Here’s the deal:
You signed a contract and said you would do the work.
Did you negotiate a budget? Because if you didn’t, this could be a job requiring a straw – in order to suck it up.
A little story
In my old school district, one of our middle school chorus teachers walked out one day and never came back. They needed a chorus teacher pronto but were having problems filling the position. An all-points request went out to the school’s faculty for any suggestions. One of the math teachers said that Shirley, a Spanish teacher in the school, ran a small choir at her church. Maybe she would be interested.
Shirley was a great teacher and knew how to sing a pop song. She couldn’t read music, couldn’t play an instrument, and never took a music elective in college. But she smiled a lot, sang with a big voice, moved when she sang, and had a positive, infectious attitude with the kids.
She took the assignment and nailed it. Morale improved, membership went up significantly, and admin was very happy. Shirley used karaoke .mp3s she found on Youtube, word sheets, and had the kids singing mostly unison with a few harmony spots to songs by Michael Jackson and other pop icons.
The concert was an unmitigated success: kids singing, smiling, dancing, and giving their parents and school district a great evening of music and memories.
Shirley had no budget, no degree in music, and killed it. Needless to say, this rubbed some of the district music teachers the wrong way.
What do you think admin thought?
They loved her. She was HELPING them. They asked her what she needed and got her what she asked for.
Take Away: Shirley stepped up, asked for nothing, provided exceptional service and benefits, made music out of a handful of supplies, and presented the school district it the most radiant light possible.
Being a leader was more crucial than being a certified music teacher.
Jack Jadach, my principal at the Leach School, provided our music program with everything I proposed in our school for kids with disabilities. He was a prince and knew the power of the Arts with all kids.
Then again, I routinely stuck my head in his office, especially on slow in-service days, and ask if there was anything I could do to help – help clean the basement, assemble fliers going home from the school office, or sit in on committee action teams. I know he apprciacted my offers to help.
When you serve, don’t limit the nature of your service.
Once I was moved to a general music and chorus position in a new schools, the principals were very tight with their budgets – not just with me but with the entire faculty. There was less the aura of a school and more the feel of a factory. The music room inventory could have been written in 1900: there was no technology, only one piano, and no guitars.
Asset Allocation and Management
Just like we have to organize, allocate, and manage our 16.5 hour business investments with a high degree of definition, the same goes for our 7.5 hour teaching job.
I remember having college practicum students who had an assignment based on the premise of what would they buy for their music program if their principal gave them $3,000.00.
That’s easy.
Suppose they allot you no money.
First, a few “don’t”s.
Don’t do a bake sale, sell candy bars, or charge admission for watching your students perform, especially if you are getting no funding support from your admin. Some of these strategies can be appreciated as last-ditch supplementary capital sources but should not set a precedent for the sole source of funding.
If you prove to your admin that you are willing to make your kids perform or sell items for the money that the school refuses to provide, you are going to be selling more than chocolate bars.
The same goes for “Donors Choose” and “Go Fund Me”. If as a teacher you are destitute, homeless, existing on SNAP food benefits, or providing over-and-above home health care to a family member that prevents you from getting a second job, then yes, apply for charity or assistance. But I would never let my admin forget.
Don’t appear needy to school parents. I wouldn’t allocate quietly going to parents or PTA members with your hand out. Principals have a way of wanting to appear as if they’re not supporting their students to the public at large. You can look for a parent advocate who can approach the principal with a soft touch try to persuade them to financially support the music program with specific needs – like instruments.
If you have no music, compose some.
If you can’t compose, study some books and many songs, watch some videos, talk to friends who do compose music, and try. You might surprise yourself.
You can allocate some of your 16.5 hour budget to supplement your 7.5 hour job. The only thing I want you to promise is that whatever you buy, you take when you leave. Use it on your next teaching placement. If you retire, donate it to a school that means something to you.
When I decided to take my teaching to a new strata that would require school purchases, I wrote proposals that fell on deaf administrative ears.
