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Leadership, Laugher & Loud Opinions on Music Education
The French Revolution & Amazon Prime
I have been on a streak. Not streaking - get your mind out of the gutter. I have been on a writing streak. If I do say so myself, since coming back in August, I have been really pleased with my weekly content. It is interesting, insightful (I think), and (hopefully) thought-provoking. Eight straight weeks of delivering on the promise.
That streak ends today.
It's Tuesday afternoon. It's 1:30 p.m. I have consumed enough coffee to make Mr. Coffee nervous. I have been staring at this computer screen for the better part of two days, waiting for an epiphany. Dare I say, patiently waiting for an idea to arrive. Something insightful. Something pithy. Something poignant. Heck, at this point I would settle for mildly interesting. But alas…nothing.
It's not for lack of effort. I have started and deleted at least ten different versions of this article.
I thought about writing about the education revolution happening in France. I actually did some research. I opened tabs. I had thoughts. Then I decided I didn't have enoughthoughts and there was not enough of a crossover into music. At least one I could flesh out.
I briefly considered writing about Amazon Prime Days (what would you Prime deliver to your band room if it were on sale and you had the budget?). That's when I knew I was reaching. Apparently I am at the point where I am combining my music education profession with my personal ambition to save 31% on a cordless leaf blower.
If you know me, you know I love me a leaf blower. No, seriously, I use it almost every day.
(Editor's note: Scott sure has a lot to say about having nothing to say.)
I kept waiting for the big idea to arrive, and usually, it does. Eventually there's a story, a conversation, a student, a teacher, an observation from an airplane seat, or some completely unrelated thought that somehow turns into something worth sharing.
But not today. No last-minute epiphanies are coming. No game-saving witty remarks. No finely crafted insights. Just me, a blinking cursor, and the realization that perhaps this is one of those days when nothing particularly remarkable is going to happen.
And maybe that's worth talking about.
Because we have those days in the band room too; days where it feels like we didn't get anything meaningful done. Not every rehearsal is going to be a musical epiphany, the trumpets suddenly play in tune, and the clarinets remember there is, in fact, a key signature. Not every rehearsal ends with goosebumps or with the percussion section finding their music. Not every student has a breakthrough. Not every Tuesday changes a life. Sometimes you spend 45 minutes fixing eight measures and, when the bell rings, you're not entirely certain you actually fixed them. Sometimes you leave rehearsal thinking, Did we accomplish anything today?
I think we put too much pressure on ourselves to manufacture magic every day. We are teachers, so we want breakthroughs. We want evidence that something we said or did fixed something wrong (or at least made it less wrong). We want the kid who couldn't play it yesterday to suddenly play it today. We want the rehearsal where everyone locks in, the room changes, the hair on our arms stands up, and everybody knows something special just happened.
Those days are wonderful. They are also rare. Most of teaching—and, if we're being honest, most of life—happens somewhere between spectacular and disastrous.
I call them needle days.
The needle moved. Maybe not much, and maybe not for every student. But the needle did move.
Maybe today the articulation got a little cleaner. Maybe one student finally understood the rhythm. Maybe you cleaned one drill set. Maybe you finally got through measure 72 without stopping. Maybe the ensemble isn't good yet, but it is slightly less not goodthan it was yesterday. That counts. In fact, I'm beginning to think that counts for a lot.
We tend to celebrate breakthroughs while ignoring the tiny movements that made them possible. But the magical rehearsal is rarely magical because of what happened that day. It is magical because of what happened during the twenty ordinary rehearsals before it.
The counting. The tuning. The repetition. The reminders. The pencil marks. The "one more time from 37." The days when nobody left inspired but everybody left one millimeter better than when they walked in.
And as teachers, we have needle days too. Some (most) days you are inspiring, hilarious, energetic, and completely on top of your game. And there are days when you have been awake since 4:30 a.m., it takes two hours to accomplish twenty minutes of work, incoming emails outnumber outgoing ones, and your to-do list seems to reproduce when you aren't looking.
Like me, you drink an entire pot of coffee and still resemble a tortoise more than a hare. You aren't changing the world today. You're just trying to answer the email, teach the class, get through rehearsal, and maybe remember who you gave your keys to.
That's okay.
I wonder how much kinder we would be to ourselves if we stopped measuring every day against our best day.
Maybe today doesn't need to be transformational.
Maybe today just needs to move the needle. One student. One measure. One conversation. One email. One tiny thing in a slightly better place than it was yesterday. We tell our students that improvement is incremental, that mastery takes time, that mistakes are part of learning—and then somehow expect ourselves to operate at peak performance every waking moment.
So if today was one of THOSE days, I'm with you. Mine was too. I didn't have an epiphany. I didn't solve the problems facing music education. And I didn't have any coffee (see the post script).
But, I was smart enough not to write the definitive treatise on the French education revolution. And, I didn't even buy that leaf blower (as tempting as it was). But I sat down. I stared at the screen and I kept trying. And eventually I wrote this.
Consider the needle moved, even if the streak is over.
Sometimes that has to be enough.
Besides, I'm not worried.
TOMORROW'S GONNA BE A BANGER. I can just feel it!
Because here's the thing about needle days: you don't always realize what they were building until the needle finally moves far enough for you to notice.
Have a great week,
Scott
p.s. On the EXACT days of Amazon Prime Days, my Roomba, electric mop, coffee maker, and Apple HomePod all stopped working. All in one day. Coincidence? I think not.
p.p.s My leaf blower is still going strong!
Eight Minutes vs. Eight Weeks
If you don't know Randall Munroe, you should. He's a former NASA roboticist, physicist, and the creator of the wildly popular webcomic xkcd (yes, that's the real name). He is possibly one of the world's foremost experts at taking ridiculous questions far too seriously.
Munroe has built an entire career around asking the kinds of questions most of us laugh out loud at—and then using actual physics, mathematics, and research to figure out the answer.
