Year 4: Week 1 – A Sound That Only A Music Teacher Could Love

After hearing almost seventy 6th graders try to play the saxophone for the first time, I was ready for the day to be over.

Wednesday, I taught the entire sixth grade split up into four class periods (three of which were in a row without any break). We broke down each section into small groups that rotated between the flute, clarinet and saxophone. Next week we are having the students try the trumpet and trombone. This experience is exhausting. It involves a fair amount of 6th grade saliva, helping kids through insecurities and students producing musical “sounds” that only a music teacher can appreciate.

But it doesn’t have to be like this.

At most schools when students choose between choir and band, not every student tries all of the band instruments. Usually there is some kind of assembly where musicians come in and demonstrate the instruments. Then students write down whether they are interested in band and list two or three instruments they want to try. These students then get about a five-minute experience on each instrument before choosing which one they want or play. Many great band programs start this way and this works for a lot of schools.

This process is pretty expedient and directs energy specifically at kids who show interest. In some ways it’s a more focused experience but this process didn't feel right to me when I first came to this school four years ago to start the band program.

How many kids don’t know they like playing an instrument unless they actually try to play one? How many people are we missing when we don’t make experiences happen for all of the students?  This “recruitment” process is set up to be just a means to and end.  Why can’t we make it more significant of an experience?

This is what we do. We get our hands on a bunch of instruments and we get some musicians to come in and help. We split each class up into two group so it looks like this.  Each group has nine people and there are a teacher and a musician in each group.

	Group 1	Group 2
1st  half of class	Flute	Saxophone/Clarinet
2nd half of class	Saxophone/Clarinet	Flute

Each half of class is about 20 minutes long (with transitions that adds up to our 50 minute class period). The saxophone and clarinet sessions are only ten minutes long. There are enough similarities between these instruments that this made sense and it’s important that students have more time on the flute because of the slower learning curve and unique technique of that instrument.

The next week is the same except its with trumpets and trombones. We ask students who are interested in percussion to come in individually.  Also during this week we have another music class in which students have a choral experience.  

After the fourth year of working this process I still feel its worth the extra work and the exhaustion at the end of the day. Some students will walk into this experience telling me that they want to do choir. I tell them that I’m glad that they’ve made this decisions but I want them to try the instruments for the fun of it. Because of this, our choir students pay more respect to our band students because they know first hand how hard these instruments can be.

Other students who never thought they would want to play are surprised. When I see the look on someone’s face when they react with amazement at how good it feels to play an instrument, I don’t even notice the discordant honks of saxophones around me.

For most of my students this is the only opportunity they will ever have in their entire lives to play these instruments. Shouldn’t this be more than a five-minute experience?

In the rush to get the band off the ground, teachers often speed through the recruiting. My process is really slow. We don’t have our first band class with instruments until the fifth week of school. Why don’t we do this in the spring before this school year? Because about a quarter of the sixth grade is new and we don’t want there to be another experience they have missed out on.

Think about the your recruitment process and how students choose to be in band or choir.  It should be a meaningful musical experience for all students regardless of their musical inclination.  Imagine that you've worked through your process having students choose between band or choir.  If your music program was cut right after students completed this experience, would you feel that this process was a waste of time?

Find a way so that this answer is no.  Remember we are not building bands and choirs, we're building a musical community.  It's worth the extra time and listening to the squeaks, honks and squeals that only a music teacher could love. 

Parenthood: Week 14 - What Every Man (and woman) Should Know About Breastfeeding

A mother produces milk, a baby nurses from his or her mother for a couple months and then the baby moves onto solid food when the baby is about a year old. Seems pretty straightforward right?

Wrong.

I like to think of myself as a pretty knowledgeable man. However, I knew little to nothing about breastfeeding when my wife got pregnant. Our societies’ puritanical squeamishness of the female body extends beyond sexuality to basic biological functions like breastfeeding. For a culture that is fascinated with images of women’s breasts, our lack of awareness about the biological function of the breast is astonishing.

So here’s a primer. Here are some things about breastfeeding I’ve learned in the past year that every man (and every woman) should know.

1. It’s a natural activity that doesn’t always come naturally (or quickly): Some women have no problem with breastfeeding. Other women end up formula feeding, because breastfeeding is so difficult. For many mothers, it takes weeks or even months before the baby consistently "latches" on to the breast.

The process of learning how to breastfeed can be emotional, frustrating, and exhausting. A mom may have no problem getting her first child to breastfeed and then struggle with a second child. A mother who is successfully feeding her six month old might have gone through sessions with a lactation consultant, hours of failed attempts, or breakdowns. You never know.

