Boyd Holmes, the Writer

Getting From Here To There - Part 3

4/21/2021

The Most Important Line Of All

I had a policy in my classroom where I kept number 10 posted on my chalkboard at all times. If I saw some serious problems in the class, I would not smile, I would say very little, usually nothing at all, and simply erase the 10 and replace it with a 9. If the class dropped down to a 9 or an 8 but responded properly, as in they turned on the gas jets attempting as a united class to improve, I would say nothing but would raise the number up one digit. As a result, the goal was always to have a 10 at the end of class.

The students knew I always reported that final number to their teacher when they were picked up. The teachers supported the expectation that their class would earn and keep at 10 at the end of class.

There was one incredible way to get an 11 in my class. The way a class got an 11 was to stand up quietly when a visitor walked into our room. It didn’t matter if it was another teacher, a first grader, a grandparent, the custodian, a cafeteria lady – they come in, we stand.

Pretty simple. Nothing needs to be said. Nothing to do but just stand up and smile with teeth. “Because”, I would say, “this is a sign of . . . .?” And they kids all would say, “Respect!”

I would tell them that if they didn't feel like standing, they didn't have to stand but if one kid did not rise, the 10 did not change to an 11. And if they were on a 9 when they stood for a visitor, the number would only go up one digit to 10 – so if they wanted an 11, they knew they had to be on a 10.

I counseled them that if everyone was standing except the kid next to them, the idea was not to slap the kid in the back of their head to get them to stand but rather to gently get their attention and point to the fact that everybody was standing.

If, and only if everyone was standing, quietly, smiling, showing their teeth (because that's the only real smile - a smile where you see your front teeth – and they better be clean) when the visitor would leave, I would change their 10 to an 11 and we would all celebrate with a freeze pop party.

Due to medical and dietary reasons, not everyone was allowed to have a freeze pop. And in some schools you're not allowed to give any edible treats to kids at all. I was able to do the freeze pops in my school. I bought them at Costco, and the $8.00 I sent on 200 freeze pops was money well spent. Ahead of time, I would parcel out the 200 freeze pops into piles of 20, put them in a grocery bags, secure them with a rubber band, and keep them in the teacher’s lunch room refrigerator freezer for quick access.

When we had reason to celebrate an 11, the kids were ecstatic. And I would allow their screaming and shouts of joy once I told them we were going to get a freeze pop party. I praised them for their sign of . . . “Respect!”

The first thing I had to do was check to see if there were kids that we're not allowed to have sugar or freeze pops. I would tell those kids that they would get something special instead of a free spot from me. Usually three Mr. Holmes guitar picks.

We would line up at the door to go to the teacher’s lunch room with one caveat: I would tell the kids that if one - and I meant one - if one kid started walking without their hands behind their back or started talking in the hall, I was simply going to stop the line and take them back to our music room and there would be no freeze pop party that day. Not that they lost the party forever. It would mean that we would have wait and try again on another music day. As I would say to the older kids, “This is not the day you want to learn what ‘delayed gratification’ is. Get it right the first time.”

Most times we did it perfectly: we'd hit that hallway, walked to the teacher’s lunch room, grabbed the correct numbers of freeze pops, headed back to the music room, partied on “Go” time with their choice of music on the SmartBoard.

But there were days when they found out that I was a man of my word. If they couldn't get down the hallway properly, there would be no yelling or screaming from me. I would simply turn the line around around and we walked back to my room and sit down quietly for a good two minutes in silence thinking about how good those freeze pops would have tasted. I would break the silence by saying we'll try again on another day. Failure to get to the teacher’s lunchroom never occurred twice with the same class.

As kids approached fourth and fifth grade, sometimes when they were in line, I'd say, “Funny how life can sometimes be all about getting from here to there, isn’t it? As we get older, accurately and safely getting from here to there can be very important. Think about what we look like getting from here to there. What will people say as they watch us moving from here to there?

Knowing the best way how to get from here to there will have a lot to do with how successful we’ll be in achieving our goals.”

None of this had nothing to do with music. They didn’t remotely approach topics like this in any music education classes.

"Getting from here to there" has to do with children developing self-discipline, planning, setting and re-assessing a goal, and feeling good about their accomplishments.

Just as small things lead to big things, small kids turn into big adults. Getting from here to there is probably one of the greatest existential skills I developed with most of my students.

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Getting From Here To There - Part 2

4/21/2021

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If I needed to have my class exit our music room and move to an different area of the school, we would still line up the same way. Getting out the door, though, was going to be much more different than what I saw most teachers do.