His What If? series is a wildly popular blog (600,000 readers a week - slightly larger than mine) where people submit absurd hypothetical questions, and Munroe attempts to answer them scientifically.
And when I say absurd, I mean absurd. REALLY ABSURD!
Munroe has investigated what would happen if you threw a baseball at 90 percent of the speed of light (bad news for the batter and the catcher), whether you could swallow an entire cloud (you can't), if everyone on Earth jumped at exactly the same time (I'll let you read for yourself about that one), and how long humanity might survive if the Sun suddenly went out (not long).
But that is just the beginning.
Ever wonder what would happen if we drained the oceans, or if the solar system were filled with soup out to Jupiter? If the answer is yes, you need therapy, but more than anything you need yourself some Randall Monroe. Just so you know, as far as soup for a universe, he observed that things "might be okay for some people for a few minutes." After that, things get considerably worse.
This is Munroe's particular kind of genius: ask an absurd question, apply serious science to it, and somewhere between the joke and the mathematics, discover something genuinely interesting about the world.
Ask an absurd question, and Randall Munroe will give you a very serious answer.
In his latest book How To: Absurd Scientific Advice for Common Real-World Problems,Munroe turns his attention among other things, to learning to play the piano.
But because this is Randall Munroe, he doesn't simply talk about practicing scales or learning chords. It's kind of funny to those of us who have suffered through class piano as he states, "Learning to play is easy enough; just raise a finger and press down on a key that has little resistance. Simple!"
As someone who survived class piano, I just wish I could tell him, "Oh Randall, if it were only that easy."
As he posits about learning a new instrument, he doesn't stop at playing the piano; he starts wondering about the piano itself.
A standard piano has 88 keys. Fine. But he finds it limiting.
Why not 150? Or 250? Why stop at sounds audible to humans?
That's where things get wonderfully Munroe.
He theorizes that we should start expanding the piano to accommodate more of the frequencies humans can't hear and start worrying about the frequencies dogs can hear, which of course would require more keys. Bring bats into the equation, and suddenly Munroe's theoretical piano has around 155 keys.
Which is both ridiculous and brilliant.
Because underneath the absurdity is a surprisingly profound question:
Who is the music for?
We assume it's for humans. But what if were wrong.
In his book, he considers how music would be different if we made it for whales and bats. While it stretches the bounds of the activity, it raises an interesting question (this is Scott's question and not Randall's):
What if the music were for no one?
Think about it as I channel my inner and inadequate Munroe.
I have spent my entire career as a music educator - the large portion of which I was preparing music for someone else. Not for me. Not for my students. But for others who are not in my charge or my professional responsibility
The concert.
The football game.
The marching contest.
The festival.
The adjudicator.
The parents.
The administrators.
The audience.
No matter where the venue or what the event, there was always a recipient to hear the music-making—someone else to hear what we (my students and I) had created. I know we are the recipient during rehearsals, but for the sake of Randall, let's follow the question through.
We rehearse because eventually somebody is going to hear us.
We fix the release because somebody will experience it.
We tune the chord because somebody might notice.
We spend twenty minutes fixing eight measures because someday those eight measures are going to leave the rehearsal room and become a performance.
And that's okay.
Performance is one of the things that makes music extraordinary.
However, I wonder if, somewhere along the way, we teach kids that music becomes valuable only when and if somebody else hears it.
So, allow me to continue my Randall Munroe-esque journey into absurdity by asking you this:
What if at your next performance, nobody came?
Seriously! (Pause here for a minute and think about the ramifications for you and your students.)
Imagine telling your ensemble on the first day of the concert cycle:
"We are going to spend the next eight weeks preparing this music. We are going to rehearse it. Study it. Tune it. Phrase it. Fight with it. Get frustrated with it. Fall in love with it. And eight weeks from now, we are going to walk onto the stage and perform it beautifully."
But....
Nobody will be there to hear it.
No parents.
No administrators.
No judges.
No recording.
No applause.
You will walk onto the stage, perform the concert beautifully, take your bows for an auditorium filled with empty chairs, and go home.
What would your students say?
How would they react?
Would the eight weeks still matter?
Would you and they still fixate on the wrong notes?
Would you and they still care about the quality of the crescendo?
Would you and they still spend fifteen minutes getting the clarinets to match the articulation in measure 47?
Be honest, just between you and me. Would YOU still record rehearsals and study scores? Would you become so frustrated at repeated mistakes and missed rehearsals? Would you spend as much time at work obsessing over literature and seeking out errata sheets if no one would ever hear the fruits of your labor?
If we're (I'm) being honest here. I probably wouldn't care to the level of detail I do now.
And here's the bigger question:
Even without an audience, would the music still have accomplished what you wanted it to?
We all know it would. Because, in the end...
The audience gets eight minutes. The students get eight weeks.
The audience hears the final product.
The students live through the process that created it.
They learn to listen.
They learn to adjust.
They learn that the person sitting beside them matters.
They learn that their individual contribution is incredibly important, while also discovering that the group matters more than they do.
They experience frustration.
Patience.
Failure.
Repetition.
Improvement.
Trust.
Responsibility.
And every once in a (very long) while, if we're lucky, they experience beauty.
Because some of the most important musical moments of the year happen when nobody is listening.
Tuesday. 10:17 in the morning. Third period. Nobody outside the room even knows it happened. But it happened.
That is one of the great privileges of teaching music.
Yes, the concert and contests matter. The audience matters. I will be the first to admit that.
But they aren't the reason we do what we do, or our students do what they do..
Because the audience ONLY gets eight minutes. AND EIGHT WEEKS IS WHERE THE MAGIC HAPPENS AND WHERE MUSIC EDUCATION LIVES.
So maybe every once in a while we should channel our inner Randall Munroe's and...
Take away the audience.
Take away the judges.
Take away the trophies.
Take away the applause.
Take away everything except the kids, you, and the music.
Then ask one wonderfully absurd question:
If nobody were listening, would this still be worth doing?
