Thanks for your continued support of the weekly email - if you’ll indulge me, I plan to just muse regularly based on what's on my mind during the summer as opposed to specific in/out of the classroom ideas.  

What I’m thinking about this week: QUIT

As a rule, public school teachers are set on hyperdrive and always moving at 1,000 mph.  Personally, I’m wound so tight that I make coffee nervous. ;) When summer finally arrives (a couple more weeks for me), I struggle to shut it down.  If I’m not careful, I find myself tossing and turning in every ‘free’ moment thinking about all the things I should have done or need to do, and before I know it, school is back in session, and I’m already stressed!

While my job is way more fun than working, I have to remind myself that it is OK to quit. 

In the classroom - Shut My Mouth: The last week of school brings a myriad of emotions and a significant number of logistical challenges.  Couple that with an environment where both students (and some staff) have a casual (at best) relationship with school expectations, and things are bound to get weird.  Even the best kids can push our buttons. 

More often than I’d like to admit, the first thing I want to say is NOT the last thing I want them to remember about me or their experience in our program.  

Here is a quick Sunday night musing about what I’m focusing on this week.

In the classroom - a Commercial Success: Our final concert is Tuesday night.  We’re playing a lot of new music and (like always) we could certainly use a few more rehearsals.  For years, I would get extremely stressed and (more often than I’d like to admit) I would take it out on the ensemble.  We could play easier rep, and it would certainly be tighter, but I’d rather do it this way.  

A colleague once taught me that we’re not searching for a squeaky clean performance this week, but rather a Commercial Success.  If the kids and their families leave on Tuesday night humming a tune or two, with big smiles on their faces from the moving experience of a night of inspired music-making, then we’ve won.  Will there be a couple of moments that don’t live up to my expectations?  Could be, but the cost of getting it there isn’t worth it to me anymore.  

Please don’t misunderstand;

In the classroom - Varied Fundamentals: In a continued effort to embrace the chaos that the end of the year brings, I try to vary the fundamental activities multiple times a week to test out new concepts for possible future use and attempt to keep kids from ‘going on auto pilot.’  

Here are a couple I’ve used recently:

• Long tone exercises based around a new tonic - try Bb or Eb instead of F for a change

• Flow studies utilizing flutter articulation - flutter a flow study at the softest volume you can control a resonant sound then after a couple of reps, return to ‘straight’ tone and see if there is a more open/resonate core to their sound

• As & Bs / Odds & Evens: break the group into two segments and have them do call and response or handoffs of phrases

Behind the scenes - Sometimes I don’t want to…

In the classroom - shuffle the delivery, but still deliver:  as the school year winds to a close, it feels like every day is a new (and disruptive) adventure.  If it isn’t STAAR, it's AP testing, field trips, or assemblies.  Couple this with the myriad of different directions we’re being pulled in behind the scenes, and it seems futile to run a typical rehearsal in the face of constantly shifting, atypical situations. 

I'm committed to delivering high-quality experiences, but on some days, I can’t maintain my normal approach and still deliver.  The only way I’ve found to not lose my sanity is to embrace the disruption and add to it. 

In the classroom - A Synthesis of Skills: As our ensembles shift focus from UIL evaluations towards the Spring Concert, we coach that this concert cycle is an opportunity for students to showcase a synthesis of skills.  With the number of distractions (from AP testing to Student Faculty Volleyball Games and everything in between), there just isn’t enough available bandwidth for us to teach them every note, rhythm, and style marking they need for the Spring Concert.  In an attempt to maintain some level of musical integrity (and dignity 😂), I hype the idea that this chaotic and fragmented approach is intentional.  I explain that we’ve utilized the last seven months helping them gather the tools necessary to achieve without hands-on attention from the staff.  This concert cycle will land much closer to the professional world.  Performers need to attend rehearsal with every detail of their parts prepared in advance.  They need to assume we’ll only get one or two reps prior to performance.  In short, they should enjoy the autonomy of this time and take extreme ownership over being performance ready without the engagement of class splits, weeks of sectionals, masterclasses, passoffs, etc.