter break. It felt like a return to “normal.” For my 4th and 5th graders, we were returning to lessons and curricula that weren’t as focused on preparing for a performance. 

The classes in the last couple weeks before winter break culminated in our Winter Program. These lessons had a singular focus on performance preparation. While I enjoy the focus of this work and building up to a performance, the skill-building and variety of activities we usually do get put aside.

Returning to the same class routines with my 4th and 5th graders felt nice. We had some fun doing drum circle activities and composition work for both of these classes. These activities are ones that I’ve done before, almost every year for the past thirteen years. Returning to lessons and projects I’ve done before can sometimes feel mundane, but this week was fun.

Teaching is the practice of doing something over and over, year after year. Yes, there is a percentage of what we teach every new year. However, a lot of what we do, even in the best and most progressive situations, is the same yearly.

What makes things exciting and interesting are the students. The audience, the collaborators are new. Even when teaching the same lesson to different classes on the same day, the experience varies. This is what makes teaching challenging, but it’s also what makes teaching so much fun.

Some of this has to do with your approach to the craft of teaching. It is often said that you don’t teach a subject. You teach children. Great math teachers don’t teach math. They teach the subject of math to children. I genuinely see myself as a teacher over a music teacher. My role in their lives is as a teacher first. The priorities of safety, SEL, and DEIB work are the foundation of my work, not music. Music is the path forward to teaching my students, but it is not my priority as a teacher.

The thing about teaching lessons that you have taught many times before is that the familiarity with them, which one might think would make them boring, is actually an opportunity to engage more proudly with students. When teaching a song or an activity I don’t know very well, I’m more focused on myself and my knowledge of the materials. When I’m teaching something I’ve done before and know well, I can focus more on my students, their reactions, their thoughts, and their work. I’m free from my concerns and insecurities and I can be more in the moment, with and for my students. This past week, this felt great.

Other things about this week felt difficult. There was a lot of catching up to do and taking care of tasks that were put aside because of the performance. My middle school bands have a performance in early February, so they are starting to transition into performance preparation mode. I’m concerned about helping my students make the best of this performance opportunity, as it is their first performance, but I’m optimistic and ready for that challenge.

Year 13: Week 17 - Return Of The Winter Programs - Part 1

"You must have been waiting for years to do this. You were having so much fun!" 

"Thanks, and yes, I have been waiting a long time for this."

The last time we had a JK-5 Winter Program was in 2019. Three years later, this event was finally back. Every time this program was put on before 2019, it was a great achievement by the students and the music faculty. This program is the only time all of the students in JK-5 share a program with their families in the audience. Every single student in seven grade go on up on stage and performs. The students worked on the music for weeks and also worked on the performance skills of walking on and off stage and how to stand and perform for an audience.

The music is all memorized; instruments and choreography are often involved in these performances, and for many students, this is one of the few times they are up on stage performing in the school year.

For the music faculty, a lot of work goes into this program. A lot of time is spent on the selection of music. It's important to find a piece at the pedagogical level for the students and meaningful music reflecting diverse cultures and shared values. Focused on the student's experience, teachers carefully plan everything from seating charts to lighting.

These challenges and hard work were present in "normal years." This year was anything but normal.

For the 2022 winter program, we knew we were dealing with a unique situation. Instead of having one grade, the JK students who had never experienced this MX had three grades: JK, SK, and 1st. In addition, the older grade students only have vague memories of their performance in 2019, when they were younger.

Our students had three years of the modified curriculum because of the pandemic. Students were remote in the last part of the 2019-2020 school year. During the 2020-2021 school year, COVID-19 mitigations meant we couldn't have our students sing. Then in the 2021-2022 school year, we had to modify everything we taught considering our students' experience since the pandemic started.

We needed to consider who the students were as musicians affected by our curriculum changes throughout the pandemic. More importantly, we needed to examine who our students were as learners and human beings. The younger students lived most of their with the COVID-19 pandemic, and older students only have vague memories of a time before masks and social distancing.