That may be the most important lesson we learn from Randall is that the most important performance we ever give might be tomorrow, during 3rd period.
Moment Maps and Measuring What Remains
For reasons that were not apparent to me, but were to my wife, I have been thinking a lot about the future, and specifically my future, and how I want to spend it.
What started last Spring with my brother's passing was further fueled by reasons to reflect, and a book I read and wrote about in May: Die with Zero by Bill Perkins. In the past couple of months, I have given the book to 10 different people, all of whom said it was life-changing. It's worth checking out.
Even after thinking a lot about the last chapters of my life, I wasn't prepared for a blog post I came across by Tim Urban's called The Tail End, published on his website Wait But Why. Tim thinks like no other human being I know.
Like Perkins, Urban suggests we stop measuring life in years and start measuring it in experiences. At first, it sounds like a clever thought exercise or math problem.
Then it becomes something much more profound.
Instead of saying he has fifty or sixty years left, he begins counting what those years actually contain. Not could contain, but actually WILL contain.
For instance...
If he reads five books each year, he thinks about having maybe three hundred books left to enjoy. He imagines fifty or sixty Super Bowls remaining. The same goes for presidential elections, Olympic Games, autumns, family vacations, or walks on the beach. Life suddenly isn't an endless stretch of time—it becomes a finite collection of moments.
Then he arrives at the thought that stops you cold.
He realizes that because he only sees his parents a handful of times each year, he has probably already spent nearly 90 percent of the time he will ever spend with them.Not ninety percent of their lives—ninety percent of his moments with them.
Think about that. Maybe there are only thirty more dinners around the table. Twenty more Christmas mornings. A dozen family vacations. A few more birthdays. A handful of ordinary afternoons that don't seem important until one day you realize they were.
Urban's point isn't that life is short, but that what matters is what you do with your remaining experiences.
As I finished reading his essay, my mind immediately wandered to us as music teachers.
A student who begins kindergarten and graduates from high school will spend roughly 2,340 days in school. That sounds like forever. Ask any sixth grader, and graduation feels as far away as retirement.
But students don't get music for all 2,340 days. And you only see them for a portion of their time in music.
Because of elementary schedules, alternating classes, testing, assemblies, holidays, summers, and the realities of school life, the average student spends a portion of about 1,110 of those days learning music (I actually roughed out the math on this one).
And that's assuming they don't quit.
Start counting experiences in those 1,100 musical days, and the number becomes MUCH smaller. In those 1,100 plus days, they will likely experience around twenty-eight concerts, and sixteen home football games under Friday night lights. If they keep going, they will attend thirty plus marching invitationals. A few district concert festivals, and maybe four state festivals, if everything goes well and they make the top group their first year. Otherwise the number is even smaller.
Want to see the number shrink again? Of the dwindling numbers above, how many remain? For instance, my youngest son (who is a junior in high school) has the following remaining:
12 Marching contests
9 Home football games
6 Band concerts
4 More trips
3 Camps
2 State championships
1 Senior concert
One final show. One last bus ride home. One last hug before graduation.
Read those numbers again, but now think of them for yourself, as a music educator,
How many times will you teach someone to make their first sounds?
How many football games do you have?
How many marching band contests lie ahead?
How many holiday concerts and times will you conduct Sleigh Ride?
How many festivals?
How many more times will you play Pomp and Circumstance?
Suddenly every rehearsal looks different. And every student seems more meaningful.
The rehearsal that gets shortened because of an assembly isn't "just one rehearsal." It's one of only 1,140 opportunities. But every performance is just one of thirty.
Every moment becomes a little more precious when you measure the experiences and not the days.
It got me thinking. What if we measured our careers the same way? How many years do you have left?
Look at your career not in years. Not by contracts. Not by retirement dates. But by experiences. And not just the experiences you have had, but how many you have left.
The football game you complain about attending? One of perhaps sixteen left in your life. The spring concert you've conducted dozens of times? Maybe you only have seven or eight left.
How many first days of school do you have left? Twenty? Fifteen? Ten?
One August morning you'll unlock the band room for the very last time. How many more beginning band classes will you teach? How many more times will you hand a nervous eleven-year-old their first instrument and watch them make that glorious, squeaky, unforgettable first sound?
How many more times will you conduct Holst's First Suite in E-flat? Or Second Suite in F? Or Lincolnshire Posy? Or Ride of the Valkyries?
Or that piece you've loved since your very first year of teaching?
At some point there will be one final performance.
One final downbeat.
One final fermata.
One final release.
How many more seniors will walk across the stage, hug you, and whisper, "Thank you for being there?"
When you begin counting moments instead of years, your career suddenly feels very different.
Perhaps that's what Tim Urban was really trying to teach all of us. Life isn't measured by the years we accumulate. It's measured by the meaningful experiences we create for our students and ourselves.
Have a great week,
Scott
p.s. I created a way for you to build your own "Moments Map." Click below to build it. Be sure to download, print, and post somewhere you see every day.
p.p.s. Really - click it. It won't take more them 90 seconds.
NOT THINKING ABOUT SOMETHING MEANS YOU HAVE IT
(The entire East Coast is back in school this week, so I decided to release this as a bonus edition)
I recently read a blog post by Scott Clary that quantified something I have been thinking about for years.
He said: "The difference between having money and not having money isn't what you can buy. It's whether you think about money at all."
He went on to explain that "When you're broke, every decision comes with a calculation. Can I afford this? Is this worth it? What else could I do with that money? The thinking never really stops."
What does this have to do with you?
As a teacher and speaker, I have espoused the belief that success is how YOU define it, not a set of judges. In the last week alone, I have stood in front of more than 1500 students and teachers and shared some variation on this same message. That's just this week.
I share this message with ease and confidence, not just because I believe it, but because I have experienced success, so I no longer beholden to it.
Let's revisit Scott Clary's quote, but think about it as a music teacher and program manager.
When your program is broke, every decision comes with a calculation. Can I afford this? Is this worth it? What else could I do with that money? The thinking never really stops.
