What do you mean lesson plan? I just direct a band.

This post is part of a blog project on student teaching hosted at So You Want to Teach.

My director is going to be out tomorrow - this is when all the effort put into obtaining that pesky sub credential pays off. He's left a list of songs for the jazz bad to run, but it's a practice, and not a rehearsal. With their rhythm section, they're pretty much autonomous, and I couldn't really have much constructive input since most of the kids know more about Jazz than I do about Irish trad - or anything else for that matter.

However, everything about the other two periods was left to me. What to rehearse, and how. And more importantly, he wants me to rehearse the kids, even his audition ensemble, not just run them through their music. We only have a few weeks and he just dropped new music on them this Wednesday. This is the difference between being a conductor and being a teacher.

One small problem: I've never even seen a lesson plan for an ensemble course. I've put plenty together for the Music Theory course I interned in last year, but here I'm doing everything backwards. I've none of the credential programs under my belt, but have over a year's worth of observation and teaching experience in this same classroom. I fretted about this for a while until I realized, I put a lesson plan together before I step up to the podium every day. 

In preparing my score, I go through it, listen to a recording endlessly, or more often, sing it (much to my brother's annoyance). Anywhere I trip in singing it, I drop a sticky note. Anywhere I think a problem will occur, sticky note - usually covered with barely decipherable scribbles. These aren't notes to myself about conducting, they're to use to help direct a rehearsal. Anytime I come up with something to say about the piece that would help the kids in artistically shaping the piece - like "With Quiet Courage" being about a mother, who was later diagnosed with cancer, exhibiting the courage to face down anything and everything life has to offer without flinching, instead of the brash heroic deeds with which we generally associate courage - that's a sticky note.

Anytime we stumble in rehearsal, and I mention something to correct it, I go back through rehearsal after class and write down everything, and stick it in my score. After a while, if things are no longer an issue and the kids routinely get it right, the sticky note gets tossed.

Right now, my score for Chorale and Toccata by Jack Stamp is covered to the point where I almost can't read the music. Almost. They just got it on Wednesday, and hopefully in three weeks, the score will be clean and ready for the Festivity of Bands. Tomorrow I'm going to come in and pull down a few of his books on "Teaching Music through Performance in Band" and find the pieces we're playing to get another point of view on what's important in the piece, and a few more sticky notes will go into it.

The only other aspect is organization and pacing of the rehearsal, something I'm still working on perfecting. The pieces will be on the board before the class gets in, something my director doesn't often do and we'll tear through them with a lingering promise of giving the kids "the rest of the period off" if we accomplish everything I want. Which means maybe five minutes out of 50, but they won't know that. It's Friday, their teacher isn't there, they'll expect a bit of a break, which means they'll work for it. I just need to keep their instruments on their lips as long as possible. I say on their lips because I have ten trumpets and  seven trombones in my back row in one period. If you work with a school band, that actually means something.

My lesson plan needs to be modular and flexible, it's not seventh grade science or 9th grade english. Sometimes I wish it were, other times I'm glad it isn't. I have to adapt what I'm teaching to what they need to work on, what they're giving me and how it measures up to what I expect. Now, that sounds just like any other class, but I'm doing it beat by beat, second by second, and not chapter by chapter or test by test.

I have great respect for the music teachers I work with, after trying to emulate what they do for just two periods. Different music for each class. I work with a teacher whose mutters a litany with pride: "I teach 7 sections of 6 classes in 5 classrooms. I have 4 bosses at 3 schools, and I commute 2 hours a day for 1 job." After years of doing this, they just fall on their feet, as if they were airdropped onto the podium ready to go and can rehearse without too much preparation. But I need my sticky notes and an overarching plan, so here we go:

6th period: Symphonic Band. Theme for the day: LISTEN!

Warm up, tune.

Masada, the first fast part. I don't have the score with me.

Really tune.

Run the Times Square 1944 section towards the end where it pits 4 against 3, take them through it slowly, which will hamper their ability to match up, force them through it and speed up. Spend no more than 6 minutes doing so.

NEW MUSIC. Chorale and Toccata. Not technically new, they've read it once, and I'm sure my bass section has been going nuts. Skip the showery entrance straight to the beautiful bassoon/english horn solo. Normally, I wouldn't make the kids sit through a solo section, but it's important that the trumpets listen to the soloists. Make sure the soloists understand that they have a give and take dynamic in this duet. One pushes and the other gives, then pushes back. The trumpets come in right after and need to match not just the dynamics, but color of the solo. Something hard to do pitting 10 trumpets against two double reeds. together they need to bring out the warmth of their lower register, while sounding like one trumpet, over a hill somewhere for a measure or two then growing. The rest of the band needs to notice the dynamic (not volume, but dynamic) between the soloists and reiterate that when accompanying

the trumpets. 