We had students who needed to learn what this program meant and missed out on meaningful learning that would have helped them during this performance. We had to completely rethink who our students were as learners and people compared to pre-pandemic years, and we, as faculty, had yet to do this performance in three years.

This all would have been enough to make this performance an enormous challenge. 

All of this made the success and joy of the JK-5 Winter Program even more extraordinary.

Year 13: Week 14 - Indeed I Do

Next week is our JK-5 Winter Program. We haven’t had one since the winter of 2019. Last year, we got close by doing a separate JK-3 and 4-5 assembly, but this was just for the students, and no parents or families were invited. This year, we are finally, after three years, bringing this event back. 

The current 5th graders were in 2nd grade the last time they participated in this performance, and most don’t have strong memories of this event. So in some ways, we are starting new and fresh, especially since many families and teachers were not part of our school community the last time we did this event in 2019.  

I teach 4th and 5th grade, so it was up to me to program this part of the program. Since they hadn’t performed as students in 4th and 5th grade before the pandemic, I needed to find a song that was easier to sing and teach and fun. After much thinking and research, I landed on “People Got To Be Free” by the

Rascals. 

 

The Rascals are a wonderful rock band, and having a song that felt more like “rock” would make students feel less apprehensive about it than a slower song. But, most importantly, this song has great connections to the Civil Rights movement and has important themes like freedom and caring for each other. 

Initially, my 5th graders didn’t catch on to this song, but I kept on, and slowly they came to like it. We’ve had some great conversations about the lyrics of these songs. I have a small group of volunteers who will sing parts of this song in small groups, which will be a nice touch.  

My 4th graders will perform “Crowded Table” by The Highwomen.  

 

I first taught this song to my 3rd graders in 2019 as part of a Thanksgiving presentation. I’ve continued to teach it to my students. I’m really excited for my 4th graders to perform it for the community.  

Everything about this song reflects the values of my school. The story of the Highwomen, a group of women coming together to create music and support each other, is beautiful and powerful. The lyrics during the pandemic became an anthem of all we were missing and all we were hoping for, and my students love singing this song.  

 

My 4th graders are then going to end the program by leading a dance-along with me. On his most recent album, Bruce Springsteen covered the Motown classic “Do I Love You (Indeed I do).”  

 

I commissioned a co-worker to choreograph a dance to his song and taught it to my 4th and 5th graders. This was so much fun with them that we will do it with everyone in the auditorium. I’ve led dance-along at my school, but never with parents and families in the audience. I’m a little nervous, but more than that, I’m looking forward to helping my community have a moment to affirm our love for each other and feel what it means to be a community through music and dance.

Year 13: Week 13 - I Never Did Believe In Miracles…

Sometimes when I play the music that I love for my students, I'm unsure how they will react. I've been listening to Christine McVie's work, ever since she passed away earlier this week. I didn't really have time to teach about her this week, but I wanted my students to have an experience with her beautiful voice, incredible songwriting, and masterful musicianship. So during our opening warm-up activity, I played "You Make Loving Fun."

 

As soon as the keyboard groove hit, I could tell that my students were feeling this song. I wondered how they would react to the dated keyboard sound, but they didn't seem to mind. As I led my class in stretching and some breathing exercises, I smiled and sang along softly to this song. While I did this, I could see in my students' eyes they were enjoying this song too.

  *****

We had a modified schedule on Thursday for a community partnership project. This meant my middle schoolers would have half an hour of band on Thursday afternoon instead of an hour of band class on Thursday morning.

With all that was going on in the next couple of weeks, it was important to go over this change earlier in the week. So I opened band class on Monday and Tuesday, letting them know about the schedule change. I explained this to them as a heads-up more than a big piece of news. I didn't think they would react strongly to this, but they did. My students expressed anger, confusion, and shock. They were not happy about having a shortened band class on Thursday.