2. It’s not always a choice: The choice to breastfeed or not isn’t always a choice. Breastfeeding requires a mother to have access to her child. In order to pump breast milk, a women needs a room and enough break time to pump. (By the way, pumping really isn’t “break time” for women, so don’t imply this to a woman even if you see her texting on her iPhone while she is hooked up to a breast pump. Pumping takes a lot of time and dedication, and it's a chore. It is not fun.)

Even though this is mandated by law, it's still not actually an option to many women, especially those in lower income brackets. And let’s not go with the “well, if the job doesn’t provide those things, then she should quit that job and get a different one” argument, because that’s just offensive and ignorant.

For women who pump at work, they need to do it every 2–3 hours without fail. Most give up their lunch breaks, prep time, or other free time to do this, every single day. They can't skip a day, a week, or even a feeding. Some women (quite legitimately) choose not to do this. Breastfeeding as a working mother is a huge commitment.

3. There are more reasons than it seems: Beyond economic situations, there are many different reasons a woman may or may not breastfeed. Here are just a couple reasons: supply issues (not producing enough milk), cultural traditions, sexuality, psychological issues (postpartum depression), physical limitations of the mother or the child, multiples, social norms, and gender roles. Also, some women simply don’t want to breastfeed. If that’s the choice a woman makes, that decision makes sense, because...

4. Breastfeeding is not the most important thing you do for your child: There are approaches to child-rearing that argue that breastfeeding is the most important thing you can do for you child emotionally and physically. While there are many benefits of breastfeeding backed up by scientific research, children reared on a combination of breast milk and formula, or on formula alone do not become the dregs of society.  One of the smartest and most successful people I know never had a drank a drop of breast milk as a baby.  In my own life experiences, I have found no correlation between the success and happiness of people and whether or not their parents breast-fed them.

5. There’s a war out there: One of the first questions expectant moms are asked about are their plans to breastfeed or not. Between girlfriends, doctors, mothers, grandmothers and complete strangers, expectant moms are inundated with unsolicited advice and arguments around breastfeeding. There are people who in an almost militant way try to convince women to breastfeed their child. This contributes to depression and shame in woman who can’t or choose not to breastfeed and superiority complexes in a some woman who do. The conversation out there can sometimes be divisive, making the challenge of child-rearing only more difficult.

Men, now that you have an idea of what’s out there, what are we suppose to do as prospective fathers? Well, first off, support whatever choice your partner makes about breastfeeding. Help her unpack her reasons and make sure she has thought it through.  Whatever her choice is, help her out. If she chooses to breastfeed then do extra diaper duty and research nipple ointments. If she is using a breast pump, help her out by cleaning the parts of the pump, and if she chooses formula than make sure you are doing your share of the bottle feeding and cleaning.

This is not an easy issue for mothers to deal with and there’s a lot more than five points of information about this topic. Be informed, listen to your partner, and be present during these discussion. I guarantee there is someone in your partner's life who doesn’t agree with her choices surrounding breastfeeding and doesn’t support her.  So she needs you to have her back and to constantly reassure her that she is making a great choice for your child.

Choosing to trust your wife and support her in her decisions around breastfeeding and other difficult decisions related to being a mother is one of the most important things that you can do for your child, your wife and yourself.  

Year 4: Week 0 - Looking Foward

Year 1 was an adventure. I had never taught at this school and it seemed like every week I was experiencing something for the first time.

Year 2 was a challenge. I knew the scope of the year, which comforted me but also made me feel stress, as I knew what was coming up next.

Year 3 was time to grow up. For the first time I taught at a school for a third year. No longer could I claim the guise of a rookie teacher. At the end of year I got confirmation that I was truly part of this school community when I was awarded tenure.

Year 4 is going to be something different all together and I’m not sure how it’s going to pan out.

I still love my school and I love my job, but my experiences with my son Ollie and my wife these past couple months have shown me that my priority, what’s most important to me in my life, is my family.

I’ve always felt that my family was central in my life but before Ollie, it was easier to spend more energy focusing on work. I still get into a great work mode, but at the back of my mind, I’m thinking about my son.

I believe that the best way to take care of another person is to take care of yourself and the best way to love someone is to love yourself. Enjoying my time at school and challenging myself to grow is not only a financial contribution to my family but it’s also a way that I can take care of my own needs socially, professionally and philosophically.

The challenges are laid out in front of me. I’m taking days off for my paternity leave this fall. I have new teachers that I’m working with along with a new principal. These professionals can help me in my job with fresh perspectives. However at the same time I need to help them get to know what I do and help guide them through the scope of the year.