This concept applies to time as much as it does money. Reread the paragraph again, but instead of money, use the word rehearsal time.
The bottom line is, it's easy not to think about success once your program has had it. Until then, it consumes far too much of your teaching bandwidth.
It's never about winning or ratings, AFTER you have won and gotten the highest rating. But before? That can be a different story.
If you've ever taught in a struggling program, you know exactly what that feels like. You think about everything. You think about every kid who walks out the door. Every instrument that doesn't get returned. Every parent who sends an unkind email. Every feeder-school student who chooses something else. Every concert that feels half full. Every budget line. Every rehearsal. Every empty chair.
When you're trying to build something, your brain is constantly doing the math.
Can we afford to take this trip? Can we keep this class alive? Can we recruit enough kids to justify the section? Can I convince this student to stay? Can this drill writer take us to the next level? Can I somehow make one more thing happen with less time, less money, and fewer staff than I had last year?
If that's where you are right now, I want to say this clearly: That's exhausting.
It also doesn't reflect your worth as a teacher.
Incredible educators lead programs with 30 kids. Incredible educators are trying to rebuild after years of turnover. Incredible educators are starting at new schools. There are incredible educators in schools where the schedule works against them, the budget is thin, the feeder system is weak, and there is no history of success - YET!
Sometimes success comes slowly.
Sometimes it comes painfully slow.
Sometimes it feels like you are pushing a piano uphill.
I know how discouraging that can be.
The danger is that we start believing the size of the program or the score measures the size of your impact.
It doesn't.
A struggling program is filled with kids who matter. A small ensemble does not mean a small impact. A kid who finally plays eight good measures still matters. The student who comes to school because your room feels safe still matters. The parent who tells you, "This is the first time my child has ever stuck with anything," still matters.
Impact is not a number and can never be fully measured.
Now let's revisit Scott Clary's idea.
If you are fortunate enough to lead a program that has become successful, something strange can happen.
You stop doing the calculations. Not because you've stopped caring, but because the things that once consumed your thoughts begin to feel automatic.
The kids show up.
The parents volunteer.
The program has a reputation.
The feeder schools send students.
The culture seems established.
Success slowly convinces you it doesn't need maintenance. But it does.
Every year. That is true whether your program has 40 kids or 400.
And maybe that is where the struggling director and the successful director have more in common than we realize.
Both are building. One is rebuilding something visible. While the other is building something invisible - something only they can see.
Both require intention. Both require humility. Both require YOU!
Have a great week,
Scott
MUSIC EDUCATION AND OUR COAT OF MANY COLORS
(I normally don't include images in this newsletter to ensure copyright compliance,
but I am making an exception for this newsletter. All photos are considered public domain)
When I first heard of Dolly Parton's passing, I knew I wanted to write about her. It was Tuesday night a week ago, and I had already written, edited, formatted, and loaded that week's edition into my system. So, I decided to hold for a week.
I'm glad I did.
Plenty has been written about Dolly Parton, and plenty will continue to be. Far more talented writers than me will regale you with tales of the superstar, songwriter, entertainer, businesswoman, and philanthropist. Deservedly so; however, there is one little piece of her story that I think those of us in music education should hold especially close.
Before Jolene, Dollywood, 9 to 5, the Imagination Library, and I Will Always Love You, Dolly Parton was something much simpler. At Sevier County High School, she was a music kid. She played drums in her high school marching band and sang in the choir. Maybe, in a life that ultimately became a beautiful Coat of Many Colors, school music was one of the early patches.
I would love to know more about that band kid. Was she ever late to rehearsal? Did she lose her music? Did she ever get in trouble for talking during class (like every other drummer)?
In other words, was she a typical student, or did she show early signs of the superstar she would become?
Did her director ever look at her and think, "This kid is going somewhere"? Or was she simply another student in the room? That's the wonderful mystery of teaching:
We have absolutely no idea who is sitting in front of us.
Dolly's first and perhaps most iconic hit, Coat of Many Colors, tells the story of her impoverished upbringing. I didn't know the story behind the song, but my wife, who LOVED that song as a young girl, told me all about it upon hearing of her passing.
Dolly's mother took scraps of fabric given to the family and lovingly stitched them together into a coat for her daughter. Dolly proudly wore it to school, only to be ridiculed by classmates because her beautiful coat was made from rags.
What other people saw as evidence that Dolly had very little, Dolly saw as evidence that she was rich in abundance. The coat wasn't valuable because of what it cost. It was valuable because of what went into it. That little coat would eventually become one of the defining stories of her life.
The third-chair clarinet might someday cure cancer. The trumpet player who won't stop talking might become a senator. The quiet cellist could start a company. And that percussionist in the back? Well, she might become the next Dolly Parton. I am always wondering in what classroom (or workshop) the next Tim Cook, Jennifer Garner, or Jimmy Fallon is- all of whom were in music. Just the thought of that reminds me that our job isn't to predict a child's destination. Our job is to help them get there, wherever it is.
We are a part of the fabric of their lives.
I think music teachers make coats like that every day. Not with fabric and thread, but with experiences. One rehearsal. One concert. One bus ride. One solo. One failure. One victory. One teacher saying, "ONE MORE TIME." Another saying, "I believe in you." A Friday-night football game here, an honor band there, and an inside joke or friendship that somehow survives for twenty years.
Individually, they may look like scraps, but stitch enough of them together, and eventually you've made something your students can wrap around themselves for the rest of their lives.
For some students, music is their coat of many colors.
Dolly never forgot where she began. After becoming successful, she returned home and helped raise money for scholarships, instruments, and equipment for the very school band she once belonged to. Think about that. She could have spent her money anywhere. She could have looked at Sevier County and said that's The Last Thing on My Mind. Instead, she remembered. She came home. She invested in the next generation of kids.