My first reaction was to calm them down and ask them to temper their responses, look at the positive and express their opinions more constructively. Then I paused and thought, "Band is going so well this school year that my students are upset that their band class is shortened. This is a great sign." So I sat there for a moment listening to their protests and enjoyed this expression of how much they enjoyed band.

*****

There is a pride I feel when someone I hire finds success. It's one of my favorite things about my job. When I hire someone, my approach is to put faith in them and their abilities. I manage them believing that they will be successful. And I continue to work with people this way until they prove me wrong.

One of the new teachers I hired this past week had their first concert, which was wonderful. His students performed at a high musical level and worked really hard, and there was a great feeling during the whole event.

It's nice to be proven right, but more than that, it's wonderful to be part of someone else's success and know that I did right by this teacher and our students.

Year 13: Week 11 - Time

People assume that time is a strict progression of cause to effect, but actually, from a nonlinear, non-subjective viewpoint, it's more like a big ball of wibbly-wobbly, timey-wimey.

- The Doctor

One of the most important teaching tools that teachers have is time.

Education in America is very much about time. Students have schedules that they follow throughout the day. There is a priority on these schedules, sometimes even over student learning. There are benefits to this when you think about how we help students learn to organize their lives, but there are drawbacks. Life isn't always about being "on time," I've experienced some of the best moments in my life have been when I've forgotten about time and prioritized being in the moment.

As a music teacher, I'm very aware that music "decorates" time. Work in music class, like the music itself, can make time feel like it's passing slower, or faster. It's always interesting to me when I start wrapping up music class, and students are surprised at how fast the class seems to go by.

Teachers are very much managers, and trying to help students understand when they need to change tasks before they become unproductive or spend longer on a task is tricky. I do want students to learn how to press "pause" on their work. However, I love it so much when students are deep in their work and don't want to stop. Sometimes I stop an activity too early or too late, and some moments, I stop it at precisely the right time. There is some science in this, but it's more art than anything else.

One of the aspects of time in education is how learning evolves over a couple of days or a week. For example, I started a song with my 5th graders last week, and it didn't go well. I was almost at the point of dropping that song from my curriculum. However, I was wisely advised not to make any decisions that day.

For most of last week, I was out with the flu, and while my students did some work on this song with the substitute, I wasn't expecting much growth. It was just a lesson or two. However, what I heard from my students was a huge improvement. While I credit the substitute teachers and the students for doing some good work while I was gone, this was a good reminder that sometimes students need time.

The process of musical learning, like other learning, has to occur over time. If you spend five hours on one day learning a song, you will sound less good than if you spread those five hours over a week. Stepping away from a piece and letting your brain process the music is essential to learning music. It's one of those seemingly magical things that's easy to forget.

The other piece of this is just trusting the students and the process. One reason I kind of freaked out last year is that this program that I'm preparing my students for is the Winter program that we haven't put on since 2019. I'm more nervous than I'm allowing myself to feel about preparing myself and my students for this performance. I've done a lot to set my students up for success. We are starting the music earlier than I have in years past. I'm keeping the arrangements simpler and prioritizing finding fun and joy in the process. Yeah, we'll be fine, but it feels like a lot.

I need to trust my students that they can do this. I need to trust myself that I know what's best, and I need to trust in the process, and most of all, I need to trust in time.

I can pass the time by worrying about the time I don't have, or I can find peace in the time that I do and the choices I make with the time that I do have.

I'll work on getting the latter.

It might take some time.

Year 13: Week 10 - How This Year Compares To 2020

It’s not like I was all chill and not stressed before the pandemic. 

As we were getting word as department chairs to get our faculty ready for a possible shutdown in early March 2020, part of me was looking forward to the week off. To my knowledge, all we were going to do was shut down for a week or two, the virus would chill out, and then we’d be back. This would give me a respite and time to catch up on work, which felt overwhelming.  

We know how that worked out… 

Then teaching during the 2020-2021 school year was understandably overwhelming. Being in person before vaccines, with students podded, teaching in homeroom classrooms instead of a music classroom, with restrictions to singing and wind instruments, was a lot. Some of what made this year feel like a lot was the great lengths we were taking to get back to “normal.” I remember putting on an outdoor concert that Spring, and working late to figure out how to make it happen.  