So those four bars were a mouthful, that's why I generally speak in music instead of english at the podium. Tragically, I can't sing for you here. I know my timpanist was practicing this piece at lunch today, and I'm sure my bass clarinets are rocking the toccata and are ready for tomorrow.

7th Period.

Longford Legend I.

Tune

Longford III.

New Music. (Mostly New) With Quiet Courage. The piece is thickly scored, so the lack of horns and oboe in my concert band is not going to be a problem (though always disheartening). The problem is going to be that without varying instrumentation, the piece starts to sound cyclical and isn't interesting. I'm going to try and combat that by focusing on the countermelodies and bringing them out more, even to the point of absurdity if it will bring about contrast in the piece. It's likely too easy for them, and we won't play it past tomorrow, but it's a really pretty piece, and they need to focus on intonation. They have enough technically difficult stuff on their plate and sometimes they're so focused on their fingers, they don't listen to what they sound like. This piece will force that. 

Then come the shape note pieces, Geneva Variations and Rhapsody on American Shape Note Melodies. The first in my opinion is too hard for the kids, the latter, too easy. We'll run them and see what they like and don't like about each piece and what they can accomplish. 

My brother just popped in to ask me a favor: if I'm going to be listening to the music I make my kids play all night, force them to play something awesome like the theme to Jurassic Park. As cheesy as it sounds, it's not a bad idea, especially for our band trip to San Diego this May. I at least started playing the soundtrack for his benefit. 

I've got a bit of system down, but I really don't know how anyone else does it. My lesson plan for tomorrow? Attempt to topple my biggest challenge: shut up long enough that the kids are listening to themselves instead of me. I hope I can pull it off.

Mr. Obama's Package.

It's time I briefly revert back to my original intention of this blog; to provide completely unsolicited and relatively uninformed commentary on what's going on and how it affects me. I mean, isn't that the standard definition of the purpose of a blog? Evidence certainly seems to point that way.

Anyways, HR 1 for this congress is coming to vote today, otherwise known as "THE STIMULUS PACKAGE" (that was a big, booming baritone announcer voice.) All week we've heard how the house minority leadership has griped about this and that; not enough tax cuts, ridiculous amounts of spending and the magic word: Pork.

Though the bill has been meticulously searched and there are no congressional earmarks, Mr. Boehner has gotten a lot of airtime denouncing projects democrats have thrown into the bill to further stimulate the economy. Condoms and replanting the lawn on the national mall have gotten the most attention, and though it's hard to defend the programs with a straight face, some have done so.

What bothered me most, was tuning in to All Things Considered yesterday on my way home from Davis and hearing that somewhere around 50 million in support for the National Endowment for the Arts was being labeled as Pork.

Ms. Blair made an argument that stuck with me, the Endowment has means to get the money into peoples hands, and fast. There is a system in place that's governed by a peer reviewed grant making process.

Think of it this way: An artist in San Francisco gets his grant for a couple thousand dollars. He might leave his job at Starbucks that he's had to hold down to support himself to work on his project. He's not going to cash his check, take all the money home with him in small bills and make a giant paper maché penis. He's going to be living off of that money and supporting himself and his work with it, it's going straight into the economy and the government is supporting a part of our society that is shrinking under the shadow of the cult of prosperity and profit.

I think everyone should listen to more Bernstein, they may not like his music, but that's not necessary, his words will work for now:

"I think it is time we learned the lesson of our century: that the progress of the human spirit must keep pace with technological and scientific progress, or that spirit will die. It is incumbent on our educators to remember this; and music is at the top of the spiritual must list. When the study of the arts leads to the adoration of the formula (heaven forbid), we shall be lost. But as long as we insist on maintaining artistic vitality, we are able to hope in man’s future."

Then there's the issue of education and HR 1. The Grey Lady brought up a much missed point in the stimulus package yesterday. Granted, who would want to talk about schools when you could talk about condoms - but the stimulus package offers up huge aid for schools, federal aid, which has a lot of people worried. 

Opponents of the aid are afraid huge federal investment in schools at the state level will fundamentally change our system. Though our education is paid for in part by, we are not schooled by the federal government, something that's very important. But the question is, who's going to fund the public schools in California right now? California can't even pay its payroll of state employees, let alone fund programs. All state budgets are thinly stretched, trying to cut spending instead of raising taxes in this time of economic decline. States don't have the financial clout to borrow money, and they can't just print more like the federal government is doing. We need this support. Besides, money set aside for school construction will go far to shore up many jobs that have been lost since the the housing market crashed.

The federal government has already done enough damage to education at the state level with NCLB. They're involved in controlling what schools and teachers do with the ability to deny them funding, why don't we let them help instead? 

Csus4

This post is part of a blog project on Student Teaching hosted at So You Want to Teach.