That philosophy eventually grew far beyond music. Dolly created the Dollywood Foundation and later the Imagination Library, putting books into the hands of millions of children. She believed deeply that where a child starts should not determine where that child finishes. Her own journey from My Tennessee Mountain Home to international superstardom certainly proved the point. Her life seemed to say Try. Dream bigger. Learn more. Don't allow somebody else's expectations to define you. Maybe there really is A Better Place to Live, but sometimes we have to help our kids imagine it before they can find it.
That's where Dolly's story becomes our story. Music teachers spend their careers collecting scraps. We take the kid who can't afford an instrument and find one. We take the student who doesn't think they belong and give them a chair. We take the kid who can't play four measures and stay after school until they can. We take fifty completely different human beings and somehow convince them to breathe together, listen to one another, and create something beautiful. On our best days, a band, choir, or orchestra is a beautiful coat of many colors—different people, different backgrounds, different abilities, different stories —stitched together into something none of them could create alone.
A great life isn't one perfect piece of fabric. It's a thousand little pieces sewn together. Some are beautiful. Some are painful. Sewn together day by day, stitch by stitch, those experiences become our story.
The funny thing is, most of us will never know which patches mattered most. It might be the conversation after rehearsal. The trip where a kid laughed until they cried. The day you noticed they weren't okay. The first time their parents heard them perform. The moment they realized there was finally a place where they belonged.
Years later, they may not remember the music you programmed or the rating you received, but they remember how being part of your program made them feel.
And suddenly, Here You Come Again—another former student walking through your door twenty years later to tell you about something you barely remember doing that changed their life.
Dolly Parton was a public school music kid. And those experiences didn't just help shape her musical career, but her entire identity.
That should remind every music teacher of something incredibly important: you may never know what the scraps you're giving a child today will eventually become. Someday, long after they leave your room, one of those kids may look back at everything you've given them and realize something Dolly understood better than almost anyone: they were rich all along.
Have a great week friends!
Scott
p.s. Want to know more about Dolly's philanthropic work? Click here.
MUSIC EDUCATION & THE MERE-EXPOSURE EFFECT
Back in the 1990's, researchers Richard Moreland and Scott Beach at the University of Pittsburgh conducted a fascinating experiment. They had four actors pose as students in a college class over a semester.
One actor attended the class zero times.
Another attended five times.
Another ten.
The final actor attended fifteen times.
They didn't participate in class. They didn't introduce themselves. They didn't make friends with their fellow students. They simply walked into the room, sat down, listened, and left. In other words, they did nothing more than show up.
At the end of the semester, researchers showed students photographs of the four actors and asked them to rate them. Something remarkable happened. The more frequently an actor had attended the class, the more positively the students felt about her. Students perceived the actor they had seen more often as friendlier and more likable. This (now) well-documented phenomenon is called the mere-exposure effect: repeated exposure can create affinity.
Contrary to the age-old saying, familiarity doesn't breed contempt; familiarity breeds connection.
The women weren't trying to be impressive. Unlike teachers who are trying to be memorable, the actors weren't trying to entertain anyone. In fact, they were trying to be unmemorable. They didn't say anything at all; however, they were remembered, fondly, for just showing up. So it begs the question:
How often did you show up for your students?
The study suggests that the consistency of your presence is more important than the quality of the instruction.
As a music educator, you show up. Again. And again. And again. Before school. After school. Tuesday night. Friday night. Saturday morning. Sunday afternoon. August band camp. December concerts. February festivals. April trips. May auditions. And just when everyone else thinks the year is over, we start planning for the next one.
Few people outside of our profession fully understand the depth of the commitment. They see the concert. They don't see the 6:30 a.m. sectional. They see the marching band at halftime. They don't see the director unlocking the band room before sunrise. They see the orchestra dressed beautifully on stage. They don't see the teacher who spent lunch helping one student learn four measures that everyone else mastered last week. The performance is the visible part of music education. Showing up is the invisible part.
But our students notice. Maybe not consciously. Maybe not today. Maybe they won't walk into rehearsal tomorrow and say, "Mr. Lang, I really appreciate your consistent presence in my life." Still, even in Costco this past weekend, I ran into a former student from 2003 - now married with three kids- and she had taught her 7-, 5-, and 3-year-old kids the band credos. I was amazed that she remembered the credos, but blown away that she taught them to her kids.
As a music educator, every interaction is another small investment into a relationship. Every trip. Every concert. Every bad rehearsal. Every great rehearsal. Every "Good morning." Every "Let's give that another rep." Every "We can do better."
You keep showing up.
That's particularly important for those of us who suffer from imposter syndrome (we meet Thursday evenings at Starbucks). We attend conferences and watch brilliant clinicians. We hear phenomenal ensembles. We scroll through social media and see someone else's incredible concert, enormous marching band, gorgeous facility, or latest award. It's easy to convince ourselves that everybody else has figured this out. They haven't.
You don't have to be the greatest conductor in your state. You don't have to have the biggest program. You don't have to win every festival or know the perfect thing to say every time a student walks into your office. You have to be there today. And then you have to be there the day after that.
Think about how extraordinary that is in the life of a young person.
Students change teachers every year. Coaches change. Classes change. Friends change. Interests change. Families sometimes change. But a music teacher remains in a student's life for years. That's hundreds—sometimes thousands—of moments of exposure, encouragement, correction, laughter, frustration, music, and life. You were there.
You don't just show up for students either. You show up for parents and families. You help foster family relationships, provide opportunities for shared experiences, and give fodder for post-performance car ride conversations. You attend birthdays, weddings, and even funerals.
There's an important distinction here. The Moreland and Beach study doesn't prove that simply being physically present automatically makes someone a great teacher. High-quality instruction and the pursuit of excellence are required and still add important value. It just means you don't have to have a world-class ensemble to make a world-class impact.
Perhaps that's the real lesson. Excellence is important, but consistency is transformational.