Then there was 2021-2022. Teaching during this year, in some ways, was harder than the year before. Yes, we had fewer restrictions due to the pandemic, but we also had a more significant disagreement and less clarity on what COVID-19 mitigations were necessary. Once only a fringe opinion, the idea of not wearing masks was embraced by reasonable professionals based on scientific research. This added a layer of tension. Also, we kept getting tripped up by students being exposed and quarantine rules, which seemed to become less clear as the year went on.  

Now, here we are, months into the 2022-2023 school year, and do things feel? CRAZY. J/K. Not really, but things aren’t simple. So returning to how easy things were before the pandemic is an illusion that has confused me until I remember that things weren’t truly a walk in the park before the pandemic. The challenges were just different.  

Some things feel much easier and like a return to home that I haven’t felt since before the pandemic. For example, my class schedule has returned to what it was before the pandemic. I’m back to teaching a curriculum that I don’t have to make up new every week, which I had to do when the pandemic first started. Yes, we still have to mask up at my school when there is exposure, which is a pain. However, it is helpful that most kids do not wear masks voluntarily, so how we communicate does feel much better.  

The challenges I’m feeling now are related to two things. First, I am trying to get back to the processes we did before the pandemic that will serve us moving forward. More importantly, the challenge now is figuring out how we have all changed, the students, the faculty, the staff, and the administration. When I look at my students and things aren’t working like I expect, how much of this is how my students have changed, or how much of this is because of how I have changed? 

The pandemic has changed us all and continues to change us. The evidence of this is clear at times, and other times the change is more ambiguous. 

We have a lot of work to do as adults to unpack all that we've been through as teachers as we figure out how to serve our students in a world no one imagined. 

We may feel done with the pandemic, but it isn't done with us. 

Year 13: Week 9 - Away Message

There’s a feeling when you are away from school that is odd and puts you off balance. 

I was away on the 5th-grade outdoor education trip from Wednesday until Friday last week. Then on Monday, I stayed with one of my sons, who had a cold. And on Tuesday, I was out because of a medical procedure. I was hoping to be back at school on Wednesday, but Tuesday night, it was clear I hadn’t fully recovered, so I made the call to take a sick day on Wednesday. It was clear on Wednesday that I had made the right call... 

This meant I was at school for two days this week, Thursday and Friday.  

Of course,  the work of school went on without me. I saw emails come into my inbox. At times I deliberately ignored them, and at other times I was able to take care of some of this business. And, of course, things were fine without me. Some things had to be put on hold, and some meetings had to be rescheduled, but things were fine. I got behind on some work I wanted to do, and my students, while they got some work done with the substitute teachers, were less productive than they would have been if I had been there. But they were fine.  

One of the lessons of the pandemic was that we needed to take time off to take care of ourselves and our families. Unfortunately, there were far too many times before the pandemic when I was sick and went to school to teach when I shouldn’t have. What makes me even sadder is that there were times when I didn’t take time off when I should have been home with my children when they were sick. 

As teachers, we are insecure, and one of the ways that many of us handle this insecurity is by proving we are tough by teaching in a way that is physically taxing, whether by teaching when we are sick or working long hours at school and home. But unfortunately, there are teaching situations where this isn’t a choice, but a feature of having a teaching job, which is absurd, exploitative, and ridiculous.  

It’s strange. Even though I know in my heart that it’s the right thing to do to stay home to take care of one of my children if they are sick and that it will not negatively affect my job, it feels like I’m making a sacrifice to stay home. But what am I trading away? The joy of teaching, having fewer emails to answer, and feeling more accomplished at my job? This feeling makes the job feel all about me. This probably is a good thing because it reflects that this job is fulfilling for me and isn’t just a paycheck, but it also feels out of whack with the fact that me and my family and my priority in my life.

