Boyd Holmes, the Writer - Boyd Holmes

Don’t Say This One Word.

5/4/2021

“Um”

Typical classroom scenario:

Teacher asks a question.

Student raises hand.

Teacher calls on student to respond.

Student responds with, “Ummm . . . “.

There are lots of reasons why all of us make the sound “um”. Usually it’s because we are still thinking. Or we haven't found the exact word that we want to say because we're still formulating the sentence or thought in our mind.

Maybe it's just a bad habit.

Tape yourself while you're teaching. Do you do it?

The problem is that the sound of “um” communicates indecisiveness, a less than firm grasp on vocabulary, the inability to express ourselves in the moment. “Umm” is the verbal equivalent to watching someone compulsively blinking.

We're so accustomed to scripted movies and TV shows where the snappy response comes immediately and effortlessly that it's easy to forget that it rarely happens that way in real life. The ability to come up with funny responses and one-liners is a sign of someone who can think “funny” on command. It emanates from equal parts DNA, viciously quick observational skills, and the quirky ability to make instant correlations.

It is far better to stifle the “um”, simply be quiet, formulate the thought, and once formulated, say what needs to be said. You'll notice that the silence entices people to lean in with expectation of what you're going to say.

The beauty of silence is it creates space that allow everyone involved in the exchange of ideas to briefly reflect on what was last said. You’ll notice that the silence entices people to lean in with expectation of what you’re about to say.

Whatever you say after a second or so of silence will have slightly more impact. Watch a few famous soliloquies and you'll hear – and see - the power of silence. Silence is what makes Laurence Olivier a great actor. It's what makes Miles Davis in incredible musician. It’s what gives Tang Yau Hoong’s art a stand-out quality.

Adults and children alike say “um” all day long in schools. It approaches feedback levels in some classrooms. I would often say that “um” was two letters away from “dumb” and none of us are dumb so steer clear of “um” before people start adding letters to your words.

Don’t Say These Two Words.

5/4/2021

"Good job."

This one drives me up the wall. It rings through the halls and rooms of all schools. It's the compliment that isn't a compliment. They are the two words that say you can't be bothered to positively summerize the student excellence you just experienced.

Some people have a swear jar at work where they have to put a certain amount of money in anytime someone swears. One summer, I had a “good work jar” on my cart as I went from room to room teaching. Anyone who praised a student's work by saying “good job” had to put a quarter in.

Try this. Create a repertoire of new positive affirmations.

Take each letter of the alphabet in order and think of a word or phrase you could say instead of good job.

Awesome.

Beautiful.

Can’t believe how cool that was!

Then take that word and incorporated it in a short sentence that sums up what you just saw.

“That was awesome how you played drums with me while I played the guitar!”

“It sounds beautiful when we stop the song at the same time!”

The student will walk away with a visual image of their success instead of a generic teacher word-burp of “yada yada”.

Don’t Say These Three Words.

5/4/2021

“I don't care.”

Whenever I hear an adult in a school say “I don't care”, it’s usually an emotional reaction to an irrational behavior presented by a student. The student has blurted out an indignity (maybe even an "I don't care" of his own) or done something ridiculous either to get revenge, tick off the teacher, exert power, or because they feel threatened in the moment.

Parents provide unconditional love. Teachers should be providing unrelenting education. Kids think that teachers are going to respond like their parents and many times they are correct. Many teachers believe that emotion is the secret sauce for getting their idea across to kids. The more emotionally charged their message, the greater chance it will resonate with the student. It just doesn’t work that way.

Once you say “I don't care” to a child, you are giving them license to believe that you don't care about anything they do. That's the way children think, in blanket concrete terms. It's a difficult bell to un-ring.

One of the things that I remind student teachers of is that they are always going to be the teacher and the students are always going to be the students. The adult is the one with the upper hand, more experience, more power, and more to lose in an escalating verbal battle with a kid so pick your battles carefully.

There are alternatives to saying “I don't care” and still slow rolling your displeasure with the situation of the moment. Some sentence starters are:

“I get the feeling that you're saying . . . . “

“If I'm not mistaken what you're trying to do right now . . . .”

“I had a funny feeling you might say that . . . . .”

“I know how you feel.”

“Let me get you straight . . . “

If you deliver those lines calmly, you have a greater chance of bringing the temperature down in the situation and making yourself look more like a teacher and less like looking as if you're another arguing kid.

