So you are or were in high school and pursuing a career as a music educator.
The focus of your time in college is to become adept in all areas that you will need as an educator of music.
That means you're going to be working on your strengths as well as your weaknesses, but primarily relying upon (and mightily compensating) your instructors on helping you strengthen your weaknesses. The idea is so that when you leave college, you are self-sufficient and it's hard for people to tell what your strengths are because there is an high
level of evenness about your presentation.
Caveat: you and your instructors might disagree on what is a “weakness” or an “asset” in your portfolio of skills. I know I did. Never forget – this is YOUR career. They’ve had their opportunity to craft their professional path and now it’s your turn.
College and improving your weaknesses is a little bit like applying compression to an audio track. You're bringing up those low spots to look and sound more convincing next to your strengths.
When you get to your 7.5 hour job, your goal is to have all your strengths and weaknesses evened out.
As far as your 16.5 hour business goes, that is the time to really focus on your strengths and not your weaknesses. It's where you are going to make your most substantial gains personally, professionally, and financially because the sky's the limit in your 16.5 hour business.
There's always going to be a financial lid on how much you can achieve within a school. The nice part about having a teaching a 7.5 hour job in a school is that everything is laid out for you. If you just connect the dots, you will end up with a horizontal straight line. Compensation might be a flat straight line, but at least it'll be a straight line infinitesimally drifting north-northeast.
Unless you are pursuing a leadership degree at the graduate level, there are few opportunities to develop your leadership abilities and even fewer opportunities to make any money off of them for a typical music educator gig outside of your classroom within the district.
Lucky for you, you have a 16.5 hour business, right? I mean, you have your own business, correct?
While leadership is not a job requirement as a music teacher in a school, learning how to be a leader in your 16.5 hour business is crucial for your business’ success. You will be the boss of you. You will own the failures but you also own the successes and reap the financial rewards of their successes.
But, back to college.
College is the prime time to develop your entrepreneurial persona.
That is, unless you did that when you were in high school.
There is a ton of free time in a music education college schedule if you plan your hours correctly. I chose to get my school work done as quickly as possible and experiment on lots of projects. I endeavored to be the guy who read the text book before the first class.
These are some of the opportunities I pursued while still in college that were the beginnings of my 16.5 hour business. If you’ve never considered the idea of your 16.5 hour business, consider these as story starters:
Gigging - I actually started gigging in earnest in high school.
I joined the union.
By the time I got to college, I had played close to 1,000 gigs. They were low paying but were an academy where I learned my instruments and theory as well as the rules of the road.
The union band gigs that I played at the shore or at state parks were instrumental in landing my first full-time teaching gig. The first flutist in the Delaware Symphony and many of the union gigs was a woman in her fifties who I met on these college year gigs. We became friends and through a number of fortuitous circumstances, she created a flight path for me to take over her private school elementary teacher gig when she retired at the end of my senior year.
Again, many of these summer gigs were not high paying but they opened a very crucial door.
Substitute Teaching – One of the older men that I started playing jazz gigs with in high school had a wife who was a full time general music gig in a beautiful public elementary school.
During college, I used to hang out at their house. One night, Lois asked if I was interested in subbing for her and the rest was history. I also subbed for several of the teachers I met on the summer union gigs. As a “class B” substitute, the money was good but the experience was priceless.
Private Teaching – My junior year, I stepped into a director’s gig for a Saturday morning diocesan music program. We had up to 100 kids and I oversaw a staff of half a dozen teachers, including working on the payroll. I learned more in that job about teaching and myself than 90% of college.
That summer, I made a connection with a local school district that had a summer school private lesson program four days a week for six week. The pay was decent but the real dividend was having forty students a week – brass, woodwind, percussion – I saw every bad embrasure and compromised technique under the sun and had to come up with remedies.
Theater – As much as I hated marching band, I loved playing in pit orchestras. I got a few gigs playing in college and community pit bands and was the assistant conductor for a college production of Sondheim’s “Company” where I had to coach the cast with their singing.
Arranging/Composing – One summer, I worked with a classmate of mine, Terry Stewart, selling halftime marching band arrangements to local high schools. It was a hooky premise: we would arrange their school song or alma mater four different ways through the ages: Middle Ages, Classical, Dixieland, and rock.
Our secret selling weapon: we would tailor the arrangements to the strengths, not the weaknesses, of the band. The trick was it engaged the band directors in opening up and talking about their band (something all band directors like to do) – and anytime you are trying to sell something to someone and you can get them engaged in conversation is always good.