I’m glad that I had time away from school. I did some important things taking care of my family and myself. I didn’t give anything up to make this happen. I made a choice, and I have no regrets.

I think we are better teachers when we are more balanced humans and clearly define our priorities, but it's complicated. So we try and do the best we can. It's not always easy, and it's often complicated, but it's a struggle worth having and a tension worth leaning into. 

Year 13: Week 8 - Goals, Draft #2

I want to be honest, which means I have to admit that things are complicated. 

I value and care for this school, but my family is my priority. There are spaces where I feel valued and included and situations where I feel isolated. I feel confident in my power and position, and sometimes, I feel overwhelmed and stressed.  

There are things about this school that I’m proud of and things that bring me concern There is great satisfaction in much of the work to do, and times when a lack of gratitude makes this work feel like people take me for granted.  

And if I’m sincere, I must admit that it’s not easy to separate my work on myself from my work at this school. I must admit that sometimes negative feelings of loneliness at this school are not reflected in the incredible support many people give me at this school. And I have to admit that I don’t always know who I am and who I want to be outside and inside of this school.  

It would be easy to construct goals that appear progressive and reflective but those would feel like platitudes. So instead, I will lean into the tension, the complexities, and the truth of my work. 

I want to continue developing curricula that center DEIB in a subject that in most places does not. Foundations of my curriculum, like solfege, the recorder, band instruments, and note-reading, are reflections of a Euro-centric paradigm that permeates American music culture. While developing and pushing against this, I can't recognize and abandon these techniques and materials. For example, I’m working to de-center whiteness and masculinity in Western music while teaching tools created by white men. This is all in the goal that students will continue this work using music to strengthen their voices and self-expression.  

I am committed to centering my instruction on social and emotional learning and helping students develop better relationships with me, their classmates, and themselves. In addition, I want to be more effective at teaching music. While these things do not work against each other, as a more emotionally aware student is a more effective learner, the SEL work sometimes feels like it’s taking time away from music instruction, especially when most models of music instruction do not reflect the more progressive teaching practices l of  RULER.  

As the music department chair and DEIB co-chair, I love collaborating and being in the “room where it happens” with members of the admin team, and I struggle with the distance this work creates between the people in my department and me. I am excited about the challenging work that I can often find solutions to and frustrating problems that persist beyond my best efforts and intentions.  

I know people like me have moments when we don’t feel like we belong and are unseen by this community. In every interaction with faculty, new and veteran, I have the opportunity to empower others by making them feel more seen and valued. I will continue to create lessons and programming to make people see mirrors of themselves and the humanity in others different from themselves. I can deal with people’s thoughtless actions by allowing myself to feel these emotions, find support in others, and sometimes take action. I'll use my power to spread more positivity to others to feel the inclusive light of our mission.  

This school is a place that can be warm and inviting and can also feel cold and lonely. It is a place that is exhausting and energizing. And it's a school that is a place that has helped me better embrace facets of my personality, and at times seems not to honor parts of my identity. Among these contradictions and dissonances is me: a teacher, a department chair, a colleague, a collaborator, a leader, an ally, a manager, and to some, a friend. 

The truth is there are things that are clear and absolute.  

I am more excited about what Parker can be than frustrated at what Parker is not. I feel great gratitude for the people who have mentored me and supported me, and I am committed to making meaning of these gifts by helping others. I am here, ready to lean in, to all the complexities and challenges, for the work is good and allows me to bring meaning to others’ lives as this school has brought meaning to life.  

And that's if I'm being completely honest.

Year 13: Week 7 - Goals

In some ways, it's easy to state my goals are this year as a teacher and department chair. I have new faculty to support and mentor, I need to rejuvenate the music program, and I need to lead in changing our curriculum to meet the needs of the students. We have all been changed by the pandemic and other current trends like social media and political extremism, and in turn, so does our work.