Scrawled across the blackboard are some bar lines, a few ticks indicating rhythm and a chord symbol: C-sus4.

"How would you go about teaching a 13 year old pianist in your 7th grade jazz band how to read that? He's pretty good, has some Bach - a few 2 part inventions under his belt." 

Cmaj7 (sus2)

"How about that one? It's just gibberish to him. 'Where are the notes?' He asks."

The blackboard slowly starts to turn into a jazz chart and my hands get a little clammy.

School's back in session, and my "Instrumental Literature" course starts off by dropping me into the deepest end of the pool as far as my experience goes. We're looking at building a strong rhythm section in a junior high jazz band. At this level, the horns already know what they're doing, but how do you get the kid on the drum set to set them up properly when he barely reads music? Or the guitar player who maybe has Stairway to Heaven memorized but doesn't know that the term "comp" is actually short for accompaniment and not another word for "solo." How do you teach kids to swing eighths? Most of all, how can I lead them if I don't have a grasp of the jazz charts myself.

I'm out of my league, and I'm excited. If I was back taking structural geology classes or linear algebra, I'd be panicking, but those days are behind me. I paid my dues, got my degrees, and now every class I take has a direct stake in my future. And tackling an issue I've worried about constantly over the last few years, and doing it head on is kind of refreshing.

I come into work every day during fifth period and get to sort, file and copy to an awesome soundtrack of a full big band. I get all the administrative crap my director needs out of the way so I can work with the "real" bands during the following two periods, but I've never been put in a position to work with the jazz students.

Nor should I though. I play the tenor sax, but couldn't solo to save my life. Being self taught on your instrument in a department of performance majors is really intimidating and I never took the chance to stand up and take an improv class in front of them, something I almost regret. I suffer from a bit of performance anxiety - it used to take monumental courage to step up to the podium at a concert, and I still have trouble leaving the score behind and directing the ensemble even in rehearsal. As far as performance goes, as long as there is music in front of me, I had the confidence to keep up and even take a solo in the wind ensemble, but give me a lead sheet with chords and I'll fall apart.

Now however, that's all I have. I get to draw up parts for a rhythm section based off the lead sheet to Autumn Leaves and decide on which instrument I'd rather make a fool of myself  - trombone or saxophone - when I solo in two weeks. We'll see how long my excitement holds out.

I'm now wrestling with a more pressing question: what else about a jazz program might be an even bigger hurdle for me when trying to build one.

This post is really about rehearsal techniques... I think.

This post is part of a blog project on Student Teaching hosted at So You Want to Teach

DHS didn't have school today, and even if it did, I probably would have called in sick.  I put in enough hours over the weekend to take a week off if my contract allowed for comp time - but of course, it was all volunteered.

Instead of working, I drove down to Stockton to sort out the rest of my life.

After interviewing with the faculty, (who are awesome) I was told that as long as I filled out the paperwork I was guaranteed tuition remission for 9 units of study per semester for two years. 9 units, with a 20 hour assistantship AND student teaching is a full load. If I get everything in and they have the money, they'll even toss in a 3,000 stipend per semester - which, considering I won't be able to hold down a job that doesn't require me to work during normal business hours (school), or nights (rehearsals), would be pretty much necessary. I'm in a far better state of mind now than 6 months ago when I got the acceptance letter. I know my parents read this, and they can breathe a little easier now.

So, buoyed by some promise of a future, I sat in on the rehearsal of Pacific's Wind Ensemble, under the direction of Dr. Eric Hammer (under whom I'll be working as my graduate advisor next year).

This is an auditioned ensemble of conservatory musicians, all of whom are miles beyond me in any aspect of performance (Shh! don't tell anyone). But, what impressed me the most was the balance and instrumentation of the group. Used to a high school or general college wind ensemble, this group surprised me by having each part in the score covered by one or two musicians. Instead of fifteen flutes or clarinets, there were six each - balanced by three oboes, three bassoons, a bass clarinetist, four horns and a sax quartet, 5 trumpets, 3 bones, euphonium  and a tuba. 

This was professional instrumentation, and they were sailing through pieces like John Barnes Chance's Blue Lake Overture (Track 6), and Copland's Lincoln Portrait (9:40 in the interview)- a piece that I've loved since I had to rip it apart for a ten page paper for an American Studies class on semiotics and images in society. 

However great the ensemble was, it was due to its director, and I want to bring to light some observations of rehearsal techniques he used that I want to adopt for my own.

1. Ear training. - This is something I'm sure high school teachers wrestle with: how much time to spend rehearsing the music, and how much time to spend on things like theory when the class is designed to be little more than a performance opportunity. If I have the chance as a high school teacher, I'm going to remove all work required by a marching program during rehearsal in the students first year to focus on theory. 
   