We sold the package to about six or seven band directors. I think we spent everything we made on paper, ink, pencils, and fast food on the way to the different schools as we traveled up and down the state.
I was also doing lead sheets for campus kids who were writing songs but didn’t know how to notate them. At $25 a song, it kept me in cigarettes and fast food.
Consulting – This is a weird one. I didn’t really make any money but I developed a hell of a lot of gravitas in the eyes of many of the music department faculty that created momentum in my own eyes.
The head of the theory department, Dr. Robert Hogenson, approached me as well as my classmate, Craig Smith, at the beginning of our senior year to design the university’s first electronic music studio and put a bid list together. We had to work within a limited budget.
We did the homework, helped our department chair order the equipment, and set it up on arrival. We were also enlisted by the department chair to do a demonstration presentation for the deans and financial department to pitch for additional purchases the year after we would graduate.
All this snowballed to the department deciding to hire an instructor of electronic music for the coming school year. Craig and I were chosen to interview all the candidates because we frankly knew more about the state of computer music than most of the music department members. We had private interviews with all the candidates. We sat in on faculty meetings and our opinions and observations were actually appreciated by our teachers.
The candidate we supported, Dr. Fred T. Hoffstetter, was brilliant and the department agreed with our choice.
The studio was simple but powerful. I ended up composing a sonata for tuba and synthesizer that a classmate, Jim Murphy, performed at his senior recital.
In hindsight, I realized this changed the way I looked at myself. While I wasn’t the best in anything musical in my music education department, I had developed a confidence walking through any door or on to any stage that money couldn’t buy.
So there you have it.
I pursued many of these threads after receiving my bachelor’s degree. They were the falling dominoes that led me to new beginnings like computer programming.
The key here is this: When I signed a contract for my first 7.5 job teaching position May first of my senior year, I had already logged hundreds of hours and invested many dollars developing my 16.5 hour business.
So if you are still an undergrad, it’s time to get crackin’.
Even if you graduated years ago and have been working a while, today is always a good day to make more of the hours that are available to us.
Kick around those ideas for your 16.6 hour business and entrepreneurial persona.
You’ll be happy you did.
The focus of your time in college is to become adept in all areas that you will need as an educator of music.
That means you're going to be working on your strengths as well as your weaknesses, but primarily relying upon (and mightily compensating) your instructors on helping you strengthen your weaknesses. The idea is so that when you leave college, you are self-sufficient and it's hard for people to tell what your strengths are because there is an high
level of evenness about your presentation.
Caveat: you and your instructors might disagree on what is a “weakness” or an “asset” in your portfolio of skills. I know I did. Never forget – this is YOUR career. They’ve had their opportunity to craft their professional path and now it’s your turn.
College and improving your weaknesses is a little bit like applying compression to an audio track. You're bringing up those low spots to look and sound more convincing next to your strengths.
When you get to your 7.5 hour job, your goal is to have all your strengths and weaknesses evened out.
As far as your 16.5 hour business goes, that is the time to really focus on your strengths and not your weaknesses. It's where you are going to make your most substantial gains personally, professionally, and financially because the sky's the limit in your 16.5 hour business.
There's always going to be a financial lid on how much you can achieve within a school. The nice part about having a teaching a 7.5 hour job in a school is that everything is laid out for you. If you just connect the dots, you will end up with a horizontal straight line. Compensation might be a flat straight line, but at least it'll be a straight line infinitesimally drifting north-northeast.
Unless you are pursuing a leadership degree at the graduate level, there are few opportunities to develop your leadership abilities and even fewer opportunities to make any money off of them for a typical music educator gig outside of your classroom within the district.
Lucky for you, you have a 16.5 hour business, right? I mean, you have your own business, correct?
While leadership is not a job requirement as a music teacher in a school, learning how to be a leader in your 16.5 hour business is crucial for your business’ success. You will be the boss of you. You will own the failures but you also own the successes and reap the financial rewards of their successes.
But, back to college.
College is the prime time to develop your entrepreneurial persona.
That is, unless you did that when you were in high school.
There is a ton of free time in a music education college schedule if you plan your hours correctly. I chose to get my school work done as quickly as possible and experiment on lots of projects. I endeavored to be the guy who read the text book before the first class.