Someday, every one of us will put the baton down. Someone else will unlock the band room. Someone else will stand on the podium. The trophies will eventually gather dust, the marching shows will be forgotten, and even the performances we thought were unforgettable will become stories that fewer and fewer people remember. But scattered throughout the world will be former students who remember something. You! And you being there. Day after day. Night after night. Weekend after weekend, year after year. You didn't have to be the world's best teacher. You didn't have to be perfect.
You just had to care enough to keep coming back. And that's way more than mere exposure.
Have a great week,
Scott
KNOWING AND DOING ARE NOT THE SAME THING
In a recent article in The New York Times; What Do Students Lose When They Stop Writing? makes a compelling case about what is lost when students write in the age of artificial intelligence. The article explores a question much larger than whether students should or shouldn't use AI:
What happens when we separate the result from the work required to get there?
The author makes a compelling case that when AI does the actual writing, the learning isn't imprinted on the student because they didn't actually go through the task of writing.
READING doesn't equate to learning - WRITING equates to learning.
As someone who writes every week (and writing may be a generous definition of what I do), for me, writing is hard. Really hard. It requires me to process information, come up with an original observation, build it into an engaging narrative, and deliver it on a timeline. As I said, writing may be an overly elegant way to describe these weekly missives.
But I do it every week, forty weeks a year.
But according to the researchers cited in the Times, that difficulty isn't simply an unfortunate side effect of writing. The difficulty is part of what makes writing valuable. According to author Dana Goldstein, "The process develops working memory, planning, metacognition, and the ability to evaluate and revise our own thinking."
But I already knew that. Not because I am a writer. Because I am a music teacher.
(I was literally talking about this in a workshop last week)
Because in music, knowing isn't enough.
You can know every note on the page. You can identify the key signature, explain the time signature, define every musical term, and tell me precisely what the crescendo means. Congratulations. Now pick up your instrument and do it. And then come back tomorrow and do it again. And if it pleases me, again the day after that.
You don't learn to play the clarinet by knowing about the clarinet. You don't read a book about it, memorize the fingerings, and pick it up and ne Eddie Daniels. You learn to play the clarinet by playing it. Usually badly at first. Occasionally loudly. And sometimes producing sounds that cause fear among your family members and pets.
Then you practice. You listen. You adjust. You fail. You improve. And you come back tomorrow. And it's not just the music.
Knowing your drill isn't the same as marching your drill. You can memorize every coordinate on the page, but eventually you have to put your feet on the field. Eight-to-five. Hit the form. Dress the line. Miss it. Fix it. Do it again. Eventually, what you knowbecomes something you can do.
And then there's responsibility.
Imagine if we knew the music and drill and only showed up on Friday nights. After all, why should we have to DO something when we already KNOW something?
What separates music from every other curriculum is the daily, repeated application of the knowledge.
We don't teach responsibility by giving students a book or a PowerPoint (although my books are pretty good). We teach it by asking them to be responsible every day. Bring your instrument. Have your music. Show up on time. Practice your part. Remember your uniform. Help load the truck. Put away a chair that isn't yours. And, in one of the highest expressions of personal responsibility known to humankind, remember to wear LONG black socks under your uniform.
But there's something even more important happening there. Music teaches a particular kind of responsibility because other people are depending on you to know AND do!
If you don't know your part, the entire band pays the price. If you miss your dot, somebody else has to fudge the form for you. If you're not there to play your part, we can't 3D print another second bassoon. Well, not the person, at least. Your preparation—or lack of it—affects people besides you.
The same is true of non-musical skills. You can define grit. You can read about teamwork. You can probably write a perfectly respectable five-paragraph essay about both things. But music requires you to practice it in real time, EVERY DAY! Music teaches you when to speak, when to listen, when to lead, and when your contribution matters precisely because nobody notices it.
And if you fail to learn these lessons?
There is no undo button. You don't get to stop the ensemble and explain that you actually knew the answer. You can't hit the delete button or erase the mistake. You recover. You count. You listen. You find your place and get back in. And maybe five minutes later, you get another chance. Music teaches students that making a mistake isn't nearly as important as what they do in the measure that follows it.
So yes, this activity is meant to be hard. Not just once, every day.
Not impossible. Not miserable. Not the hard that makes kids want to quit, like marching in 118-degree heat in July in Arizona. But hard enough that forces you to learn something to make it easier. Without the hard, there is no learning.
The music is supposed to require practice. The drill is supposed to require repetition. Playing together is supposed to require listening. Being an ensemble is supposed to require compromise. And being dependable is supposed to require showing up again tomorrow.
The difficulty isn't a flaw in the experience. It's part of the experience.
That's what I think is so important about music education right now. We live in a world increasingly capable of producing the product without requiring the process. And I'm not anti-technology or anti-AI, far from it. Technology can be an extraordinary tool. Even the experts in the Times article aren't advocating abandoning AI altogether; they're asking educators to think carefully about which parts of learning students still need to do themselves.
In music, we want kids to...
Know their music—and play it every day.
Know their drill—and march it every day.
Know to listen—and actually listen every day.
Know about responsibility—and be responsible every day.
AI may provide a shortcut to writing––but not one to learning.
And that is why music matters.
Have a great week,
Scott
I’M NOT OLD, I’M JUST A LATE BLOOMER
I'MMMM BAAAACK. Did you miss me? I missed you! No, really I did. Anyway...
Just so you know,
I am a runner. I'm just slower now.
I am a reader. I now need glasses to do it.
I am an active person. It just hurts more the next day.
I still travel a lot, but it's getting harder. (yesterday was BRUTAL)
Why? Because I'm getting old(er).
Yes, any semblance of color has left my hair years ago, and it sits above a forehead that appears to have accumulated several new topographical features. Somehow, the person in the mirror looks older than the person doing the looking.
You would think it's my glasses. But first, I need to remember where I left them. All six pairs of them. It's a constant game of hide and seek. A game I lose more than I win.
I do not THINK of myself as old. I do, however, notice a decline.
I run a little slower. Recovery takes a little longer. Things that once required a good night's sleep now seem to require a good night's sleep, stretching, ibuprofen, hydration, and possibly a consultation with a medical professional.