Then there’s the role of co-music department chair, which I’m sharing with the previous department chair. I’m looking forward to helping serve my colleagues in this capacity but I’m also nervous about situations I’ve never dealt with and conversations I’ve yet to have.

When I think about school, I’m excited. I’m looking forward to getting to know my kids and the process of putting together great musical experiences for my students and the school community. More than that I can’t wait for the little moments that make the struggles of teaching worth it and the energy from my students that keeps me going.

Year 4 is going to be fun, confusing, challenging, exacerbating and full of moments that I'll struggle to accept and memories that I hope I will never forget.

Ollie: Weeks 8-10

If I Could Turn Back The Hands Of Time by R. Kelly

Conversation between me and Diana as we were sorting through storage boxes:

D: Do you want this cd?
K: prob not. . . Wait a sec. . . OH MY GOD! Yes!!
D: Are you sure? I mean it's not . . .
K: Give it to me NOW!.

The CD in question was “Now That’s What I Call Music 3.”

For those of you who have no idea what I’m talking about, the “Now That’s What I Call Music” was a series of compilation CD’s of current popular songs. If you watched MTV and VH1 regularly like I did growing up, you were used to seeing television commercials for these CDs ALL of the time.

Believe it or not the series is still going on and is up to number 43. While the television commercials don’t seem as prevalent, someone out there must still be buying these things.

After listening to this CD over the past week.,I’ve come to the some conclusions about the state of pop music as represented by this CD in 1999.

Enrique Iglesias is shockingly sensual. “Bailamos” is absolutely astounding in its level of “heat.”


I still don’t care about what Limp Bizkit will do for the “Nookie.” This song is all immature bravado and doesn’t describe any real substance.


Oh, K-Ci & Jojo, I believe that you want to hear that it’s real.


And then there’s R. Kelly – Mr. “Trapped In the Closet, went on trial for doing things that I get creeped out even thinking about thinking about, wave around arms like just weird conducting that choir in the end of the “I Believe I Can Fly” video.”


“If I Could Turn Back The Hands Of Time” was not a huge hit for R. Kelly. However this song, a beautiful mixture of “Unchained Melody” and 1970s soul is a powerful, emotional and touching ballad. R. Kelly’s schmaltz can be a bit much and it definitely feels melodramatic but this is an example of when this was done right.


The sentiment in this song of regret is instantly relatable (unlike the call for needing a city like Gotham).


Instead of projecting a “playa” image, R. Kelly portrays a man who feels at a loss, who has weakness and surprisingly vulnerability. The reflections that R. Kelly makes are simple but insightful. For example, “You had enough love for the both of us” is a powerful realization of how much his partner had to give and how little he gave. Also this describes how blind he was to the blessings in his life.

What really feels timeless about this song is that if Jimmy Ruffin sang this song in the 1960s or Adele sang it right now, it would be a hit.

R. Kelly through his career sometimes seems to have become a caricature of himself. It’s easy to forget that behind the bravado and the controversy, you have a great singer who understands his place in popular music. As “Now That’s What I Call Music 3,” takes me back to another time in my life, there’s some things that I’m glad I forgot about like “Nookie,” but others things I’m glad I rediscovered.

Parenthood: Week 13 – Nana's Story

“He told me to give him Carnation canned milk diluted half and half with water.”

My wife Diana’s Welsh Nana sometimes repeats stories. She's allowed to—she's over 80. I heard the one about the Carnation canned milk for the first time almost a decade ago, but it wasn’t until hearing it again last week that I realized why this moment had stayed with her after all of these years.

The story goes like this: My father-in-law Andy was a big, hungry baby. She tried to nurse him, but he just kept crying. So Nana went to the town doctor (this was a small enough town where there was only one doctor) and he instructed her to buy a can of Carnation milk, dilute it with water “half and half” and feed it to him. She proceeded to do this and it helped satiate his hunger. He stopped crying.

This story was the first thing she thought of when Diana told Nana she was pregnant, and Nana has told us this story almost every time we have seen her since. The first few times I heard this story, I didn’t understand why Nana seemed to get choked up every time she told it. So she gave her baby some canned milk, big deal. People do this ALL of the time now with formula.

Hearing this story again after becoming a dad, I realized that this story embodies some of the most powerful and undeniable emotions about being a parent.

The experience of being a parent is a mix of instinct, social expectations, and spirituality. These three things combine in almost every action and choice parents make and nowhere is this more present than in feeding children.  The most basic biological instinct for parents is to feed their child. When this doesn’t go as expected it touches a deep primal instinct.  Sometimes societal norms make parents feel better about their plight, but often they only make these feelings worse. 