Some teachers think that having the power to say “I don't care” is like a superpower. It is a phrase reserved for adults, not kids. It’s three little words that negate the existence of the student’s behavior or argument and, by association, actually momentarily negates the student’s existence in the eyes of the teacher.

“I don't care” becomes a vaporizing gun in the hands of an emotionally unhinged teacher.

Say “I don't care” enough times, and eventually everyone will believe you.

I was transferred into a school where the kids actually told me, “You never say “I don’t care”. Our old teacher said “I don’t care” all the time.”

My response: ‘”Well, I DO care - all the time.”

If you find that you are unable to curb yourself saying “I don't care”, you might want to consider if it's simply projection and what you really don't care about is your own identity and self-worth as a teacher.

When in doubt, care.

The First Few 7.5 Hours – Part Three.

5/4/2021

There was no escaping the reality that during the 7.5 hours I was teaching, I was working for someone else and not for me. My salary was such a pittance that I qualified for food stamps.

Let me say that again.

I was teaching full-time in one of the most prestigious private schools in Wilmington Delaware and they were paying me wages that qualified me for food stamps.

I knew that I was going to have to make more money and the solution would have to do something with those 16.5 hours. I came to the realization that I had a job and I had a business. My job was working for the school. My business was going to be me, working for me, as well as having others work for me, too.

Max asked me if I even knew what my strengths were. I realized that my notoriety was growing whenever I played a song or wrote a song, or played piano or played guitar, any kind of performance, or connected music with some other discipline for children. One of my most useful skills was that I had the ability face a group of any size, smile, and perform music fairly well and not die of fright. Max advised that at this point in my development, I needed to capitalize on my strengths.

I started by visualizing and branding myself as Mr. Holmes the musician, Mr. Holmes the guitar player, Mr. Holmes the piano player, and Mr. Holmes the composer. The more I saw it in myself, the more others appreciated those qualities in me and saw it, too. It was nothing I said but rather how I projected myselfwith these new personas and brand. The more others saw me in this new light, the more financial and professional opportunities came my way.

I still wasn't too confident with my singing skills but I was working on it. I felt that singing would be the linchpin to coalesce all the other strengths I possessed. During my 7.5 hour job, I continued to play music within the school, accompany the high school shows on bass, perform in concerts and assemblies, and started writing more complex music for my students to perform vocally and instrumentally. During my 16.5 hour business day, I was private teaching, playing big band and trio gigs, playing in an after-hours club in Philly, and taught computer programming in the summer months.

My second year, I wrote a musical based on Margery Williams’ classic children’s book, “The Velveteen Rabbit” for our lower school holiday program which was a huge success.

The following year I wrote my own story and built a musical about it called “Harry’s Quest” based on a character I created when I was four. We staged the musical right before the winter holidays again as we had done the previous year.

The stunning colorful costuming by our art teacher, Evelyn Spence Reeve, captured the exact flavor of the story and music. It was even a bigger success than “The Velveteen Rabbit”, something on a scale the school had never seen before. The following year, the school community came to me, wanting me to record the entire musical, put a record out, and sell it.

I got started on on the project immediately. I didn't dare ask if I was going to make any extra money given that I had written and composed it. I considered it “giving one away” in order to take my brand to the next step.

The record exceeded everyone’s expectations.

Our following next seven holiday musicals were performed on the huge upper school stage and took on Broadway vibe: every child was in a beautiful handmade costume, we had a pit band led by Marty Lassman with orchestrations I wrote, and elaborate lighting and colorful sets by Even Spence Reeve with help from all the staff and many parents.

In all, I wrote eight original musicals.

One of the musicals I wrote was based on the life of American illustrator, cartoonist, and animation Winsor McCay.

Two school parents in the audience owned an audio-visual production house and were blown away by the entire production, especially the music. After the performance they said to give them a call, that they might have a project I would be interested in. It was a video/teaching package aimed at instructing latch-key kids how to be safe called “Better safe Than Sorry”. The composer hired to do the score had recently dropped out of the project and they needed a fully original, recorded, edit-ready score – in three days.

Was I interested?

I jumped at the opportunity.

That started a long professional relationship with “Teleduction”. I provided scores for many TV shows, documentaries, commercials, a 22-part series, “Art Under Foot”, that was aired around the world, and a TV movie, “Drawing a Blank” that was broadcast on Nickelodeon. Without proactively building my brand as Boyd Homes, the composer, during my 7.5 hour job, those opportunities would have never presented themselves in my 16.5 hour business. Without the support Sharon and Frank Baker, Fritz Horisk, and countless others at “Teleduction”, I would have never developed my skills to the degree that I did.