I taught in over a dozen school with student enrollments from 250 to 2,500 and teaching staffs in excess of 40 or 50 adults. I never saw another teacher do “from here to there” it quite this way – but every principal I had commented on how my classes always traveled the hallways better than any others - especially during fire drills.

After the kids were lined up with hallway expectations, I would enter the hallway, pick a landmark somewhere about 25 feet away from my room, and tell the leader of the line to go to that landmark, stop, and wait for further instruction. The landmark would be something like a hallway wall clock or a fire extinguisher unit on the wall. I would tell my leader to walk to that spot, stop, and wait for further directions.

I would not stand at the front of the line nor would I stand at the back of the line. Instead, with the kids (blue dots) walking on the right side of the hall, I (red dot) would stand on the left side of the hallway, close to the wall with my gaze not facing forward but rather turned and looking at the line.

All of us were able to maintain some level of eye contact. Also, I walked with my hands behind my back and didn’t talk. Modeling is key.

Once the line leader stopped at the landmark, I would wait for the entire line to come to a halt. Just as the last two or three students were stopping, I would pick out the next landmark I wanted the leader to approach. That pattern would repeat over and over until we reached our destination.

As classes became more adept at hallway expectations, the distance between landmarks grew.

The problem with most lines in schools is that they become disjointed and disconnected. These kiddie caravans start to resemble rush hour on I-95 when cars speed up and suddenly have to jam on their brakes. Better to stay at a good steady pace in the hallway and maximize movement.

Occasionally, a leader will be nervous and miss their spot to stop. I would just gently remind them and they would readily halt. There was no big deal like, “I need a new leader! You're not doing your job!” Everybody should be given the chance to be a leader in an elementary school and if they make a small mistake, it's not grounds for the third degree.

I would often tell my classes after they had done a good stint in the hallway how good they look compared to other classes. It wasn't quite ridiculing the other class but it was definitely point-by-point praise on why they did a better job.

Reasons I Would Stop In the Hallway

If I saw or heard talking, we stopped and waited.

As they were standing there, I would tell them what they were doing: they were waiting because somebody couldn't keep their mouth shut.

Of course, I was saying this is other people were walking by, other teachers, other classes, and , heaven forbid, the principal. As my father said more than once, “All things are possible with just the tiniest bit of shame”.

I would stop the line if I saw people touching the wall hallway wall. I would go into a short ninety-second script I had prepared:

“Do you see how clean these walls are?

They don't stay clean all by themselves.

Our principal has a chief custodian who's responsible for cleaning them but he's very busy so he hires a very old lady to come when you’re home and in bed. She comes in to scrub the walls on her hands and knees with a bucket of hot soapy water and a brush and a towel. (At this point I am on my knees in the hallway, wearing a suit, acting out this script.) She does this work not because she loves that people dirty the walls – she does it because she needs money to feed her family. The only reason she has to scrub walls is because people - children AND adults - touch these walls and leave their greasy, grimy fingerprints on them. Yes, you heard me right, ADULTS DO THIS TOO, and I bet you've seen them. I consider it a vile disgusting habit to touch the walls.

If the walls stayed clean, the chief would be able to give the little old lady a more appropriate job to do in our beautiful school. But there are people who have developed the bad habit of touching the walls as they walk. These people are often the same people with bad habits with their fingers. They have their fingers in their mouth, up their nose, and who knows where else. We do not touch the walls!”

I would then pause for five seconds, let the silence sink in, and start the line again.

There was one time that the kids loved lining up. They considered it most IMPOTANT lineup in their minds. That will be in “Getting From Here To There – Part Three”.

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Getting From Here To There - Part 1

4/21/2021

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“The journey, not the arrival, matters.” –T.S. Eliot

Being successful in music education is often a question of being good at a lot of little things that don’t necessarily contribute to your accomplishments but rather amplify and compound the successes of your students.

When you're working with little kids, it's often about the little things, the little steps, the bite-size increments of achieving goals.

For that matter, that applies to big kids, too. One of the first things that legendary college basketball coach John Wooden instructed his players on was the proper way to tie their shoes. Get enough of the little things going right and you'll get big things going right, too.

Whether you are a school teacher or not, these next three post will provide insights on the way I approached some of the little things that, when left unaddressed, can turn into big problems and even worse habits.

When I'm asked if I ever get butterflies before I go out to perform, my usual response is no, because I've trained my butterflies to fly in strict single line order. One of the greatest gifts you can give little kids in an elementary school is showing them a way to get from here to there that is painless, always works, and draws praise from all who observe them in motion.

Being an elementary music teacher is similar to being a grandparent. They generally bring the kids to you for a while and they return to pick them up.