In other ways, it's hard to articulate and understand what I want for myself and this school. I love the work I have the privilege to do in this community. The time I have with my students and the ability to support and help other faculty feel meaningful is rewarding. Because this school has helped me develop as a teacher and administrator, I have the tools and abilities to enjoy the challenges. In the same way, I enjoy solving a Rubik's Cube because I know how to do it. Most of the challenges at this school feel manageable and even fun sometimes.  

However, there are feelings that are hard for me to process.

There are times when I don't feel appreciated and included at this school. Some of this is because we as a community need to continue to put effort into being for each other. That work is never done, and while people at this school are overwhelmingly outwardly kind, there are aspects of interactions at this school that feel less than. Some of this is my perceptions and work that is more about me. This is hard to process because it's nigh-impossible to separate out and fully understand what these feelings are about other people actions and what about my own insecurities.  

Feeling isolated is part of the gig sometimes. I teach a curriculum that no one else does. I'm one of the few Asian-American men at this school. And my position as department chair sets me apart with the information I can't share with others and situations when I have to make decisions all by myself. So while I do have the opportunity to work with teams of teachers and am honored for my contributions, often I'm working with a team and not part of the team.  

I wonder what of this is a feature to be accepted and what is a flaw that can be improved upon.  

In these thoughts and wonders, I see that I want to develop my personality and my understanding of myself. And as I better understand who I am and who I am becoming, I want to make school a place I feel more comfortable being myself. Because I do believe that I can change, and this school can change, and be better for myself and others.  

I've always made it a practice not to complain unless I had a solution. While I feel this has made me an asset to work with, it has made me take on too much of a burden to fix things and closed me off from meaningfully expressing experiences, concerns, and feelings that people need to hear. I can change this. 

I feel a need to prove myself and sometimes take on so much that I feel overloaded. While I know, I have a valued place in the community. I don't understand why I push myself. I have more value to this community the more balanced I am. So I can back off, do less, and address these feelings more productively. I can change this.  

I will continue to be warm and inclusive to other people. This isn't going to change all of my feelings, but it's something I can do to help others and make them feel like they have a place in this school. My approach to others does not have to be dictated by how I think other people treat me. I can help make sure this is a place for others that I want it to be for myself. In these efforts, I can work with others and find joy in changing.

What I want for myself is what I want for students. I want them to feel known and seen. I want them to be appreciated and for people, to understand them, and I want people to want to work with them. Everything I'm doing to create an atmosphere where my students feel these things are what I know I need for myself.

 

Sometimes when we do for our students, we learn to do for ourselves. So I'll lean as I always do, and do what I can do make this school what it can be for myself and for others. 

Year 13: Week 6 - Introducing The Story

It’s really scary to share something you love with people. Even though you know that if someone doesn’t like what you have to share, it’s not personal, it can still feel invalidating. The more you tell someone how you feel about something, the more vulnerable you feel. However, this sharing also opens up the potential for a deeper connection.  

We’ve been studying The Highwomen with my 4th graders. “Crowded Table” is a wonderful value-affirming song to start the school year.  

 

The story of The Highwomen, four female artists frustrated with the state of country music coming together to feel less alone, is relatable to children and is a great example of how you can empower others by being your authentic self.  

As part of this unit, we are learning about the four artists who make The Highwomen: Amanda Shires, Natalie Hemby, Maren Morris, and Brandi Carlile. 

Earlier this week, the lesson was focused on Brandi.  

It’s both incredibly easy and challenging to explain what Brandi Carlile and her music mean to me. Her music gave me hope and strength in the darkest moments of my life. Her life story, her resolve, and the way she has used to voice and platform continue to inspire me as a teacher and a person.  

I wanted to tell my 4th graders some of this. Hyping up and preparing students for music is important. If I genuinely tell students that something is interesting and why students will be more likely to have a meaningful connection with the music.  

So I told my students that Brandi Carlile is one of my heroes. I told them that her music makes me feel less alone. I explained that the song “The Story,” written by Phil Hanseroth, the bass player in her band, is about how the good times are so much more fun with people that you love and the bad times aren’t so bad when you share them with people that you love.  