   Dr. Hammer started rehearsal off by getting everyone to hum America the Beautiful off of the B flat they tuned from (casting it in the key of E flat), then play it, then sing it in Solfege and play it again, which fixed all the problems. It was impressive watching the student's theory brains kick as they figured it out. He does this with a new song every rehearsal.
   
   
2. "Sizzling" - Air control. I know how important it is, but it's something that I practice on my own, usually with buzzing, and definitely not in rehearsal. Dr. Hammer had the students "sssss-ing" their parts for part of the Blue Lake Overture, and while he conducted it, I could hear the phrasing and dynamics with just their air. I could focus on the melody bouncing around the room and afterwards, something clicked with the students and the entire piece had more substance behind it - it wasn't heavier, just more massive - if that makes sense.
   
   
3. Metronomic Abandonment - They are planning on including the Washington Post March in their concert just in time for President's day, and what surprised me was after all their work, they started falling apart on Sousa. They were stretching the time at the trio, and people weren't watching the director, it started to bounce along like an accordion, stretching out to compensate for speeding up, etc. In a response to this, Dr. Hammer placed his right hand behind his back after a preparatory beat and only gave artistic gestures and cues with his right and, leaving the band to fend for itself, and forcing them to listen to each other. This might end up in a trainwreck with younger groups, but the awareness sudden awareness of a lack of visual cues caused many to focus more on listening.
   
   It cleaned up well.
   
   
4.  Itinerary - Dr. Hammer conducted all business at the end of the rehearsal. At the top, he had a sheet with everything on it, and students picked it up as they walked in. It had a breakdown of every piece to be played during the 1.5 hour rehearsal, and a meticulously structured schedule on how much time was to be spent on each piece. This allowed the rehearsal to move swiftly and orderly, and end with reminders and motivation on the part of the director. Also included on the itinerary, which the students took home with them was everything for Wednesday's rehearsal, and what they needed to practice to be prepared. A little much, but the smoothness with which the rehearsal ran was testament to the order and discipline of the group.

To sum it up, I'm really excited and am chomping at the bit to work with someone whose conducting is as controlled and powerful as it is fluid and  graceful, and am looking to get some real feedback on my own. 

Is it August yet?

<3 Parents.

This post is part of a blog project on student teaching, hosted at So you Want to Teach

Forgive typos, I haven't slept since Saturday morning and I'll edit this later.

Parents.

If there's one thing I'm going to drag away from my experiences working with the bands at Davis High, it's that parent involvement and support are probably some of the most important things in teaching any child. Whatever the subject, only a small amount of learning ever happens in the classroom and anything taught there is reinforced by learning at home. When it comes to a performing arts program, however, parental support is paramount due to all the effort required by a student outside of a classroom. Any performance program requires a regular practice regimen -akin to homework- but all the concerts, festivals, workshops, trips, everything done to make the students better musicians (and make the elective more appealing than art or yearbook), requires a substantial amount of time, effort and money on the part of the parents. Most of my students have their own instruments, many are in extra curricular performance groups and about 80% receive private lessons, and have since fourth grade. This is all a substantial financial investment on the part of the parents and reflects the affluence of the community, something I know I can't replicate when I step into my first job as a teacher.

Operational budgets for performance programs are generally barely enough to pay for routine maintenance on their instruments; let alone venues, festival fees, travel, and the ubiquitous annual "band trip." Fundraising is an integral part of every performance program I know. Those stupid candy bar scams are the first thing to come to mind but thankfully the students I work with have parents who are deeply involved in both the school and community, and the kids are able to do most of their fundraising with their instruments. The bands rent themselves out in small combos at winter time to play for christmas parties, the jazz band and choirs put on an annual Cabaret, the Madrigals hold a Madrigal dinner between thanksgiving and christmas, but the one big thing our band program does is something called a "Playathon." 

I don't know whose idea this was, but it's akin to the "jog-a-thons" I did in elementary school. Kids beg for money, er collect pledges from close family and friends, either by hour or for the entire night - promising to attempt the amazing feet of playing for 12 hours, straight through the night without sleep.

This money doesn't go towards the band's operational budget, but towards the kids cost of the trips we take, some upwards of $600. Each student has their own account and the money is deposited and kept there for them, and any left over is carried over to next year's account. None of this would be possible without the Band Booster's program, and I am routinely surprised at the amount of organization and continuity in the program. They have an extensive charter and binders for each event throughout the year holding the lessons learned from the years previous and instructions on how things are done. The amount of parental involvement in this program is phenomenal and building a booster's program, or taking active involvement in an existing one will be a large priority of mine as a first year teacher.

Although too much parental involvement can lead to twitching, murderous glares from teachers, in building an amazing performing arts program, no matter how big of a pain they may be, parents are a teacher's greatest asset. 