As you can see, the story is morphin from the 7.5 hour job into the 16.5 hour business.

As soon as 3:30 hit, I tried to move my mindset from “this is my job” to “this is my business”. I dropped the Philly after-hours club gig, left Temple University, was writing music, scoring it for television, teaching tons of private lessons, lining up and playing gigs on trumpet, double bass, tuba, and electric bass, and eventually started a band with Marty Lassman and drummer Bob Brown. There will be more about that in a future blog post.

What I'm trying to emphasize is that during those 16.5 hours, while I might have had only a few people working part-time for my business, I made my 16.5 day money work for my business. I steadily invested in the bare musical necessities that would enable me to make more money making live and recorded music. It would be a few more years before I learned how to make that gigging money truly generate income for me. After all, when money is generating money, it's being generated not in 7.5 hour increments or in 16.5 hour increments but in 24-hour segments.

Take away point: Certain incomes never sleep.

Nothing of any value happens overnight - except compound interest.

Your financial and professional portfolio will require your attention every day. Think of ot as financially flossing your teeth. Just realize you are going to do this every day.

It took me five years to get my teaching where I wanted it. It took me over ten years to find my voice on guitar. In each case, I knew I was close. There was no specific moment when I hit that point of “jack pot”. I just remember that all of a sudden, I felt this incredible sense of momentum on a daily basis.

Those first five years were filled with doubt and I almost quit. Don’t be surprised if you experience the same fears.

Keep moving. Action is always preferred over inaction. Don’t become complacent or make excuses when things go south.

Successful people will always credit some of their success to luck. My definition for “luck” has always been “Being prepared for opportunity”. I was very lucky – but was as prepared for every day as I could be during those first months and years of my 7.5 hour day. There is no accounting for chance encounters with good or bad luck. If your attitude pushes you through spells of bad luck, you will often find even better luck on the other side of your adversities.

There are connections you will make during your 7.5 hour day that will provide undreamed of opportunities for your 16.5 hour day. Network early and often. Send hand-written “thank you”s. Know that you will do a few free gigs, not just to get your foot in the door, but also to learn how not to have the door slam shut on your foot.

Don't forget to floss - both dental and financial.

With a little luck and a lot of focused effort, your first 7.5 hour days will lead to a successful career.

The First Few 7.5 Hours – Part Two.

5/4/2021

Within several days, I knew I had a problem. I was a new teacher with no classroom experience and several classes of students who deeply missed their old teacher who left without warning. If I didn’t find a way to help make this situation better for both them and me, the school student community would be emotionally hamstrung and never move forward.

I came up with a plan that might mitigate their feelings.

Speaking to them as candidly as possible, I told them that I knew how much they missed their old music teacher. I shared that I missed her too. The truth was I really did miss her because I wished she could have said some words of guidance to them to get them through this emotional blockage.

I had a suggestion for the students. “How about if we write a letter to her and tell her how much we miss her. We could do this together.”

(Notice the use of "we", not "you")

They all nodded yes.

“How about if we draw some pictures of us to put in the card, pictures of us in music class doing the songs that we did the other day?”

Bigger smiles, bigger positive head nods.

“Hey, I’ve got an even better idea! How about if we make a tape of us singing her favorite songs and we send it to her?”
Now they were jumping up and down eager to sing for me, eager to be the best students they could be.

Lesson learned: genuflect at the altar of the person you follow.

As the year progressed, we were working together and developed synergy. I started writing music for the kids to sing, silly songs, and songs that allow them to emotionally share how they really felt at times.

I still didn't feel like I was hitting the mark as a music teacher even though I was being touted as the wunderkind by parents and other teachers.

My classroom management was erratic. Some days it was as if a riot was going on. I was always hoping someone wasn't going to get hit by something or fall or get injured. I had no real system for creating lesson plans. While I knew what was important to me as a mature musician, I was looking at pre-school children trying to fathom what was important for me for them. As an only child, I spent no time with kids that age for the most part and next to no time observing young children in my college studies.

My principal hid from me. She wouldn't give me any advice. Wirh no real mentors in the building. I felt was different from all the other staff members. It was more like I was just seen as a different breed of cat and they were going to let me do my own thing.

