Boyd Holmes, the Writer - Boyd Holmes

Create a Workforce - Part Three

4/30/2021

You might notice that none of these workforce initiatives had anything to do with music per say, nothing to do with my choice of repertoire, nothing to do with how I approached teaching in two or three parts, or how I worked on vowel production.

What it did emphasize was developing more proactive habits in our students, having them take responsibility for their 7.5 hours work day much like I had learned to take care of my 16.5 business day.

I won’t begin to pretend that it was a cake walk or easy or that there weren't profound mistakes I made along the way.

Just as I make a few mistakes with each these 1,500 word writing pieces I produce, I made miscalculations and mistakes with this program as well as many others – but I got much more right than wrong.

Developing a workforce, job applications, and a leadership team required that I make what I called “chorus corrections” along the way. Yes, I made errors, but I made much more progress than I would if I had just sat still and done nothing. And so did my students.

I knew that there were many teachers in my school working diligently to provide similar character trait training for their students. It felt right supporting their classroom efforts.

When I finally walked away on my last day, I knew that I had dedicated my energies on the right things.

Giving so many children a safe construct for learning the basic ropes of wanting, earning, and keeping a job is easily one of the teaching achievements i'm mist proud of.

As Irving berlin wrote, "The song has ended but the melody lingers on", long after the chorus has disbanded, the proactive idea of getting a job, having pride in it, and staying the course even when the going gets rough is the real leason I hope you'll consider implimenting in YOUR program.

Just look at the pride and sense of achievement on Yasir’s face.

By now, you are probably realizing that the non-music priorities were definitely feeding our musical priorities and vice a versa.

If I hadn't done this program my last year, would my life have been easier? Probably.

Would I have had more free time in my 13.5 hour business day designed to increase my income? Definitely.

But as Dr. Covey says ‘begin with the end in mind’, and that had been in my mind for a long time.

I knew how I wanted to go out from teaching.

Burt even more, I knew how I wanted my students to continue on after I wasn't there.

Create a Workforce - Part Two

4/30/2021

Getting set up for chorus in another room was a labor-intensive endeavor. One of the biggest issues was setting up a sound system every Wednesday for chorus.

My classroom had two cheap 12 inch speakers and 4 input 100w head that I used in all of my general classes. I supplemented that rig with my own mic stands and SM58 mics. Every Wednesday I had to break all of it down, along with my electric piano and stand as well as my acoustic/electric Epiphone guitar and stand, and transport it to the multi-purpose room that was easily 3 minutes away from my classroom.

The solution: I hired roadies!

The Roadies would arrive at my room at 12:10 before chorus, pick up a flatbed from the custodial closet, and load everything on the flatbed: the PA, the boxes of music, piano, mics, mic/piano/guitar stands, speaker and amp runs. We employed four to five roadies. We would roll down those hallways and everybody knew that Mr. Holmes’ Magical Mystery Music Flatbed was in town.

Within weeks, our roadies achieved celebrity status around the school.

"Comin' through! Watch your step!"

We had a high retention rate with our job holders. There were only had two students who walked away from their jobs. Everyone else stayed in their jobs until the very bitter end of my last week.

If you submitted an application and had been notified by me that you got a job, you had to report for a leadership meeting because all our workers were on the Wilbur Chorus Leadership Team. At that meeting you would receive your leadership folder containing all your job responsibilities, a leadership journal, proactive certificatees that members filled out and handed to kids and adults they they "caught" being proactive, expectations of all workers as far as their behavior in school, and Doctor Covey’s seven habits for highly effective people that were outlined in his “Leader in Me” program for school-age children. The Leadership folder contained the one thing they all really wanted: the coveted Wilbur Chorus Leadership lanyard that they were to wear on chorus days and at all concerts. Chorus pride ran deep (many leadership members wore their lanyard every day).

You might be asking yourself, Holmes, that seems like a lot of work.