As an elementary music teacher, I'm usually not taking kids to the music room or sending them back. That's the job of the classroom teacher. I've seen just about every variation, good and bad, on the theme of how to get kids from here to there. What I'm going to detail here is the best amalgam of ideas and techniques for “getting from here to there” that I employed with children in ages ranging from kindergarten to 5th grade.

Getting Out the Door – Preparation is Everything

Before I had the kids line up, I explained exactly what we were going to do.

Anytime you need to have kids go from here to there, clear expectations are paramount. An old classroom credo of mine is to tell them what you're going to do, tell them how we're going to do it, tell them what they're doing while they're doing it, tell them what they did after they've done it, give a little feedback, and hopefully be in a position to give a lot of praise.

Right before it was time to leave, I would tell the kids that in a minute or so, I would give them “Go” time (time where they could talk to each other or me), and during that “Go” time, they were supposed to line up at the door. When I moved the magnet on the chalk board back to the “Stop” sign, the expectation was their hands, feet, and mouths would “stop”, their brains would keep working, their hands would be behind their back, and they would be showing hallway expectations (no talking, hands behind our backs).

Sometimes after signaling for “Stop” time, I'd approach the line and identify the four most focused kids standing in line. I would rapidly point to each of them and say, “Five, ten, fifteen, twenty!”. That meant that those kids were supposed to get out of line and into the fifith, tenth, fifteenth, and twentieth spots in the line. I often told them that “A line is like a chain, it's only as strong as its strongest links”, which is a play on the old cliché. The children that I pointed to we're going to be my strong links. They were my helpers, my inside line leaders, and they were going to assure us that we would get us from here to there.

This technique firms up the line, gives me more opportunities for recognizing effort and leadership, and took attention away from the solitary kid who was at the front of the line.

Once I had my strong links in position, I would often remark that I might need one more “strong link kid”. If I said that, the entire line would snap into perfect position hoping they might be the one I would pick.

Only after everyone was exhibiting hallway expectations did I ask the leader of the line to choose one of the five air fresheners.

By the door to my room, I had five aerosol room fresheners that sported fake labels I designed. Each of them had a silly, gross name and a funny graphic, creating kid-friendly products you would never want to spray in your house or classroom. Scents like “Rat Fink Fruit Punch” and “Gooey Garbage Can Delight”.

At that point I would ceremoniously hold the can high up in the air and scat the melody to “shave-and-a-haircut”. The “two bits” response would be two sprays from the air freshener which the kids would mimic with a “Pssst, pssst!”. It was a great routine, very predictable once the kids learned it, and put a smile on their faces as they walked out the door.

As the kids would pass me smiles, standing by the door, they would often turn to me, close their eyes, take a whiff, and say, “This smells like a garden!” or “This smells like a rainy day!”, or “This smells like my Grandmom's house!”

The best was one day when a kid walked by and nonchalantly said, “This smells like pot!”

My promise to the teachers picking up their classes was that the kids would always be lined up and in a proper mindset to approach the hallway as well as the rest of the school day. What happened after they left my room, well, that was on the teachers, and as you can imagine, some teachers had a plan to “get from here to there” and some didn’t.

When the teacher arrived at my room, I would tell them what score of the kids got for the day as well as give them a thumbnail sketch of what we did in class that day.

Now suppose I had to take my class to the multi-purpose room halfway through my music session with them. I had a plan to "get them from here to there" for that, too. That will be in “Getting From Here To There – Part Two”

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The Two Most Important Notes.

4/17/2021

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“To begin with the end in mind means to start with a clear understanding of your destination. It means to know where you’re going so that you better understand where you are now and so that the steps you take are always in the right direction.” ~ Stephen Covey

The two most important notes in any song or performance are the first and last. And the two most consequential classes I always taught each year were each section’s first and last class of the year.

If you are getting ready to graduate and start teaching, you are on the starting line of many “firsts”. If you are approaching retirement, you are looking back on a long arc of teaching and contemplating how you want to leave this profession. If you are somewhere in between, you are lucky – you have many options open to you.

No matter where you are on your professional journey, Gary Ryan Blair’s words were meant for all of us: Many will start fast. Few will end strong.

Begin with the end in mind.

People remember your start and they remember your finish. The first few steps of any race have a significant impact of a runner’s final steps and how they cross the finish line. The financial choices and habits we make and develop in our twenties, thirties, and forties have an almost incalculable effect on our fifties, sixties, and seventies. What happens in the middle of a performance, a race, or a career is often hazy and easily forgotten, or quickly summarized as good, bad, or indifferent. But those beginnings and ends tend to be what we’ll remember most and forget last.