I made a strong case for why pianos and guitars were crucial to a child’s fine motor skills, development in music, and overall education. When my proposals were rejected, I had to dip into my personal business capital to fund my dream of instating a piano and guitar curriculum at Castle Hills School.
We really needed it.
My preliminary data collection when I first came to the school showed that only twenty-two percent of the school population had ever played a piano OR guitar and that only nine percent had ever touched a piano AND a guitar. And this was a Title One school of over six-hundred students. I knew my program would make an unmistakably positive difference in the lives of our students.
The way we allocate the elements of our investments among mutual funds or index funds, small caps versus large caps, and the fees incurred in having these accounts can easily compound our investments in the neighborhood of $50,000.00 to $100,000.00 and higher over the lifetime of the investment.
The same goes for our teaching environment. My final principal was supportive – but I had acquired my collection of guitars and pianos by the time I started in her school.
My cash infusion to the program immediately started to compound our results as the program took off.
If you have a non-supporting principal, don’t hesitate to shop around for a new school. Find out which principals support the Arts in your neck of the woods.
The Greatest Asset You Possess
The greatest asset you can possibly have during your 7.5 hour teaching job is talent – if you can sing, play piano, guitar, all the instruments. If you can compose music and lyrics as well as perform and teach the music you compose.
Are you and your program a magnet for kids who want to participate? Do they sense your drive and commitment to the Arts in a way that they can’t stay away from your ensembles and special projects?
Just as your financial investments grow over time, how have your skill sets grown? What are you doing to improve your talents? How are those talents making an impact on your students?
Teaching leadership and self-discipline are core beliefs – not line items from a spending budget.
I would prefer a program with a driven music teacher with no funding over a school with a music teacher exhibiting mediocre talents with a fortune for a budget any day.
More than six administrators in different schools in different decades referred to me as a “pied piper” because kids followed and participated in all things music in their schools.
As Woody Allen said, “Showing up is eighty percent of life”.
Kids who are engaged in the Arts come to school. They show up.
And that is an asset that a budget can’t buy, no matter how big it is.
Be that teacher!
You signed a contract and said you would do the work.
Did you negotiate a budget? Because if you didn’t, this could be a job requiring a straw – in order to suck it up.
A little story
In my old school district, one of our middle school chorus teachers walked out one day and never came back. They needed a chorus teacher pronto but were having problems filling the position. An all-points request went out to the school’s faculty for any suggestions. One of the math teachers said that Shirley, a Spanish teacher in the school, ran a small choir at her church. Maybe she would be interested.
Shirley was a great teacher and knew how to sing a pop song. She couldn’t read music, couldn’t play an instrument, and never took a music elective in college. But she smiled a lot, sang with a big voice, moved when she sang, and had a positive, infectious attitude with the kids.
She took the assignment and nailed it. Morale improved, membership went up significantly, and admin was very happy. Shirley used karaoke .mp3s she found on Youtube, word sheets, and had the kids singing mostly unison with a few harmony spots to songs by Michael Jackson and other pop icons.
The concert was an unmitigated success: kids singing, smiling, dancing, and giving their parents and school district a great evening of music and memories.
Shirley had no budget, no degree in music, and killed it. Needless to say, this rubbed some of the district music teachers the wrong way.
What do you think admin thought?
They loved her. She was HELPING them. They asked her what she needed and got her what she asked for.
Take Away: Shirley stepped up, asked for nothing, provided exceptional service and benefits, made music out of a handful of supplies, and presented the school district it the most radiant light possible.
Being a leader was more crucial than being a certified music teacher.
Jack Jadach, my principal at the Leach School, provided our music program with everything I proposed in our school for kids with disabilities. He was a prince and knew the power of the Arts with all kids.
Then again, I routinely stuck my head in his office, especially on slow in-service days, and ask if there was anything I could do to help – help clean the basement, assemble fliers going home from the school office, or sit in on committee action teams. I know he apprciacted my offers to help.
When you serve, don’t limit the nature of your service.