In a word, yes. I knew going into my second year it that it would take a lot of extra hours to get everything organized and rolling, especially given my wall-to-wall schedule.

I’ll outline the rational for my choices in “Create a Workforce - Part Three”

Create a Workforce – Part One.

4/30/2021

I probably had the strongest chorus of my career my last two years of teaching.

The membership numbers were astronomical and constantly growing. After over twenty years in the Colonial School District, I was finally in one school five days a week. I was now teaching full-time in a school with an enrollment upwards of 2,500 students and focusing all my time and energies in one building.

My first full-time year (my second-to-last-year), I inherited a chorus of thirty-five students. By the end of the year, it had grown to over 150 students – and that was only fourth and fifth grade. My principal did not want to commit to a third grade chorus until she saw what kind of product I would produce my first year.

The chorus exceeded most of the school’s expectations – most notably, it exceeded the members’ expectations. They made an incredibly beautiful sound. At the end of that year, we made plans for a third grade chorus the following year.

Chorus rehearsals were dynamic. The chorus folders were stocked with at least a dozen different types of songs from simple pop songs and folk songs to complex three-part pieces. There was a general buzz in the school on chorus days. One of the toughest elements of the whole project was keeping a lid on their enthusiasm and dealing with the increased membership. I knew going into my second year that I would have to build a student leadership/employment component into our program.

My schedule was hellish to boot. There was no time built in for preparation, no time to get from my music room to our multi-purpose rehearsal room to run back-to-back sessions. With no wiggle room to clean up from rehearsal, deal with questions, or get back to my music room to teach, of all classes kindergarten, easily my most demanding class of the day, I needed a plan that could partly sustain itself and create logistic momentum.

There was an old line I used to say about working in schools which was if you can't have the kids working for you, what good is it?

I decided to put that joke into actual practice and develop a workforce for chorus.

I created a list of jobs with specific job responsibilities. These jobs wouldn't be given to the kids with the cutest smile or the most hyper active desire to please a teacher. Instead, I created job applications where students had to proactively pick up an application and fill out information including references. The applicants needed people to vouch for them and the job they were applying for.

Job seekers needed a signature from their classroom teacher, a current member of fourth and fifth grade chorus, as well as a staff member from the school, such as a teacher, administrator, cafeteria worker, or bus driver. The applicants also had to write why they thought they would be good at the job they were applying for.

This created a huge amount of positive buzz with kids getting hundreds of signatures from staff and chorus members. Everyone - adults and kids alike - seemed to be talking about "getting a chorus job"

I had folders tape to the wall with job applications outside of my music room.

I already had a chorus mailbox by my door so all applications had to be turned in there. Some of the jobs I had posted were:

Librarian.

It was becoming hard to keep all the music straight when we were reaching upwards of 200 people in chorus.

By the end of my last year, we had 300 chorus members. That translates into a lot of choral music parts.

Between kids being sick on chorus days when music was handed out, kids losing folders, kids in home where one night they stayed with their father and another night with their mother and chorus music was in the wrong house the night before chorus, there could be some confusion as the kids arrived for rehearsal. And then there was simply the general malaise of third, fourth, and fifth graders learning the ropes of personal responsibility and organization of materials.

Choral sheet music management was mind boggling as well as time-consuming. The librarians were responsible for getting music out to people during rehearsal if someone had lost or not received a piece of music.

When the kids came into chorus rehearsal I had the agenda already up on a huge Smart Board listing in order each of the songs we were going to practice that day. members got right to work arrangin their music in their folders. If kids didn't have the music for a specific song, they were supposed to stay in their seat, raise their hand, and a librarian would come and help them. I had three large boxes with folders containing each of the songs we were doing that year. The librarians would check on the people with raised hands, find what music needed, extract the music from the box, and hand it out.

Hall monitors.

Getting to and from course required the kids often to walk on their own through long stretches of straightaway hallways. When I say straight away, think Utah Salt Flats and the need for speed that thrives in every elemenatry school kid. Hall monitors were charged with keeping a lid on speed walkers.