I had more to say, but I stopped myself and let Brandi perform for my students.  

 

As the video played, I didn’t want to look at my students. I wasn't sure how I would handle seeing one of my students being disinterested or bored with this video. However, when I did, I saw every student looking at the screen in awe, and I got emotionally seeing them experience deeply something I loved so much.  

When the video was over, the class was quiet. There was a feeling of disbelief in the room at what they saw. I stumbled through some words and said, “isn’t Brandi magical?” And they all nodded their heads.  

I'm so glad I got to share "The Story" with my students. I didn't think this song could mean more to me, but after my experience with my 4th graders, it means more than ever.

Year 13: Week 5 - Moving On From Masks

Last fall, I had a plan. I picked out a bunch of music and activities to get my students going. The 2020-2021 school year was challenging. Students had music in their classrooms, we were told we couldn’t sing, and we were coming up with lesson plans on the fly. The 2021-2022 school year seemed like it had more potential to be normal, and I needed to plan how to get the students back to music. 

It felt good to hit the ground running last fall, and as much as I worked, it was hard to get to know the kids and connect. Even by the end of the year, there were students I didn’t feel I knew as well as I typically did before the pandemic.

This fall, I feel I’m getting to my students and enjoying that aspect of my job more than I have since the pandemic started. It’s not because of my planning. I am doing far too much teaching without well-defined lesson plans, but it’s not getting in the way of me getting to know my students for my 4th and 5th graders.

I talked to one of the 5th-grade classroom teachers about this, and he agreed. He also felt like he was getting to know and connect with his students faster than he did last year. So we chatted, trying to figure out why and he concluded, “well, we’re not wearing masks.”

This recent study argues that mask-wearing for children has no clear benefit. One thing mentioned in this article is that many people don’t see a downside to children wearing masks, so why not take this precaution, even though masking is effective?

It will take years and a lot of time and energy to fully understand the long-term effects of masking on children and teachers and how this has affected education. However, I know right now how much a lack of masking has changed how I have gotten to know and work with my students.

There were students I got to know first with their masks on, and then when I saw them later without their masks, it was really hard to process. I had only seen half of their face, and my imagination often filled in the rest of the face inaccurately and sometimes didn’t fill it in at all. So all I knew of that face was half, reflecting how little I knew of my students. 

It’s hard to feel close to someone who is wearing a mask. It’s harder to be empathetic and show you care when you are wearing a mask. It’s harder to see how people feel when they are wearing a mask, and it is harder to hear a person’s voice with a mask. I was never able to overcome these harder things, and I don’t think it was possible because there is just too much lost and too much hidden by masks. One of the saddest moments I had in my teaching was when close to a performance last spring my 5th graders had to mask back up. Even though they were allowed to take off their masks for their performances, most did not. I did everything I could to prepare them and get them going during their performance, but I just couldn't make it click. 

Nothing I could do could overcome what the masks put between us.  

I love teaching because it is a job that is built on making and nurturing relationships. But, unfortunately, masks get in the way of this. I would be the first person to advocate that me and my students wear masks if it significantly affected people’s safety. But it doesn’t. After experiencing so many wonderful moments getting to know students this past fall, it’s clear that mask-wearing “out of an abundance of caution” isn’t worth it. 

We didn't know about in the fall of 2020. We know better now. 

Now it's time to make sure we do better, and move on from the idea of masking our children. 

Year 13: Week 4 - Having Fun

One of my goals this year is to have fun. I

n the stress of the early pandemic and, well, the later part of the pandemic, it was easy to forget to have fun. And no, fun is not the only important part of music education. However, now, in this time in the world and in my students' lives, and in my life, music class needs to be joyful and fun.

I had a choice to just mail in and not do much with a 5th-grade skit for our County Fair. Each grade for this event puts on a booth for other students. We have an assembly before County Fair in which each grade presents their booth activity. Some grades do a video or a simple announcement. I have taken pride in organizing the 5th-grade doing something funny, awesome, and a little weird.