Once I was moved to a general music and chorus position in a new schools, the principals were very tight with their budgets – not just with me but with the entire faculty. There was less the aura of a school and more the feel of a factory. The music room inventory could have been written in 1900: there was no technology, only one piano, and no guitars.
Asset Allocation and Management
Just like we have to organize, allocate, and manage our 16.5 hour business investments with a high degree of definition, the same goes for our 7.5 hour teaching job.
I remember having college practicum students who had an assignment based on the premise of what would they buy for their music program if their principal gave them $3,000.00.
That’s easy.
Suppose they allot you no money.
First, a few “don’t”s.
Don’t do a bake sale, sell candy bars, or charge admission for watching your students perform, especially if you are getting no funding support from your admin. Some of these strategies can be appreciated as last-ditch supplementary capital sources but should not set a precedent for the sole source of funding.
If you prove to your admin that you are willing to make your kids perform or sell items for the money that the school refuses to provide, you are going to be selling more than chocolate bars.
The same goes for “Donors Choose” and “Go Fund Me”. If as a teacher you are destitute, homeless, existing on SNAP food benefits, or providing over-and-above home health care to a family member that prevents you from getting a second job, then yes, apply for charity or assistance. But I would never let my admin forget.
Don’t appear needy to school parents. I wouldn’t allocate quietly going to parents or PTA members with your hand out. Principals have a way of wanting to appear as if they’re not supporting their students to the public at large. You can look for a parent advocate who can approach the principal with a soft touch try to persuade them to financially support the music program with specific needs – like instruments.
If you have no music, compose some.
If you can’t compose, study some books and many songs, watch some videos, talk to friends who do compose music, and try. You might surprise yourself.
You can allocate some of your 16.5 hour budget to supplement your 7.5 hour job. The only thing I want you to promise is that whatever you buy, you take when you leave. Use it on your next teaching placement. If you retire, donate it to a school that means something to you.
When I decided to take my teaching to a new strata that would require school purchases, I wrote proposals that fell on deaf administrative ears.
I made a strong case for why pianos and guitars were crucial to a child’s fine motor skills, development in music, and overall education. When my proposals were rejected, I had to dip into my personal business capital to fund my dream of instating a piano and guitar curriculum at Castle Hills School.
We really needed it.
My preliminary data collection when I first came to the school showed that only twenty-two percent of the school population had ever played a piano OR guitar and that only nine percent had ever touched a piano AND a guitar. And this was a Title One school of over six-hundred students. I knew my program would make an unmistakably positive difference in the lives of our students.
The way we allocate the elements of our investments among mutual funds or index funds, small caps versus large caps, and the fees incurred in having these accounts can easily compound our investments in the neighborhood of $50,000.00 to $100,000.00 and higher over the lifetime of the investment.
The same goes for our teaching environment. My final principal was supportive – but I had acquired my collection of guitars and pianos by the time I started in her school.
My cash infusion to the program immediately started to compound our results as the program took off.
If you have a non-supporting principal, don’t hesitate to shop around for a new school. Find out which principals support the Arts in your neck of the woods.
The Greatest Asset You Possess
The greatest asset you can possibly have during your 7.5 hour teaching job is talent – if you can sing, play piano, guitar, all the instruments. If you can compose music and lyrics as well as perform and teach the music you compose.
Are you and your program a magnet for kids who want to participate? Do they sense your drive and commitment to the Arts in a way that they can’t stay away from your ensembles and special projects?
Just as your financial investments grow over time, how have your skill sets grown? What are you doing to improve your talents? How are those talents making an impact on your students?
Teaching leadership and self-discipline are core beliefs – not line items from a spending budget.
I would prefer a program with a driven music teacher with no funding over a school with a music teacher exhibiting mediocre talents with a fortune for a budget any day.
More than six administrators in different schools in different decades referred to me as a “pied piper” because kids followed and participated in all things music in their schools.
As Woody Allen said, “Showing up is eighty percent of life”.
Kids who are engaged in the Arts come to school. They show up.
And that is an asset that a budget can’t buy, no matter how big it is.
Be that teacher!
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