With age, there is an unavoidable and unmistakable decline. Declining hearing, eyesight, and well, just about everywhere else I look and feel.
Despite all of this, apparently, my best work is yet to come. As author David Brooks says, I am not in decline; I am just a late bloomer.
In his recent article in The Atlantic, "You Might Be a Late Bloomer," Brooks argues that some people do not live their best lives until they are much older, after they have experienced life and made mistakes.
Brooks writes about people whose greatest contributions didn't happen early at all. Cézanne struggled for decades. Julia Child didn't even attend cooking school until she was 37. Harland Sanders was apparently in no particular hurry to become Colonel Sanders. Yet, we have somehow convinced ourselves that if our career hasn't achieved notoriety by 30, we may have missed our window for success.
Society looks for early success as evidence of a bright future (like all those 30 Under 30 lists), but early failures can lead to an onslaught of senior success.
I know plenty of music educators who felt that way. I know I did. You scroll through social media and see your peers conducting an all-state ensemble, presenting at a national conference, publishing a book, or winning Teacher of the Year. They post pictures on their socials bragging about their success, standing next to a pile of trophies and plaques, while you spent Tuesday afternoon explaining for the 147th time that forte does not mean "play like you're angry at the building."
It's common to wonder if you're falling behind, but I am learning that my path is unique. It's about growth, not speed, and the turtle teaches us that slow and steady wins the race. Some of my best ideas have come in more recent years, and I am beginning to see a sphere of possibility that does not include running for the next plane - which will inevitably be delayed.
Maybe you're a late bloomer, like me. Your years of experience are allowing you to see things you might not have seen when you had better eyesight, hear things you may not have heard when you were younger, and do difficult things with less effort than when you were more physically capable.
One of Brooks's most interesting points is that late bloomers often aren't simply early bloomers who got delayed. Their difficult experiences allowed them to develop differently. They wander. They experiment. They fail. They collect experiences that don't seem particularly connected at the time. Then, somewhere down the road, those experiences begin talking to each other. The strange collection of jobs, mistakes, interests, mentors, bad decisions, accidental opportunities, and spectacularly mediocre Tuesday rehearsals starts becoming something that looks suspiciously like wisdom.
Sound familiar? It does to me. In fact, it's the soundtrack of my life. I wander, experiment, and fail as good or better than anyone else I know.
Music educators should understand this effect better than most. We literally see kids bloom at different speeds. We've all had the sixth grader who picks up the clarinet and somehow sounds like they've been secretly practicing since birth. We've also had the kid who spends two years sounding like a goose arguing with a lawn mower—until one day something clicks.
Yes, we see future potential in our students, but we oftentimes don't see it in ourselves. We offer grace, space, and hope to those in front of us but fail to do the same for the person in front of the mirror.
Why are we so willing to extend that grace to our students but so reluctant to extend it to ourselves? Perhaps in our quest for (musical) excellence, we do not afford ourselves the luxury of failure - we won't tolerate a wrong note or rhythm from our students, so why would we be any more tolerant of mistakes that we ourselves make?
Brooks explains and names this as "diversive curiosity"—the tendency to explore broadly before settling deeply into something. I love that idea for music teachers. You taught elementary music when you thought you'd be a high-school band director. You started a jazz band/chamber group, sponsored a club, volunteered for a school committee, and ran a leadership retreat with no training or experience. Every concert you teach music you have never conducted, with kids who have never played the music, and attend a festival in front of judges who have never heard your group.
Early in my career, I cared a lot about whether the ensemble sounded good. Ratings mattered. Performances mattered. Recognition mattered. I'm not going to pretend they suddenly don't. I still like winning. I still like excellence. I still think B-flat should occasionally resemble B-flat. However, after more than three decades in music education, my definition of a successful rehearsal—and a successful career—has gotten considerably larger.
I think late bloomers eventually discover something early achievers sometimes have to learn the hard way: external validation is a short-term fuel source. There will always be another ensemble that sounds better. Another director getting more attention. Another program with better facilities, bigger budgets, newer uniforms, more private teachers, and apparently a brass section recruited directly from the Blue Coats. If your sense of worth depends on keeping up with all of that, you are signing up for a race with no finish line.
Late blooming means spending our younger years building our résumé. If we're fortunate, we spend our remaining years building ourselves.
Maybe that is what blooming actually looks like—becoming more fully the teacher—and person—you were capable of becoming all along.
Yes, I am older, so I...
Run slower. But I see more.
Need glasses to read. But I understand more.
Am less physically agile. But I'm more mentally flexible.
I guess I am a late bloomer. How about you?
Have a great week, friends. I am glad to be back.
Have a GREAT week,
Scott
SEMINAL MOMENTS AND WHAT WE REALLY REMEMBER
It's that time of year. You can see the finish line, and lesson planning has given way to vacation planning. You chide your students in rehearsal to stay focused and on task, while your mind wanders to all things not music education-related.
There are still seminal moments ahead, however, so you need to stay in the moment. End-of-year performances, banquets, and graduation look large - followed by music collection, instrument check-in, and the dreaded end-of-year inventory.
These moments are important. The performances, graduation speeches, and last day good-byes. They matter. They provide closure for you and the students. You think that these are the moments your students will remember.
But there's something about this job that doesn't get talked about enough.
But they won't. And neither will you.
Or at least—not in the way you think you will.
Now, don't get me wrong. I love me a big moment. In fact, I have made a career and a lifetime reveling in them. But they are rarely as important as the moments leading up to them.
You see, the big moments are just evidence of the little moments that led up to it.
I have always said, "If I never go to a concert or contest again for the rest of my life, I will be just fine." Rehearsals? Now, that's another story.
Recently, I had the opportunity to conduct my son's band in a world premiere at Carnegie Hall. I don't know about you, but as far as "moments" go, that is about as big as it gets. It was magical. Fantastical. And something I will cherish for the rest of my life.