Playathon.

So.... anyways, our director is past 60, and three years ago he declared the last Playathon. The kids got so upset because they loved the program so much that alumni came in, and parents stepped up to make it happen the next year without the director, bringing in student teachers to help conduct instead. Both this year and last I was put in charge of the music, while parents put up the organizational front and provided chaperones for the entire night. This playathon went so well, I want to keep the schedule and music somewhere for next year, and this is as good a place as any.

19:00 - Kids show up, warm up, tune.

19:30 - Kids give a "Concert in progress," performing works that they've only seen since they returned from winter break. This year, the Concert Band played Longford Legend, Appalachian Morning, and ... (I'm honestly too tired to remember the other one). The Symphonic Band performed Masada, Three Dance Episodes from On the Town, The Whispering Tree, and a roaringly busy piece they got on Wednesday called "Applause," one they pulled off marvelously. With set changes, these two concerts take about an hour and a half.

21:00 - The Jazz Band steps in. They gave an hour long concert, after playing all day at the Folsom Jazz Festival today. They scored all Superiors, scores in the 90s, but our director was less than satisfied with their performance - the best part is, so were they. They're looking to place at Monterey in a couple of months and need to tighten up quite a bit to do so. 

22:00 - Between ten and eleven, the pizza arrived, donated in small amounts from most of the pizza joints in Davis, a small college town with lots of pizza places. Before the kids got to chow down, we allowed guest conductors to jump in and direct the band. Mostly parents, some who have no idea what they're doing but a few are "regulars" and ham it up to the point where some of the kids are laughing so hard they can't even play right. This is another chance for fundraising, getting donations, or prizing this out at raffles. 

N.B. Don't loan your baton out to someone who doesn't know how to use it. Mine was broken before I had the chance to direct.

23:00 - The fun begins. At this point we have 45 minutes of rehearsal every hour running through pieces the kids have never seen before, or at least haven't seen in a year. During the other fifteen minutes, the kids run off to a dark room with a strobe light, thumping techno music and enough sugar and caffeine to put several large animals into hyperglycemic shock. I, myself stuck to a diet of carrot sticks, wheat thins and chai tea, learning from last year that a steady diet of Mountain Dew inhibits my ability to direct and causes my hands to shake. I also brought in help, a few extra directors, the student director, manager and drum major of the Aggie Band, all current music majors at UCD. There's no way I could direct a band for 7 hours on my own. Working with a combined band of about 150 kids, I lost my voice as it is, and that was working with them only 15 minutes every hour. 

Between 11 and 12 we started them off easy with "With Quiet Courage" "Three Ayers from Gloucster" and Holst's First Suite in Eb

00:00 - 01:00: WE decided to get the harder stuff out of the way while everyone was awake: Culloden III, El Camino Real (a beast to conduct on the fly), Holst's Second Suite in F (running the march as fast as we could).

01:00 - 02:00: Mars, Baroque Hoedown, and American Elegy

02:00 - 3:00: Here if the kids were dragging we made them sing instead, playing arrangements of Les Mis, Aladdin and the Lion King

03:00 - 04:00:  Continuing in the same vein we did Phantom of the Opera, Beauty and the Beast and Hunchback of Notre Dame. 

04:00 - 05:00: Rock Bottom.  This was a bad time to pull out Vaughn William's Folk Song Suite. I think the flutes were about to cry when I called it up. Between that, Mary's boy child and an arrangement of Avenue Q, it was a disaster. We should have pulled up much easier music for this late in the game.

05:00 - 06:30: To rally the troops we played a bunch of their pep band music, (Black Saddles, Cortez) which with a full band, rivaled the Aggie Band in power and quality. We then set out to rehearse three pieces from the night to get them sounding decent for a concert at 7:00. - when their parents and people who threw money at them come to see them perform without any lips.

We chose Baroque Hoedown (The theme to the electric light parade in Disneyland), Beauty and the Beast and American Elegy as those pieces with the balance of "easy," "engaging," and "impressive."

06:30 - 0:700: Breakfast, keep everyone off their instruments to allow a bit of recovery.

07:00 - 07:30: Concert, a little flat here and there, with lips as droopy as their eyelids. But promising the kids that this is the last thing between them and sleep seems to rouse the spirits. And students always play better when their parents are watching. 

I pushed the pace on American Elegy, but as I said, it was the only thing between me and sleep. If you look closely you can see the sun rising behind the curtains of the multipurpose room.

Why I love what I do.