Stop and Go Person.

Just as I had a one foot by one foot square on my chalkboard in my classroom with an S and a G and a magnet going back and forth visually showing I wanted stop or go time, I had a huge easel with conference paper where I had immense S and G on two sheets that could be easily flipped by a student.

That child sat in the front row buy me and I told them when to flip it from S to G.

Chair Detail.

Every week, I had to set up over 150 chairs first thing Wednesday morning. The chair detail member dutifully came without prompts and helped me make my endless concave rows. I couldn’t have done it without them.

Classroom Representative.

Every classroom had at least one representative who, when the “bat signal” was put out on the school intercom for chorus reps, would hustle down to my room for handouts for chorus kids in their classroom, papers that would be going home, or extra songs that I knew they would like.

Art Department.

Members of the art department were proficient in drawing and painting posters. They were given assignments to do hallway and classroom posters based on the songs we were doing in chorus or to do a poster just promoting the course. We had posters all over the school so that our entire school community could see what chorus was all about. Posters were made after lunch or during recess.

My classroom had two cheap 12 inch speakers and 4 input 100w head that I used in all of my classes. I supplemented that rig with my own mic stands, SM58 mics. I had to break all of it down, along with my electric piano and stand as well as my acoustic/electric Epiphone guitar, and get it to a multi-purpose room that was easily 3 minutes away from my classroom.

How did I manage getting all that equipment down to my rehearsal space and set up in time? The answer is in “Create a Workforce – Part Two”.

Read the Room

4/30/2021

I would do a chorus questionnaire every year. The second best thing about it was I learned a lot about my students from it.

The best thing about it was my students learned that I wanted to know about them, their preferences, and their families.

The Golden Hour – Stop and Go part 3

4/28/2021

Sometimes, a child would make the “shhhh” sound as they saw me approaching the magnet.

I would slam that magnet even harder on the S and in a tone somewhere between put-out and but not quite angry would ask, “I heard someone make a ‘shhhh’ sound though as I was walking to the board. Who was that?”

Somebody would tentatively raise their hand thinking they might have done something wrong. I would not smile at them when I noticed them.

I would say, “What is your name?”

“Bobby.”

“Well, Bobby, get up here right now”

The class is supremely quiet at this point.

I would be saying all of this on mic without smiling with a stern voice. As Bobby would come up I would address him.

“Do you know why I called you up here?” Bobby would usually respond in the negative.

Then I would say, “The reason I called you up here is because you made the ‘shhh’ sound which alerted the class that I was walking to the board You knew I was going to go to stop time. You were being proactive. You are helping me. You were letting your classmates know that they better get ready to stop talking.’
I am still not smiling. I am looking even more intently at Bobby now.

“That was excellent.” Again, no smile.

I would reach into my pocket and pull out guitar pick, one with my face on it. I would then ask Bobby the question I asked thousands of proactive students.

“May I give you this Mr. Holmes guitar pick, for you to keep, for being such a proactive student?”

I am still not smiling at all, still being dead serious. They would usually nod their head “yes”.

I would give them the pick but I would hold onto it until they realized they needed to say “thank you” for me to release it, maintaining eye contact with them all the time.

Once they would say thank you, I would pointed say, “No, thank you.”

Then I would turn to the class, show the faintest trace of a smile and say, “Put your hands together and give Bobby a big hand” and I would start clapping.

I would jump up and run to the board like a game show host with my microphone as they were clapping , slam that magnet and announce” You have Gooooo time!!”

The room would explode in excited conversation and they would see my first big smile of the day. I would leave the mic on my piano, go over to Bobby, engage in some fun conversation with him and his friends, and tell him he would be able to use that guitar pick when we learned how to play guitar.

I did this hundreds of times and it never failed.

Next, I would explain to them what the 10 in the box was all about.