It got so bad with the principal evading me that I would go outside the school and bang on her window, saying, “I know you're in there, I need help”. The rustling window blinds blinds was the only response.

But my department head and parents appreciated what I was accomplishing. They noticed that I had an affinity for working with the kids with behavior issues. Little did they know I was once one of those kids.

By the middle of my second year, I was ready to bail on teaching and try graduate school with the goal of becoming a college teacher. I was accepted in Temple University master’s composition program headed by American composer Clifford Taylor.

During my second year, my principal decided not to return for the next term. When I met with her the week before she resigned, I turned in my resignation informing her that I wouldn't be returning for a third year.

As I started dealing with the fine print of a master's-level degree, nothing was coming together as far as college scheduling. I decided a third year teaching was more secure than grad school. I resolved I would attend grad school part time and continue teaching at the elementary school full time.

The morning after I had made my decision to stay, I called my Headmaster and department head, arranged to meet with them, and planned to beg to have my resignation letter back and continue to teach next year.

They were ecstatic with my change of heart.

“Of course you can stay!” A huge weight was lifted off my bank account.

I literally ran to lower school to tell my co-workers that I was staying for a third year.

“Really?”, a voice said behind me.

“Let me introduce myself. My name is Max Harrell and I am the new principal and I believe I have something to say about this decision”. The wind was knocked out of my checking account.

Lucky for me, Max observed me teach that day and had the kindest and most cogent observations and advice I had ever received in my college or professional career. He epitomized the concept of a teacher’s teacher. Even after taping myself dozens of times and analyzing my work, he identified some bad teaching habits that I had failed to see. He was candid about my weaknesses but rarely suggested solutions. Instead, he often asked open, leading questions, almost speaking in in zen koans at times. He made me think in ways no teacher had ever expected me to do.

In the five years I worked with Max, he made me an incredibly stronger, more confident teacher.

Despite my improved teaching skills, I was still financially floundering. I'll address that in “The First Few 7.5 Hours – Part Three.

The First Few 7.5 Hours – Part One.

5/4/2021

I've mentioned in other posts that I've looked at my career in blocks of 7.5 hours and 16.5 hours within a 24 hour day. The 7.5 hours were when I worked at my job and the 16.5 hours was when I had my business. The job was working for a private school or a school district and the business was working for myself. While both time segments were as different as possible, they became positively intertwined and synergized to great professional advantage.

How we balance our time and energies between our job and business will determine how we create or defeat momentum in both arenas.

There are certain similarities between the 7.5/16.5 hour ratio of your career to the interest and principal payment ratio in the life of a mortgage.

At the beginning of a mortgage, the majority of the payment is interest. At the beginning of a music teaching career, the bulk of your time and effort will be devoted to your 7.5 hour day, namely your job. You be busy getting the lay of the land, networking with your co-teachers and department members, and developing the patterns and rituals that form the basis of your teaching.

As you progress through your career and develop your 7.5 hour skills, you need to expand your efforts in your 16.5 hour day. That corresponds to less interest and more principle in each progressive mortgage payment. This sliding scale will continue each year as you progress through your career.

As you approach the end of your mortgage, there is almost no interest and all principal. During the last few years of your 7.5 hour job, you will hopefully mastered the skills of an experienced teacher and created a momentum that the majority of your efforts will be focused on your 16.5 hour business day and future.

My story isn’t all that unique. I bet you and I share a lot of common occurrences, emotions, successes, and failures in those first few 7.5 hours on our first teaching gigs. If you haven’t started teaching yet, maybe there are a few cautionary colonels of wisdom ahead that will be of benefit to you. One of the most apparent axioms as you read my story should be never underestimate the power of a smooth take off - especially if you want a successful landing.

At the beginning of our careers, those 7.5 hours are key for developing our reputation and our brand within music. Those are the hours when we begin to redefine ourselves, re-invent our personas, and establish who we want to be in our careers. Once we hit the ground running as a first-year teacher, we quickly discover what skills we don’t have as well as skills we do possess and can maximize to their potential. We have a choice to run toward our weaknesses or run away from them.

During my first few weeks and months of my first year, those 7.5 hours instructed me in what I needed to pursue during the other 16.5 hours. It wouldn’t be for another two decades before I realized the true power of the 16.5 hours and how they would secure my future.

During those first years, I was able to synergize with other great musicians like Marty Lassman and with great administrators like Max Harrell. I gained admittance into a prestigious Masters in Composition program and walked away from it with no regrets.