This post is part of a blog project on student teaching, hosted at So You Want To Teach

I know that I don't reflect back nearly enough on the amazing amount of opportunity upon which I've stumbled over the last two years. I know my situation is fairly unique and am continually grateful for it, except when I grumble about commuting from Sacramento to Davis 5 days a week. My job barely pays for the gas it takes to get there every day, but it's worth enough to me in experience that if they didn't pay me, I'd probably still come in every day. Having graduated in June, and deferred my enrollment in a master's program, I'm stuck between undergraduate and graduate studies and am currently taking music education courses that weren't offered in the UCD music department over at CSUS. There I'm lumped under "post baccalaureate studies" and am not currently in a credential program, or student teaching, but my work at Davis Senior High School in the position of "Paraeducator III - Music Specialist" hits very close to the mark. At the very least it's paid classroom observation and mentorship, and at its best it's hands on experience leading a class of kids in making awesome music. 

Most of my job consists of doing whatever the director doesn't want to do, which is a lot. On paper, I'm little more than an aide, something his student T.A.'s could do: be more mobile than the director (he's post-polio) and facilitate an efficient rehearsal. I make copies, grab scores, part music or file it away, take attendance and enter everything into his grade sheets. Sometimes I get to re-arrange music or write out new parts with Sibelius, other times I work as a section coach with any particular section while the director works with the rest of the band. But the reason I show up every day, and would do so without being paid is the chance to conduct the DHS bands.

When I played with the UC Davis wind ensemble, we'd go to a gig every year called the  "Festivity of Bands" it was the "Causeway Classic" for band nerds. CSUS and UCD give a joint concert, pitting the wind programs of each music department against the other. Well, for a few years now they've been inviting the audition ensemble from Davis High to come play with them, and I was always a bit bitter leaving knowing we were schooled by a bunch of high school kids. They played harder music than we did and sounded better doing it. 

This of course is the result of an amazing amount of support from the school district and community in Davis and is completely not representative of any public school program I've ever seen. Last year, when the Governator decided to cut the budget 10% across the board, we were going to lose funding for all elementary band and orchestra programs, and the community promptly raised over $400,000 for the "Save our Music" Campaign, and then voted to implement a parcel tax to cover the expenses for the next 3 years, saving the programs and teachers who had been pink-slipped.

I get to work with kids who are musically literate and have a musical maturity greater than some college ensembles. They can sight read anything and sound decent doing it. They regularly play grade 5 and sometimes grade 6 music. The non-audition ensemble, with which I get to work, regularly starts the year at grade 4 and works their way up, auditioning on grade 5 stuff by the end of the year. Last year as an undergraduate and now working towards my credential, this is experience I can't get anywhere else. I'm allowed to peruse a huge catalogue of music and choose pieces that I get to rehearse with the band and conduct in concert, going through the whole process as a director from start to finish and perfecting my skills and confidence at the podium. Right now I'm walking around with about 30 scores in my backpack preparing for a fundraiser for the kids: an all night band-geek-a-thon where I'm responsible for keeping them playing music -all sight reading- from midnight until 7:00am at which point they are to pull together, rehearse three pieces and perform a concert for those parents picking them up - with whatever lips they have left.

Basically, I'm spoiled for the rest of my career and have a template from which to work and build my own band programs. One that starts with strong elementary and junior high programs. 

Anyways, the Symphonic Band got their hands on a piece called Masada and have been working on it since January 5th - they're two and a half weeks in and still a little shaky. The piece is a programmatic work depicting a great siege of the Judean fortress, casting the Romans in sober, relentless 4/4 time and their Hebrew adversaries in complex dance rhythms (generally asymmetric meters that flop around i.e.  5/8 [7/8] changes from 3-2 [-2] to [2-] 2-3, mixed in with 2/4, 3/4 or 6/8 for good measure). I convinced the director to let me take the score home with me over the MLK weekend and obsessed over it for three days, trying to work out the rhythm patterns. The goal was to come in during their final period to put together some audition tapes for my meeting with faculty at UOP next Monday; hopefully to prove I'm a technically competent conductor when it comes to negotiating a teaching assistantship to support my graduate studies. I realize now that the video is not as impressive to look at when compared to the score (the composer or maybe publisher created his own meters to save on ink because the meter changes almost every bar). I had my head buried in the score, and couldn't think past the rhythms enough to do anything but mirror with my left hand, but it was a nice change from the slow, lyric pieces I normally get to work with (the ones the actual director would rather not conduct). In short, this is why I love what I do:

I get to work with exceptional musicians who bring energy and exuberance that only students can to a rehearsal. I get to engage both my creative muscle and theirs; they may know how to play their instruments, and well, but it's my job to teach and encourage them how to make music to the best of their abilities.