That will be in “The Golden Hour – the 10”

The Golden Hour – Stop and Go part 2

4/28/2021

Stop and Go

The first technique I introduce to each class is the concept of “stop” and “go” as far as talking and movement goes in the music room. On a magnetic whiteboard or a chalkboard, I would draw a one foot square box drawn with an S inside with a corresponding one foot box with a G .

Class actually started before the children arrived at me door. I had already communicated with the classroom teacher that their class was to wait quietly at my door until they heard piano music. Piano music would be their everyday cue to enter the music room while staying in line order.

Before the class ever left their classroom, the teacher had explained to the line leader that she was to wait outside my door until she heard piano music.

My choice for entrance music was usually JS Bach's “Well-Tempered Clavier, book one, prelude one”. As the student line leader led his class into the music room, I would negotiate the children into the room with a finger up to my mouth in a “no talking” pose.

I would not be smiling. I would be standing very close to them, shepherding them as they sat down in single line rows facing the board and the piano in the order that they walked into the room. When the first row was filled, the next person in line was expected to proactively start the next row, which also provided another leadership opportunity for the first kid in every row.

The S and G boxes would already be on the board as well as another one foot square box with the number 10 in it. A magnet was on the S. As soon as the song stopped, I would lead normally the class in our “hello” song. The first class of the year - the golden hour - started differently with me addressing the class.

Amplification

“Good morning and welcome to music class my name is Mr. Holmes.

I would say that in my most broadcaster-appropriate voice into a Shure SM58 mic that was amplified and coming out of two twelve inch speakers on either side of the room.

The sound of my voice was not so much loud as it seemed to be coming from everywhere all at once. It sounded official. The kids had never encountered a authoritarian teacher’s voice out of the blue that sounded quite like that and it showed on their faces.

I walked across the front row, pulling my twenty-foot mic run as I spoke.

“I'm going to take a few minutes here to take you through my expectations of the entire year. If you learn this today, we will have a smooth year. I know you will be able to do this, because thousands - and I do mean thousands - of students have accomplished this before you.

On the board you see three boxes. One has a 10, one has an S, and one has a G. The magnet is on the S. The S stands for stop. When the magnet is on the S, you will stop your mouth, hands, feet, and body. Your eyes and mind will keep working, but everything else will stop.

I realize that it's impossible to be quiet for 45 minutes. That's why there is a G box and the G stands for go – for a break. When I move the magnet to the G, you can talk. That doesn't mean you can yell, it doesn't mean you can shout, it doesn't mean you can make any other noises. But you can talk as if you were in a restaurant. I will move the magnet back to the S after your break is over. You will stop talking when you hear the magnet hit the S. If you learn how to do this, you will get brakes, you will get “go” time. If you don't learn this, I will not move the magnet to the G very often for you. No breaks.

If you can’t learn to stop, you will find yourselves staying on stop for longer periods of time. So in just a minute, I'm going to move the magnet to the G. Be ready, because when I'm ready, I'm going to move that magnet back to the G, and my expectation is you will all talk. Let's see how it goes.”

At that point I would move the magnet to the G and look at this class. At this point they look like a little in shock, a bit like an oil painting. They often did not talk.

At that point, I would put a check under the “minus” column and forcefully move the magnet back to S and pointedly say into the mic, “I told you to talk on the G you didn’t talk. My expectation is that if I put the magnet on G, you will talk. If you have nothing to say, turn to the person next to you and say ‘blah, blah, blah” or “yada, yada, yada”. We will try this again.”, at which point, I move the magnet back to the G, ignore them, and walk to the back of the room and my desk.

I wouldn't try to chat them up, smile, be their “buddy”, or interact with them. After about 30 seconds I would walk the twenty feet from my desk tp the board and move the magnet back to the S with a loud slam of the magnet on the board. I would spin around and expect silence which I usually got.

Some classes would have stragglers and I would have to say, “That was slow. You need to be faster - try that again.” And I would move the magnet to the G and again go to my desk. After 30 seconds, I would again move the magnet back to the S. I would usually say something like that was much better.