For example, when you determine the performance order of your music for a concert, how do you line up your songs? You usually start with your second strongest piece and close with your strongest piece. I did a concert where half way through the program, to the shock of the audience, a thirteen year old girl literally walked off the stage into the pit (she was OK) but what people remember from that concert to this day was the finale.

As far as the school year goes, the first and last class of the year are the most important classes. I often refer to the first class as “the Golden Hour”. The kids are in a state of tabula rasa: at their most open, impressionable, and expectant to see what you are bringing to the party. The last class is where they will be looking for signs of your approval for a year well done. These two classes should command your greatest respect, hours of preparation, and editing your script.

Yes, script. Any time I had to speak at school from the stage, especially when there were parents or administrators in the house, I memorized a script I had written. As far as my first and last class, they were always scripted and always in a state of constant revision. More on editing later.

Needless to say, if you buy into this concept, you will discover that your first and last weeks of the school year will be the most physically and emotionally taxing you’ll ever experience. Bring extra coffee.

The Golden Hour

As my father used to say, “First impressions aren’t that important. People will give you time and wait about eight seconds before they size you up and either hate or love you.”

At the beginning of the year when you meet a class for the first time, you will set the tone for the next nine months. Once that first hour is over, you can’t get it back. You have imprinted on the kids the idea of just who you are, what is important to you, and what they can expect from you.

You've modeled what you want to see in them.

I know many music teachers who promote the idea of getting the kids singing or playing music right away in the very first minutes of the first class. I don't. That Golden Hour was the BEST, most dependable hour where I could accurately 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. That first hour relentlessly focused on one of the most important concepts I wanted to embed in them: namely, developing their self-discipline, which in turn would free me from being a disciplinarian and allow me to be more of a musician and a teacher.
I’ll detail my Golden Hour scripts in future blog posts.

The Final Hour

Your last class of the year will become a denouement for everything you have presented to the children for the past nine months. While the first class of the year focused on self-discipline and communication techniques, the last class is a more of an emotional fulfillment. It becomes a highlight reel of your successes together from the past year.

My recommendation is to keep teaching right up to the last hour of the last class on the last day. There is an old African saying: When death finds you, may it find you alive and not already dead. The last few weeks are not a time for a victory lap. They are an opportunity to communicate that there is more to learn, accomplish, and resolve from the past months of musical work. There is still time to have fun.

When your last class finds you, my they find you still teaching.

Don’t lose sight that your final 45 minutes with any student might truly be your final 45 minutes with them. In my old school district, the turnover rate of students within the district was 40% every year so there was no guarantee I was going to teach those children again, let alone see them again after June 15th - so that makes the stakes a little higher for that last class. Say the important stuff. Don't leave anything out. Nothing like a little pressure, right?

For the final class of the year, I often showed a video I found on YouTube about people helping one another in a community. There was no dialogue - just a soundtrack with visuals. If I had a kid who recently transferred from a foreign country and couldn’t speak a word of English, he could still readily understand the movie.

The gist of the story was a connected chain of people on a downtown street who are helped and, in turn, help the next person they see. It starts with a construction worker helping a young boy who falls off his skateboard. Here’s the video:

I would show this movie to all of my students – kindergarten through fifth grade. The older kids would get the idea in about a minute into the movie; the younger kids took a few more minutes but were always proud that they “figured out” the story on their own.

This movie would be shown literally right before we sang our 'so long' song ("So Long, Been Good To Know You" by Woody Guthrie that we sang at the end of every music class through the year) and minutes before they headed out the door from our last class. As the credits rolled and the scoring played out, I would always remind them that if they forgot everything I taught them about music - how to keep their hands off their face when they sing, how to read notes, how to hold their fingers over a keyboard, how to strum a guitar to make it sound like a drum set - if they forgot all that, it would be okay if they remember the idea of that final movie and what we had done for each other throughout the entire year: namely, we are here to be kind, to help one another so our lives can all be better.

I would always end with the famous Zig Ziglar quote that says, “If you help enough people get what they want, you will get what you want.”

The only reason why this movie/last class/last statement really worked with the kids, and always emotionally resonated with the kids, was that they understood that I truly believe that statement, that my actions through the year had been congruent with that idea of kindness and helping one another.

Through the year, I would orchestrate opportunities in my lesson plans where I could say that I was not so much a teacher and they were not so much students as that we were all just musicians traveling the same road and that I was just a little further down the road than they were. I would remind them of that as they lined up to leave the music room at the end of that final class of the year. At long last, we were together on that road but just as Life sometimes dictates, we had come to a fork in the road and it was time for me to travel one way and for them to travel another. But . . . . if we were lucky, we would meet again someday further down the road.