How Obama Can Fix Schools

Yesterday I came a cross a newspost titled "How Obama can fix schools" it was a digest of a Wall Street Journal article by New York City School Chancellor Joel Klein and Reverend Al Sharpton titled "Charter Schools can Close the Education Gap" The article presents a sob story of America's youth, particularly minorities who are suffering under the current school system and in some cases are being left four grade levels behind. The article goes on to champion the Education Equality Project which, while tossing accusations at the current system of schools, tows the line of No Child Left Behind. The EEP offers advice to the President Elect on how to close the achievement gap between white and minority students and beyond expanding federal support for charter schools, their first idea is "more stringent standards."

First, the federal government, working with the governors, should develop national standards and assessments for student achievement. Our current state-by-state approach has spawned a race to the bottom, with many states dumbing down standards to make it easier for students to pass achievement tests. Even when students manage to graduate from today's inner-city high schools, they all too frequently are still wholly unprepared for college or gainful employment.

I read this and almost had an aneurism, the mental equivalent of screaming "Are you ephing kidding me Ref?" at the top of your lungs at someone who cant hear you. Stricter standards mean more "assessment" more "accountability" and more "Enforcement" Which means more tests for students (less time spent learning), less freedom for teachers to decide how best to educate their students, and stricter punishments for teachers who don't have the resources to bring some of their students scores up to grade level save by teaching to the test, which is a strategy that not only rarely works, but denies the students any useful education.

I immediately ran to my bookshelf and dug out a few old textbooks, and rifled through the boxes in my closet to find some old essays from my education courses. Here's the thing, I never had to experience NCLB first hand, I graduated high school in 2002, a private high school so we didn't even have exit exams or star testing or whatever. My first contact with this program was studying it in education courses, and it left a bad taste in my mouth. Now I work with, and am friends with many educators, all of whom have nothing but venomous words to spit about NCLB and how it's hindering the education of their students. It's not just the assessments and accountability that pressure teachers into teaching to the test and forgoing their duties to actually educate their students, it's the idea that these standards are doing more to hinder the education of their students than to help.

To make my point I'm going to lean heavily on a collection of essays both for and against standards, digest thirty pages into a few paragraphs and share them with you. The first of which is written by Deborah Meier titled "Educating a Democracy." This one essay had a lot to do with forming my own ideas of education. Meier states that the educational crisis facing our country is not the crisis presented in "A Nation at Risk," it is not based in economics and can not be solved with higher test scores, and our actions to improve education by implementing and enforcing standards in education have only caused a rift to widen within society.

"An understanding of this other crisis begins by noting that we have the lowest voter turnout by far of any modern industrial country; we are exceptional for the absence of responsible care for our most vulnerable citizens (we spend less on child welfare–baby care, medical care, family leave–than almost every competitor); we don’t come close to our competitors in income equity; and our high rate of (and investment in) incarceration places us in a class by ourselves."

"One important change has been in the nature of schooling. Our schools have grown too distant, too big, too standardized, too uniform, too divorced from their communities, too alienating of young from old and old from young."

"In such settings it’s hard to teach young people how to be responsible to others, or to concern themselves with their community."

"By shifting the locus of authority to outside bodies, it undermines the capacity of schools to instruct by example in the qualities of mind that schools in a democracy should be fostering in kids–responsibility for one’s own ideas, tolerance for the ideas of others, and a capacity to negotiate differences. "

"Because of the disconnection between the public and its schools, the power to protect or support them now lies increasingly in the hands of public or private bodies that have no immediate stake in the daily life of the students."

"We need to surround kids with adults who know and care for our children, who have opinions and are accustomed to expressing them publicly, and who know how to reach reasonable collective decisions in the face of disagreement. That means increasing local decision-making, and simultaneously decreasing the size and bureaucratic complexity of schools. Correspondingly, the worst thing we can do is to turn teachers and schools into the vehicles for implementing externally- imposed standards."

"A democracy in which less than half its members see themselves as "making enough difference" to bother to vote in any election is surely endangered–far more endangered, at risk, than our economy. It’s for the loss of belief in the capacity to influence the world, not our economic ups and downs, that we educators should accept some responsibility. What I have learned from thirty years in small powerful schools is that it is here above all that schools can make a difference, that they can alter the odds."

After six years of college there was one thing I learned that will be of more value to me in the real world than anything else; from calculus, stress (both personally and in structural geology) to composition of essays or symphonies, the one thing I learned that I value most was how to think critically and the ability to interact with and critique the society in which I live. It is this mindset, more than any skill that Meier is pushing, preparing and motivating students to go out into the real world and make a difference. Holding students and teachers accountable to scores on singular high stakes tests which don't go into any depth of studying a child's education beyond their ability to fill in bubbles has neither brought about a better America nor closed the achievement gap.

"Americans invented the modern, standardized, norm-referenced test. Our students have been taking more tests, more often, than any nation on the face of the earth, and schools and districts have been going public with test scores starting almost from the moment children enter school."

"We have test data for almost every grade thereafter in reading and math, and to some degree in all other subjects. This has been the case for nearly half a century."