Occasionally, a child would make a “shhhh” sound as I was walking back to change the magnet. See what happened when they did that in “The Goldern Hour – Stop and Go Part 3."

The Golden Hour – Stop and Go Part 1

4/28/2021

The Golden Hour – Stop and Go

Dr. Stephen Covey often used to ask this question:

If you need a tree today, when's the best time to plant a tree? Answer: twenty years ago. Which begs the second question: If you didn’t plant the tree twenty years ago, what's the second best day to plant a tree if you need it today? Answer, today.

One of the greatest challenges that immediately confronts many new teachers is maintaining discipline in the classroom. The trick to creating a disciplined classroom environment is that it's not something you teach, it's a habit you develop in your students. A habit that starts in day one, class one, hour one.

Discipline is the idea of creating the habit of self-discipline in both yourself and your students. Discipline is only taught when children are in cruise control of their behavior, not when they're out of control. I learned a long time ago that discipline is not a one-trick pony situation. It is several techniques, habits, and especially visualizations that are stacked one a top of one another that lock into a methodical environment where kids can thrive and know where they stand with you as the teacher.

The Golden Hour

That Golden Hour was the first hour I shared with each class at the beginning of the year. It was the BEST, most dependable hour where I could really set in motion the momentum I wanted to see through the entire year. That momentum hinged on the students understanding what and how I would communicate with them. The first concept I taught was “stop” and “go”. I’ll explain that in The Golden Hour – Stop and Go Part 2

Follow me for more teaching tips!

4/27/2021

The Best Way to Share a Guitar

4/26/2021

When I taught guitar in the elementary general music classroom, planning was the key to our success. The environment was set up with pairs of chairs facing a guitar on a guitar stand Two children would share a guitar. The student on my right was the “pilot” and the student to my left was the “co-pilot”. I used the following system with kids from first grade to fifth grade with dreadnought guitars.

Yes, dreadnoughts are large for first graders. But first graders aren't going to stay that size forever. They're going to get larger and with every month, those guitar will start to feel smaller to them.

It's very easy to drop a guitar. Just as it is easy to drop a guitar, it's hard to pass a guitar to someone else without it slipping, falling, and breaking. This was the system I taught the children.

“Four Hands on the neck.” - That meant that the pilot and co-pilot had to lean forward or stand up and put their four hands on the neck of the guitar as if they were holding a baseball bat and freeze in place while I observed the entire class to make sure we are all on the same page.

“Do-si-do.” - I taught the children that “do-si-do” was a dance move in square dancing and that getting the guitar into their lap was going to be similar to a dance that they would learn to perform. On the command of “do-si-do”, they would take the guitar out of the guitar stand and the co-pilot would help position the guitar in the pilot’s lap.

Older students were sometimes taught to cross their legs. All students positioned the bump on the side of the guitar’s side resting on their thigh while they hugged the guitar’s body close to their own body with their right arm and hand. Their left hand was to hold the neck in the vicinity of the top frets by the headstock.

Transitioning the Guitar From the Pilot to the Co-pilot

I designed a way to transition to car guitar to the co-pilot that didn't require the guitar to be lifted at all.

“Slide”

I would give the command “slide” and the pilot would slide guitar diagonally off their thigh to the left and over to the accepting hands and thigh of the co-pilot. The neck kept pointing to the right and the guitar’s body was almost always in either the pilot’s or co-pilot’s lap.

The same process was done in reverse for getting the guitar back to the pilot.

Getting the Guitar Back Into the Guitar Stand

I would start with “four hands on the neck”. The children would freeze in that position. Once I determined everyone had done that command, I would say, “Put your guitar in the guitar stand and freeze.” which required that they not take their hands off the neck.

I would then go to each guitar and check that each it was nestled properly in the guitar stand. Then, and only then I would point to the pilot and co-pilot and say “You may let go and sit down”. If I saw any deviation from my commands, they soon realized I was displeased and they would have to start over.