Seneca said that every new beginning comes from some other beginning's end. Just like when performing a song, try to make that first class of the year your second best class and your final class your best class. Give your students - and yourself - the gift of a new beginning.

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Now it's your turn.

4/17/2021

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This blog is for the two of us whether you know it or not.

How do I know?

First things first: you’re reading. That’s a good sign! We both have a degree of intellectual curiosity that’s poking around for something, something in a different vein, something other than, say, a You Tube water-skiing squirrel. And before you assume I’m a You Tube prude, yes, I’ve watched said aquatic squirrel - so no judgement call from me. Every life is entitled to a little You Tube brain candy.

But maybe you’re here because you’ve read something I wrote somewhere else, something that nudged an emotion.

Maybe we had a chance conversation years ago.

Maybe you’re an administrator?

Or you're here because you are a teacher, or a musician, a composer, a guitarist, a pianist, or a writer. Because I happen to be all of those things. Or maybe none of them.

Maybe we are friends. Maybe you don’t know me at all. Maybe I taught you – or with you. Maybe you taught me. And trust me when I say that if I taught you or taught with you, I hoped there was plenty of mutual learning to go around.

Maybe we made music together. I hope so.

Maybe I played at your wedding. Or spoke at your school. Or we met at a conference. Or at a watering hole. Maybe you brought me a glass of much-appreciated cold water in the middle of a hot summer solo gig under the sun.

Maybe you’re a college music major getting ready to become a card-carrying music teacher and someone said, “Yeah, this guy’s been around and knows some stuff. You should check out his blog.”

Or maybe you’re the practicum student who observed me teach at the Leach School and wrote to their college professor, “I wasn't at all certain about what I would think about this observation.

It's not that I had a problem with the idea of working with disabled children, it's the fact that since I decided I wanted to be a music teacher when I was in seventh grade, all I wanted to do was teach a band. So I felt like, in a school for disabled children, I wouldn't be using everything I was learning in my music classes, and therefore this wasn't a job I could ever want.

Today, my outlook completely changed. When I saw those kids smiling and trying so hard just to clap their hands and sing along, I thought that maybe it wouldn't be so bad to get up in the morning and know you're going to make one of those kids smile, or know that because of you, one of those children will go home and squeeze their mother's hand for the first time just because you learned to do it in a song."

Maybe you are a thriving music educator, living the best professional life you can. Maybe you’re burned out. Maybe you’re getting ready for your last year of teaching. Maybe you’re retired and some of these words take you back to that other time.

Maybe you are like me and music is so intertwined with your life that somedays you don’t know where one begins and the other ends – but what you do know is that there are so many musical touchstones in our life stories that it’s got to be more than just coincidence.

Maybe you came here for an argument – because you don’t agree with me. Or maybe we agree on a lot and you like the feeling of affirmation I provide.

Maybe what draws you to this page is that you think I am a musical truth teller. I don’t know about you, but for me, there is nothing more refreshing than the truth. That first whiff of “truth” is like what I used to tell kids was my favorite smell – the initial bouquet of flavor from a newly opened bag of potato chips – that aroma of truth that feels so welcoming and familiar. And just like when a band aid is ripped away from skin, the truth provides that honest, momentary flinch, that sensation that rapidly morphs into some other perception or emotion and reveals the miracle of healing.

I’ve done more than my fair share of falling down and as far as band aids go, I’ve lost count.

Maybe you know that while I‘ve professionally pushed myself for decades, my occasional intent here is to only nudge you for a few minutes.

And maybe you’ll agree with some of what I say as well as push back when you feel the need.

In any case, I will always be here pulling for you, no matter your walk of life, your lack or abundance of experience, or your silence.

My goal here is to add a post two or three times a week that draws from my past lives as a musician who taught music as well as to respond to questions and queries from those in or approaching the field of music education. And don't worry if you consider yourself musically reclined - I have those days, too.

I’ll be here, somewhere in the cloud behind the words I leave, and I hope you’ll come back to revisit these words.

So, no matter how we met or how you know me, as a teacher, or a friend, or as a co-musician, on these pages I will be “Boyd Holmes, the Writer”. Or "Boyd Holmes, the __________". Your call.

As I like to say, “I’ve suffered for my career and Art. Now it’s your turn.”

Because, after all, this blog’s for you.

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Getting From Here To There - Part 3

Getting From Here To There - Part 2

Getting From Here To There - Part 1

The Two Most Important Notes.

Now it's your turn.

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