These are some of the opportunities I pursued while still in college that were the beginnings of my 16.5 hour business. If you’ve never considered the idea of your 16.5 hour business, consider these as story starters:
Gigging - I actually started gigging in earnest in high school.
I joined the union.
By the time I got to college, I had played close to 1,000 gigs. They were low paying but were an academy where I learned my instruments and theory as well as the rules of the road.
The union band gigs that I played at the shore or at state parks were instrumental in landing my first full-time teaching gig. The first flutist in the Delaware Symphony and many of the union gigs was a woman in her fifties who I met on these college year gigs. We became friends and through a number of fortuitous circumstances, she created a flight path for me to take over her private school elementary teacher gig when she retired at the end of my senior year.
Again, many of these summer gigs were not high paying but they opened a very crucial door.
Substitute Teaching – One of the older men that I started playing jazz gigs with in high school had a wife who was a full time general music gig in a beautiful public elementary school.
During college, I used to hang out at their house. One night, Lois asked if I was interested in subbing for her and the rest was history. I also subbed for several of the teachers I met on the summer union gigs. As a “class B” substitute, the money was good but the experience was priceless.
Private Teaching – My junior year, I stepped into a director’s gig for a Saturday morning diocesan music program. We had up to 100 kids and I oversaw a staff of half a dozen teachers, including working on the payroll. I learned more in that job about teaching and myself than 90% of college.
That summer, I made a connection with a local school district that had a summer school private lesson program four days a week for six week. The pay was decent but the real dividend was having forty students a week – brass, woodwind, percussion – I saw every bad embrasure and compromised technique under the sun and had to come up with remedies.
Theater – As much as I hated marching band, I loved playing in pit orchestras. I got a few gigs playing in college and community pit bands and was the assistant conductor for a college production of Sondheim’s “Company” where I had to coach the cast with their singing.
Arranging/Composing – One summer, I worked with a classmate of mine, Terry Stewart, selling halftime marching band arrangements to local high schools. It was a hooky premise: we would arrange their school song or alma mater four different ways through the ages: Middle Ages, Classical, Dixieland, and rock.
Our secret selling weapon: we would tailor the arrangements to the strengths, not the weaknesses, of the band. The trick was it engaged the band directors in opening up and talking about their band (something all band directors like to do) – and anytime you are trying to sell something to someone and you can get them engaged in conversation is always good.
We sold the package to about six or seven band directors. I think we spent everything we made on paper, ink, pencils, and fast food on the way to the different schools as we traveled up and down the state.
I was also doing lead sheets for campus kids who were writing songs but didn’t know how to notate them. At $25 a song, it kept me in cigarettes and fast food.
Consulting – This is a weird one. I didn’t really make any money but I developed a hell of a lot of gravitas in the eyes of many of the music department faculty that created momentum in my own eyes.
The head of the theory department, Dr. Robert Hogenson, approached me as well as my classmate, Craig Smith, at the beginning of our senior year to design the university’s first electronic music studio and put a bid list together. We had to work within a limited budget.
We did the homework, helped our department chair order the equipment, and set it up on arrival. We were also enlisted by the department chair to do a demonstration presentation for the deans and financial department to pitch for additional purchases the year after we would graduate.
All this snowballed to the department deciding to hire an instructor of electronic music for the coming school year. Craig and I were chosen to interview all the candidates because we frankly knew more about the state of computer music than most of the music department members. We had private interviews with all the candidates. We sat in on faculty meetings and our opinions and observations were actually appreciated by our teachers.
The candidate we supported, Dr. Fred T. Hoffstetter, was brilliant and the department agreed with our choice.
The studio was simple but powerful. I ended up composing a sonata for tuba and synthesizer that a classmate, Jim Murphy, performed at his senior recital.
In hindsight, I realized this changed the way I looked at myself. While I wasn’t the best in anything musical in my music education department, I had developed a confidence walking through any door or on to any stage that money couldn’t buy.
So there you have it.
I pursued many of these threads after receiving my bachelor’s degree. They were the falling dominoes that led me to new beginnings like computer programming.
The key here is this: When I signed a contract for my first 7.5 job teaching position May first of my senior year, I had already logged hundreds of hours and invested many dollars developing my 16.5 hour business.
So if you are still an undergrad, it’s time to get crackin’.
Even if you graduated years ago and have been working a while, today is always a good day to make more of the hours that are available to us.
Kick around those ideas for your 16.6 hour business and entrepreneurial persona.
You’ll be happy you did.
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