The key elements when introducing this is to dead serious, go slowly, freeze on each step of the process, and make certain that you make direct eye contact with each student in between each step.

This works. As the children became more adept at handling the guitar, this plan was modified to refect their increased ability.

I taught thousands of children this system. NOT ONCE was a guitar ever droped while being picked up or transitioned between students.

I never saw a better system in another school or classroom.

If you do see a better was of picking up and sharing guitars that work with first through fifth grade, let me know.

The accompanying video is a second grade class.

Until then, please feel free to follow this foolproof plan.

Here is a video of a second grade class in action.

The Gateway Drug Found in Most Music Rooms

4/25/2021

When I was a kid, our family did maybe two or three day trips to the beach every summer. Never overnight, just a day trip. These were the days when Route 13 was a two-lane highway, one lane south, one lane north. I didn't have any brothers or sisters so that meant I got to have the backseat all to myself. Armed with a bottle of Sea ‘n Ski suntan lotion that my mother bought me, I would surreptitiously roll down the back window and squirt it at the cars behind us. Yeah, I was that kid. The one that if you were in the car behind us, referred to me as “little jerk”.

I loved the beach. I was terrified of the water, couldn't stand the smell of the flotsam and jetsam, and hated lying in the sun because we never had an umbrella. But other than that, Mrs. Lincoln, I really loved the beach. It was where my father introduced me to the Ski Ball arcade.

All the prizes on the wall, the clattering noise of the score tabulators above the concentric targets, the smooth sound of the rolling balls after impact, the smell of ashtrays that had yet to be emptied that season, the thought of earning enough tickets to win that Revel model plane kit on the top shelf. You only needed 100 tickets to get it.

“Nothing to it”, said my father. “I'll show you how it's done.” and he and I racked up those tickets faster than pea soup coming out of Linda Blair's mouth. Four hours later and ten pounds of quarters lighter, we had 100 tickets. Some might have said that my father hadn't achieved "baller" status in Ski Ball but he would counter that he was a methodical worker - and he delivered on those 100 tickets. We proudly took our bounty up to the glass counter to claim our prize.

“Oh, but those are orange tickets.”, said the man in the three-day-old Schlitz t-shirt that was a size too small. “One hundred orange tickets equals one yellow ticket. And ten yellow tickets equals one red ticket. And you need 100 RED tickets to get that model.”

My father was momentarily stunned.

Stunned but hooked. Schlitz guy was reeling him in. Back to the Ski Balls we went.

Imagine my mother's pride when we came back to the beach and I told her that dad won us an ashtray that looked like a toilet!

Not quite a model airplane.

And so it goes.

Often times, things have a distinct order to them.

Orange, yellow, red? Check.

Bait? Check?

Hook? Check.

Reel ‘em in.

And so it was in my music room.

The big draw was the piano keyboards and the guitars. I didn’t have to sell them very hard the first few days of each new year, the kids did that. The buzz in the hallway and cafeteria was that Mr. Holmes had all these guitars and pianos, that they were going to be playing those beautiful keyboards and guitars this year in music. And he even gives away a guitar at the concert!

I usually announced during our second class that we were going to start instruments the next time they came to music.

When they showed up the following week, I gave everybody a pair of blue and red rhythm sticks with a big smile on my face.

“What about the guitars? And the keyboards?”, they asked.

“I told you, we were going to start instruments this week! Here are your instruments. (AKA orange tickets)”

“But where are the guitars? You said guitars, you said pianos! And don't forget recorders, we're going to be buying and playing recorders, too! But the guitars?”

At this stage, I pointedly glared at the class and aggressively put a check in the “minus” column on the chalk board.

“Now seriously, you know me – or at least most of you do. Do you think Mr. Holmes is going to give you a $300 piano to play right off the bat if I don’t know if you can play a $2.95 pair of sticks without blowing them up?

No!