Nana couldn’t feed her child enough food by nursing him. She couldn't fulfill the most basic and most necessary need that babies have. What was she supposed to do?  She was a mother when formula was not widely used.  There weren't entire sections in the book store about child rearing, and the vast parent support network over the Internet was non-existent.

The answer she got from her doctor was simple and logical. He didn’t make her feel guilty for not being able to supply enough milk. This doctor gave her the tools to fulfill her instincts as a mother to feed her baby.  She was not a failure because she couldn't provide enough food for her baby. She could—she was just going to do it in a different way than she expected.  This doctor helped her comfort her son and stop his crying.

For this, she has forever been grateful. Even though the doctor passed away, she continues to send Christmas cards to his wife. When we drove past the building that used to be his office last weekend, she excitedly pointed it out as it came into sight.

When I visited Nana last weekend and she told us this story, I saw her glance over to my father-in-law. For a moment I could see that she wasn’t looking at a middle-aged man, but her baby. For a split second her memory took over and she remembered that baby in her arms, hungry and crying, the doctor who showed her the way to take care of him and what it felt like to soothe this baby that now sat next to her driving through the small town she once called home.

Sometimes we get annoyed when elderly people tell the same story over and over, but there’s a reason that this happens. We don’t always catch the meaning of these stories the first time we hear them.

Next time you hear that story from an older relative for what seems like the fiftieth time, give him or her your attention.  Really listen and even though the words of the story may come out exactly as you predict, you may learn something about life that you will never forget.  

We Can’t Stop by Miley Cyrus

We all should be proud of Miley.  

“We Can’t Stop” is not on the same level of the pop masterpiece that “Party In The U.S.A.” (which I wrote about in this earlier post). But it’s an interesting song that demonstrates the spirit and strength of a young pop star as she struggles with challenges and double standards.



Much has been written about the drug references in this song and the sexuality and drug use Miley has expressed when promoting this song. The first reference is “dancing with Molly,” which apparently alludes to the drug ecstasy (which sometimes is referred to as “Molly.”) The second references is  in the second verse, “tryina get a line in the bathroom” referring to cocaine.

Should we be annoyed/outraged that former child star that had a show on the Disney channel is not making drug references in her songs? First off her kids show was canceled almost two years ago, many of her fans from that era, have grown up. Yes, many of her fans from when she was younger are only teenagers and maybe they could do better without hearing drug references, but most will be fine.

Snoop Dogg was only one year older than Miley at the age of 21, when he broke out rapping about drugs in a far more explicit way. If you’re not a fan of Miley’s stripper reference and her sexuality, take a look at what Rihanna was doing when she was seventeen. Let’s not forget that Britney Spears was only seventeen when she asked us to “hit her one more time.”

Did generations of people who listened to these young artists sing sexually about drugs become deviants living in hedonistic sin? Look, I’m sure some people hear references in songs and get excited about them but most people make their choices regardless of what pop songs sing are about.  Music is powerful, but it's not THAT powerful.  Last time I checked, there's not legions of people running around dressed like Marilyn Manson.  

“We Can’t Stop,” like Lesley Gore’s 1963 anthem “It’s My Party,” is a declaration of independence. The fact that this song ruffled feathers and got people concerned about Miley’s influence has more to do with people’s discomfort with seeing a woman try to assert herself as a adult.

No, Miley didn’t handle the “Molly,” reference perfectly in interviews well, but most artists in the her situation handle it in a similar way with a white lie and a smile. Really, “Lucy In The Sky With Diamonds,” is not about LSD? Really? Really?!?

Miley says that this song represents where she is in her life right now. Whether we like to admit it or not, many twenty year old woman are exploring alcohol, drugs, and their own sexuality. Yes, caution is important with these activities, but most people come out the other end of these times in their lives just fine.

If Rihanna performed this song would the controversy around the lyrics and the music video be as critical? What if a guy sang these lyrics? Chris Brown was singing far more explicit and concerning lyrics when he was younger than Miley.
 
"We Can't Stop," isn't about drugs.  The line that holds the most meaning isn't a reference but a statement of belief: "Remember only God can judge you, Forget the haters cause somebody loves you."

Chill, this is a fun song.  The way she sings "we like to party," sounds really weird and the opening "God" voice chant, is funny and like the music video is more silly than anything else.  I'm proud of Miley for getting out there and reminding all of us that sometimes we just got to get out there and try something new we we can't stop.