This has taken the form of having the entire grade rap a verse from a Beastie Boys song and them singing "Rainbow Connection," except the lyrics are "what are there so many songs about rainbows" sang repeatedly throughout the song. This is an opportunity to have fun with humor and music, which is tricky.

Part of me wants to get going with my 5th-grade music curriculum, and no one would give me any grief if I didn't put together a skit, and I was really close this year to just letting it go. But then I got an idea. And I figured that it was important to have fun with this. Things have been going pretty well with my 5th grade, but it felt like we needed something like this. I wanted them to see that I was doing something for them and that the only way to get what they wanted was to really trust me and work hard.

In a short amount of time, I taught them parts of "I Love Rock and Roll,"

"Wake Me Up Before You Go-Go," 

And an extended version of "Baby Shark."

 

While we had fun with these songs, I also taught about some important things to think about. Joan Jett was a pioneer as a women rock musician. George Michael did an incredible amount of charity work. He inspired others as an out and proud gay man; the baby shark kids were Korean-American and Korean-Scottish.

Oh, and I made "Baby Shark" much longer than expected by introducing the extended family of sharks in extra verses. I think the other students will find this funny and slightly annoying. But, on the other hand, I think this is funny, and my 5th graders get the joke I'm going for, or they pretend they do.

Was it the most productive lesson this week as we worked on this? I mean, they learned about important artists and great songs. In moments when the pieces we know seem less fun, this memory we all share of the silliness of these lessons will carry us through.

This week, like many weeks, had a lot going on, and not all of it was fun, but I'm glad I chose to spend time with my 5th graders being silly. Genuinely enjoying the time that you share with students affirms how much you value them. In a world where so many people don't seem to prioritize children, taking the time to show students that you enjoy spending time with them helps them see that they are important, powerful, and wonderful.

Year 13: Week 3 - Getting Emotional

For a while, it was easier not to feel. 

When you are wearing a mask and facing a classroom full of students wearing masks, the literal barrier creates an emotional barrier. It's harder to be vulnerable, present, and real when there is so much between us. When the face is covered, and the communication that happens around the words in the face, the brows, and the mouth goes away, you are just apart. It's hard to connect, it's hard to communicate, and it's hard to share deep feelings.  

During the times of wearing masks, there were emotional connections I made with my students, but it felt lacking and strained. Also, with all the stuff going on in my personal life, struggling through the pandemic, sometimes it was important personally to not be as emotionally connected to my students, well, because I had to save that emotional energy for my student or because I was drained from all that my personal life asked of me.  

Maybe it was because of how wonderful this summer was or because of all that is changing in my life, but I've felt an exciting sense of balance. I know that my family is the most critical priority in my life, and the longing that I have to spend more time at home feels right. This clarity is helping make work feel more enjoyable. There are things that I feel like I have a good hold on, and there are many things that I feel behind on. However, I feel I am getting good work done at school.  

Engaging with my students in work feels more connected and emotional than in the past couple of years. As a result, I'm being emotionally affected in a way that surprised me.  

I'd started teaching my 4th graders "Crowded Table" by The Highwomen.  

 

It is fun to revisit the song I have taught in previous years. In my introduction to this song, I talked about what it means to feel alone in a crowd. I talked about how I feel alone as the only Asian-American person in a room. The Highwomen were trying to do something about feeling alone as women in the music industry, which is a feeling everyone sadly experiences. By the time I got to talking about how the meaning of this song had changed with the pandemic, I was barely able to keep it together.  

 

Hearing my students tell me about how the experienced the early days of the pandemic was sad at times, but more than anything it felt vulnerable and important. 

I also felt really emotional when I saw the look of awe and wonder when I showed my students Prince's Superbowl performance.  

 

This was the first time some of my students had even seen Prince perform. I felt so lucky that I lived in Prince's time and that I could share all that incredible about Prince with my students.  

Then there were moments when I got genuinely excited when my middle school students got their first sound on the flute.  

I feel like an emotional mess in class, and it's kind of nice.