I had just graduated from college. It was the summer before I started my elementary general music position. I was hired in May of my senior year and immediately bought a pawn shop guitar – I had no functional guitar skills. By the time August arrived, I knew all the basic cowboys chords. I could play just about any song I've ever played on upright bass now on guitar. While the extent of my piano lessons was only a semester of class piano, I could comp any typical song on a piano.

My place of employment was a classic eastern-seaboard private day school. For all the bucolic storefront beauty found in the school’s glossy PR admission packets, the elementary music room was sparsely stock with well-worn, tired instruments. One piano, one Yamaha classical guitar, about 80 Silver Burdett music books, a stereo, assorted rhythm sticks, 3 drums, a box of hand percussion instruments, twenty chromatic xylophones, and a box of soprano recorders. I felt I was being given a box of Popsicle sticks and told to build the Taj Mahal. I knew I was going to build something but I wouldn’t have been able to describe it to you if you offered me double my salary.

I started working on my brand right away with mixed results. The older children did not care for me and wanted their old teacher back. I was very different from the previous music teacher. She was an older petite lady and I was a twenty-something six-foot-five bearded hipster and it quickly became clear that this change was not working for them.

As classes walked down the hall to the music room, they would chant in unison they wanted their old teacher back. Their classroom teachers considered it nonviolent protest, which the Quakers were big proponents of, but I felt it was just a bunch of little kids being spoiled brats and being allowed to get away with inappropriate behavior.

Within a few days, I realized it was critical for any kind of success to have them on my side. I devised a plan. I’ll explain it in The First Few 7.5 Hours – Part Two.

The Ins-and-Outs of “Stop”s and “Go”s – Part Two- Love means Never Having To Say . . .

5/2/2021

The publicity line from Erich Segal’s best-selling 1970’s novel “Love Story” was “Love means never having to say you're sorry”. With the stop-and-go technique, the core truth is “Educating means never having to say ‘stop talking’ ever again”.

Trust me, you’ll love it!

Once you start using stop-and-go, you must steel yourself from ever saying “stop talking” to a class again. This is where we realize that we have to break our old verbal habits and not repeat the thing that all of our elementary teachers said to us infinitum if we want to have a snowball’s chance of training our students with this visual behavior modification technique.

If you end up using a hybrid system involving both the stop-and-go technique as well as vocally the mantra of “stop talking”, the whole gesellschaft will fall flat on its face and you will have less control then you did when you started.

Using stop-and-go will immediately provide you with found minutes that turn into hours that turn into days of found teaching time. It allowed me to accomplish more in 45 minutes then I could in 60 minutes without using this technique. Once you start using it, you'll come to the sudden realization that you need more material for a 45-minute class. The students have more opportunity to gobble up the content you present and expand upon it in activities that you've planned. Momentum is achieved. At the end of class, kids are sometimes winded.

One of the greatest benefits of the stop-and-go technique is that in their mind’s eye, your students will create a visual image of the S and G with a magnet moving back and forth. As children approached fourth and fifth grade, it was important to take stop-and-go from being a local technique in my music room into the general sphere, namely into what Bronfenbrenner referred to as the ecological model of human development: outside of the school and into their daily activities in the world.

If stop-and-go helped me corral children only in my class, it would have been a parlor trick, a wasted learning and leadership opportunity. Stop-and-go not only could but should also help people in their everyday lives.

As I would say to the older kids, “Just as you know when I'm going to go up and move that magnet, you know when it's the right time to do the right thing. You're just seeing someone doing an action with a magnet on a blackboard that represents what you are thinking in your mind all the time, namely that there's a right time to work and there's a right time to take a break. When you’re alone, you can move that magnet in your brain, whether you're cleaning your room at home, cutting the grass outside, doing homework on your own, going into a library to research something you're excited about, or playing Fortnite with a friend.

The one little thing I've never told you is that for years, I have had the same S, G, and magnet in my head, and I move that magnet back and forth all day long. It helps me know what I should be doing at any given time. There’s no way that you would know that I'm doing that in my head, but I am. And if it can help me, then it can help you, too. If we develop the habit of stop-and-go and learn that it's within our power to control that measure of time, we will be happier people at the end of the day with what we've accomplished.”

It took me decades to figure out stop-and-go in my life. I know many adults from all walks of life who would benefit from its powers.