"In short, we have been awash in accountability and standardization for a very long time. What we are missing is precisely the qualities that the last big wave of reform was intended to respond to: teachers, kids, and families who don’t know each other or each other’s work and don’t take responsibility for it. We are missing communities built around their own articulated and public standards and ready to show them off to others."

Meier finishes by bringing to light the problem of trying to tackle the achievement gap between students of differing socioeconomic standing with standardized testing.

"We can’t beat the statistical advantage on the next round of tests that being advantaged has over being disadvantaged; we can, however, substantially affect the gap between rich and poor where it will count, in the long haul of life."

In short, we can't begin to address the achievement gap that Sharpton and Klein are so worried about by enforcing more stringent standards and implementing more restrictions on the teachers of these kids. To tackle this problem, Educators need to be able to do their job and, prepare them for life outside of their classroom, to provide them with an education. I'm going to borrow the words of one of the President Elect's close personal domestic terrorist friends, William Ayers:

"The purpose of education in a democracy is to break down barriers, to overcome obstacles, to open doors, minds, and possibilities. Education is empowering and enabling; it points to strength, to critical capacity, to thoughtfulness and expanding capabilities. It aims at something deeper and richer than simply imbibing and accepting existing codes and conventions, acceding to whatever is before us. The larger goal of education is to assist people in seeing the world through their own eyes, interpreting and analyzing through their own experiences and thinking, feeling themselves capable of representing, manifesting, or even, if they choose, transforming all that is before them. Education, then, is linked to freedom, to the ability to see and also to alter, to understand and also to reinvent, to know and also to change to world as we find it."

Father of Nations

8 days ago I hopped in my car to go climbing and turned on the radio. Not commuting every day for over a week had created a void in my schedule for news absorbance. NPR was running a story that Israel had opened the border with Gaza and was allowing aid to reach the country after over a month of it being closed to all traffic and embargoed by sea. It was an olive branch offered in "good faith" to the leaders of Hamas to renegotiate the ceasefire that had ended recently. I thought to myself: "Oh wow, that's cool they didn't just start killing each other." Apparently there had been rocket fire launched from the strip over the past few days, no Israeli casualties, just terror and property damage, in fact the only casualties at that point had been two palestinian girls caught when a rocket fell short of it's intended target.

The next day I opened my browser to read: "200 dead in Israeli air strikes." We were told that Most of these were Hamas militants. Most. A Majority. 

101.

By Wednesday the death toll had doubled, 400 dead, not to mention the thousands wounded. And today, that border that was opened for the first time in months is now being crossed by the Israeli military.

To put this into context, Israel is about 150% the size of New Jersey, invading a state that is maybe twice the size of Washington D.C. This is similar to an eight year old blooding his 4 year old brother's nose for poking him repeatedly after he had told him to stop.

I'll be the first to say that I know nothing about living in a hostile environment, surrounded on all sides by people who are resentful of my existence, and refuse to recognize my very right to exist. But to me, the idea of "Israeli Deterrence" is thuggish and is no better than tactics used in gang warfare. "If you fuck with us, we'll fuck you up harder."

Many ask: "Well, what would you have them do? These are terrorists who will not negotiate with Israel" I can't answer that, as they are following the example we have set, one that almost the entire world disagrees with in hindsight. (One of the dissenters to this opinion, of course being Israel where Bush approval ratings are still sky high).

Israel has turned out to be the aggressor here, and it's easy to wag fingers at them. However, when confronted about the excessive violence on his part, the older sibling's response is almost always "But, but... he started it!" No one has the moral high ground here. Everyone is culpable, everyone is responsible for the ongoing violence, including the U.S. and U.N. This goes back 60 years and generations. There are many who would even trace this back to Ishmael and Isaac. 

Zionism, Terrorism, religious zealotry at it's best. I'm going to borrow from a debate I had a little while ago and lean on one of the brightest and most respected minds of the modern era, Albert Einstein.

"As long as there are Men, there will be War." 

Human nature is rooted in tribalism, whether that's ethnic or religiously motivated, there will always be "the other," "the outsider." Religious fanaticism and Nationalism only serve to extend this further.

It's not social darwinism, it's not divinely inspired, it's not the prevailing of the righteous or strong, it is simply human nature.

What's simply hilarious (in the laugh-so-you-don't-cry sense) is that this conflict between Israel and Palestine, our "War on Terror" and in truth, some of the largest or cruelest of wars and atrocities of the past 1000 years have been committed by followers Abrahamic religions against each other.

Holocaust. Inquisition. Jihad. Crusade. Committed all by greedy or malicious men hiding behind religion or more often, and with far more tragic results, hiding behind piety.

What's worse? The "big three" all trace their lineages back to the same tribe.