I'm going to give you a $2.95 pair of blue and red sticks and see what you can do with them. If you break these stick, you will not TOUCH another instrument this year. But, if you can actually show me that you can take care of them and make some music with them, I'll consider moving you up to recorders (AKA yellow tickets)”. They cost $3.00.

And if you handle those $3.00 recorders okay, make some nice music and not break them, we’ll move up to xylophone (AKA red tickets)”. They are REALLY expensive. They cost $59.99! And if you haven't driven me crazy by that point and you don’t break them, we will do xylophones and . . . wait for it . . . pianos together! But those pianos aren’t cheap. They cost $150.00!

“If you can use a $150.00 instrument the right way, not break it, and make some nice music with it, and if you show me that you can control ten fingers on two hands, we will move up to the . . . ?”

“Guitar!!”

“But they cost even more and are very fragile. Who knows how much they cost?”

“$200.00?”

“Higher!”

“$300.00?”

With mock anger, “Higher!”

“$1,000.00!”

“MUCH higher!!”

“A million dollars!!”

By now, we are all laughing. “You’re getting close. Just know they cost a lot – and I bought them, not the school. They are mine”

Now they are silent and a bit in shock.

“That’s right – mine. And if you don’t treat my pianos and guitars with respect, I do not have to let you play them. When the class is playing guitar and piano, the kids who don’t respect the expensive instruments will get . . . the BLUE AND RED STICKS!”

In fake horror, they all yell, “NO!”

“But all of you are going to follow directions, right?”

“Right!”

“And be awesome?”

“Right!”

“And this hand is my . . . . .?”, raising my left hand.

Now I hear a crazy mix of left and right dissolving into laughter.

“Hey, kids, we’ll be playing those pianos and guitars before you know it. But you have to understand. I can’t give a kid something expensive to use if I don't know if they can respect and properly use it. Think about it. If some kid breaks a guitar, that’s one less guitar I have for YOU to play.”

“And did I mention if you can do those sticks the right way today, we’ll add those paint can drums tomorrow?

Now their eyebrows pick up in expectation.

“So let’s make some music and have some ‘GO’ time!”

And as I quickly move the magnet from “stop” to “go”, the room explodes in pent-up animated conversation and emotion. They need to release the energy through talking.

A rough translation of the above for other music teachers would be:

“Yeah, I'm not just going to let kids destroy my instruments.

I'm going to have a real system on how I fold out my instrumental music program through the year. That progression is going to have an pattern of skills building upon skills. It will lead to an incredible final two months.

And yeah, each of those instruments is a gateway drug to the next instrument. If I can get them hooked on sticks and paint cans, if they think those paint cans are great, wait till they see the xylophone songs. Each one leads to the next. And the kick that they get when we bring the guitars in to the mix towards the end of the year is, well, it's just euphoric.”

Music teachers can capitalize on the fact that each instrument is an increased gateway buzz leading into the next instrument.

Fagen's lyric was applicable to my childhood music teachers, “It’s not some game I play, it's in my DNA.” In retrospect, I can see how my music teachers did it to me. I’m not trying to make them sound ominous like Curtis Mayfield’s “Pusherman”, or that they were bringin’ the skeeve like Sammy Davis Jr.'s “Candyman”, but there was an element of truth about the better the music teacher, the more kids get hooked on music. And I was one of those kids.

And I became that teacher.

Once you get kids latched onto music, there is an ancillary benefit because you have probably kick-started their intellectual curiosity in other areas, too.

Once you turn them on to the idea that music is awesome and it happens at school, it's not that the rest is easy, because it isn't.

It's just that the rest becomes an expanding blank canvas where you, as the teacher, fades and the kids design their own vision of fun, knowledge, and success.

My father passed away a few years back but before he did, I thanked him for teaching me so many things, including how the orange tickets in life work.

And if you were in the car driving behind us on the way to Rehoboth on Route 13, this little jerk wants to say he's sorry.

May I make it up to you with a complimentary set of red and blue sticks?