Ella Wheeler Wilcox once said, “With every deed you are sowing a seed, though the harvest you may not see.” By helping students find simple patterns, by encouraging meaningful habits, and by modeling techniques like stop-and-go, we will insure students a harvest that we as teachers may never see come to full fruition.

Thankfully, the seed will grow long after we are gone.

The Ins-and-Outs of “Stop”s and “Go”s – Part One

5/2/2021

Trigger warning: While I try to keep my writing grounded in common-sense basic terms, sometimes educational vernacular will be employed in this post.

The stop-and-go technique as I've outlined it in these pages is only a technique and a technique is only as good as its understanding, application, and mastery. Anyone who wants to drive a nail needs to have the proper technique of using a claw hammer. But use that claw hammer to clean a plate glass window and they will suddenly realize they have used the wrong tool for the wrong job with the wrong technique.

I've demonstrated the stop-and-go technique to several teachers as well as students from the University of Delaware with varying results. Sensing how to balance the best time increments is crucial for its success. It requires reading the temperature of the room and knowing when kids are approaching reached their time-on–task limit.

As musicians we've heard a great deal about tension and release. The effect of tension and release is something that we don't solely create as performers. Tension and release is also a compositional and improvisational technique. Teaching is understanding tension and release in light of how you implement content with students.

Dr. Jerry Petroff of the College of New Jersey has said that ninety percent of childhood behavior is communication. Our students are telling us something all the time. They are engaged, bored, distracted, confused, impatient, swamped, or caught up in their own personal family drama that we as teachers barely have a glimpse into, if at all. We need to communicate with OUR behavior that they are being seen, heard, valuesd, and acted upon.

I've observed hundreds of teachers in classrooms of children over my career. Most often what I see is teachers focused on their behavior expectations, telling students what they want to see in the moment. In turn, I see students responding by training teachers as to what's not negotiable , namely, what they're going to get away with no matter what the teacher says.

Instead of a paradigm where teachers tell students about their expectations and students respond with behaviors reflecting their intentions, my stop-and-go technique relies on a visual prompt. Kids see a magnet moved from an S to a G or a G to an S.

The system is visual.

The only Pavlovian auditory prompt is the sound of the magnet smacking the chalk board. Kids are primarily responding to the visual.

When a teacher goes to stop time, they are silently creating the beginning of a content material arc. It's crucial that as soon as stop time begins, the teacher is taking in visual data about student engagement and mental exhaustion. Think of it much like reading a biorhythm in real time.

It is always better to go to G sooner than later. It doesn't help the pearl diver if you offer them an aqualung at 5 feet from the water surface if they ran out of air at 10 feet. They'll be DOA and so will the class if you don't gauging when to switch to G isn’t properly determined.

So much of this all has to do with the decline of attention spans in the point-and-click, swipe and touch society we’ve created, and the aspect of silent/still communication. When I first introduced Bach's “Well-Tempered Clavier, Book One, Prelude One” as a settling device at the beginning of my classes, kids could not get past thirty seconds without starting to squirm and exhibiting discomfort with the stillness of the activity. Gradually sensitizing them to the music and desensitizing them from whatever they were doing before they came into my room was essential. There was a zen aspect of clearing the mind, not starting things over but simply creating a blank slate where we all could breathe together again.

Just as the implementation of any new idea in the classroom does not originate from a place of perfection, stop-and-go will not start from a place of flawlessness. There will be a learning curve for both you and for the students. Think back to some of your best private lessons in college. The best ones were not where the teacher was engaged in the muscular arrangement of your embouchure or other physical aspects of playing. It was when the teacher was able to provide feedback of your performance in real time that drastically informed you in and you could take forward to future performances when the teacher wasn't there. That is the beauty – and necessity - of using a digital recorder to document your time teaching in front of your students. That digital data will be your after-hours teacher and, if you pay attention to it, you will observe unconscious behaviors that you need to modify or completely drop.

As someone who has composed quite a bit of music, the stop-and-go technique is the closest thing to composing student behavior and engagement in the classroom that I've ever experienced. It's where I've been able to best orchestrate my forty-five minute segments of my 7.5 hour day and create educational dynamics, swells, tensions, releases, appropriate emotion, codas, and standing ovations the kids give themselves.

We’ll wrap-up the case for implementing the stop-and-go technique in “The Ins-and-Outs of “Stop”s and “Go”s – Part Two - Love means Never Having To Say . . . “

See you there!