But it wasn't the part that brings a smile to my face. It was the rehearsals. Honestly, if you offered me another chance to conduct on that venerable stage or one more rehearsal, I would most assuredly choose the latter.
I could probably write several paragraphs as to why, but I will save you the trouble of reading all that - you're welcome.
Because somewhere along the way, I discovered that for me, the performance wasn't the purpose. It was a part of the process.
I was not always this way. And I love me a good contest.
Contests are measurable. Ratings are measurable. Trophies fit nicely into display cases. Administrators love programs with visible outcomes because they photograph well on district Facebook pages. Nobody posts, "Today, a sophomore trumpet player tried to recover gracefully after massively missing an entrance. And, if you look closely, you can see the percussion section starting a bonfire with their copy of Pomp and Circumstance.
These are not the moments your admin will remember, but they are the moments you students will remember.
They will remember the Tuesday in October when the clarinet section finally mailed page 47 of the drill. The day you lost your marbles because the trumpet section wouldn't shut up. Or the day you spilled your third cup of coffee on your shirt. Or is that just me?
That's the curriculum. Those are their memories. We're not producing performances. We are producing people.
And the strange beauty of music education is that students rarely realize what they're actually learning while they're learning it. And they're not learning it when they think they are.
They think they're learning dotted eighth-sixteenth note patterns. You're teaching delayed gratification.
They think they're learning breath support. You're teaching self-regulation.
They think they're learning how to tune a chord. You're teaching them how to exist inside a community without insisting on being the loudest person in the room—which, frankly, is a lesson half the adults on the internet still haven't mastered.
The final concert matters, of course. It should matter. Milestones deserve celebration. There is something sacred about the last cutoff of the year hanging in the air half a second longer than usual while everyone collectively realizes: Oh. We won't all be in this room together again.
But the emotional weight of that moment comes from accumulation.
Nobody is sad because the concert ended. They cry because a year's worth of rehearsals has ended.
Your success as an educator is not measured by whether the final chord was perfectly in tune. Honestly, most audiences can't tell the difference.
Your success is built upon 186 days of striving for excellence, creating art, and pushing kids to be something they aren't just yet. That's what they will remember. And as long as we're at it, that's the point of education.
As you close out the year, remember, the performance was never the destination. It was simply the proof that the journey happened.
Have a great week!
Scott
THE BEE & THE IMPACT OF YOUR WORDS
This one is a bit long - but I hope is worth reading for Teacher Appreciation Week!
It's Teacher Appreciation Week, which means people are saying thank you (including me). There are kind emails, handwritten notes, and maybe donuts, but they somehow show up after you have already been to the teacher workroom at zero-dark-thirty, and disappear before you get back there at lunch time.
All of it is good. All of it is appreciated.
But there's something about this job that doesn't get talked about enough.
The impact you have, but might never know about.
I was thinking about that recently, and it brought me back to one of the most important teachers in my life, Bob Larabell.
You won't know the name, but you may know the story. The movie Akeelah and the Bee was based on him (written by a classmate of mine, Doug Atchison - worth watching). He was that guy. Brilliant, demanding, intense, and absolutely unwilling to let you get away with anything less than your best.
I barely survived his class. BARELY!
It was required to graduate, so there was no escaping it. I did what I could, which at the time felt like a lot. Looking back, it was probably just enough not to fall apart completely. I scraped through with a C-. Not exactly the kind of performance that makes you think, "This is going to be a defining relationship in my life.
Then came the final assessment, a thirty-page paper and a presentation.
The paper? I think I got a C+, but the presentation? I nailed it. I created a Monopoly-style game in which each participant was an arts organization. I structured it so that, much like in real life, each player struggled to survive and eventually folded.
On the very last day of class, we got our final assessments: pages and pages of typed, personalized feedback for every student. I honestly don't know where he found the time.
His final sentence, handwritten in red ink, said:
"Dare as I might to insult you, Mr. Lang, but there might just be a teacher in there somewhere.
That was it—one sentence.
It was delivered in the most Bob Larabell way possible—equal parts compliment and challenge, wrapped in just enough edge to keep you from getting comfortable.
And here's the thing.
I don't think he had any idea what that sentence would mean to me. For him, it was probably just feedback. A moment at the end of a long day. One more student, one more presentation, one more comment.
For me? It stuck, and it planted something.
Up until that point, I hadn't thought of myself that way. Not seriously. Not as something real. Once I read it, I couldn't unthink it.
That's the part about teaching that's so hard to see when you're in it.
Most of the moments that change students' lives don't feel like big moments at all.
They're not planned. They're not scripted. They're not part of the lesson plan.
They're just throwaway lines as a part of a rehearsal or conversation.
A quick comment. A reaction. A sentence you don't even remember saying five minutes later
But they land. And they stay.
As music teachers, we say thousands of things in a single day. We're correcting notes, adjusting posture, managing behavior, trying to get through a rehearsal while also wondering why the trumpets are doing whatever it is they're doing that day.
We're not thinking, "This might be the sentence that changes how this student sees themself."
But sometimes it is.
When we're early in our careers, we think our impact will come from the big things. The performances. The ratings. The moments where everything clicks, and we walk off stage thinking, "That's what this is all about."
And those moments matter. They're just not the whole story.
Most of our students are not going to become musicians or music educators; they're not going to spend their lives thinking about tone quality, articulation, or whether the low brass was too heavy in measure 42.
But they will remember how they were seen. They will remember how they were spoken to.
They will remember the moments when someone they respected said something that made them reconsider themselves.
We get to be that person more often than we realize. That's the responsibility. And honestly, it's also the gift.
Long after the performances fade and long after the scores don't matter anymore, those words are still out there doing work.
Bob Larabell probably doesn't remember saying that to me, but I remember it clearly. In fact, I still have that paper saved in my safe.
If I'm being honest, there's a pretty direct line from that moment to where I ended up.
So, during Teacher Appreciation Week, while people are thanking you for the visible things—the concerts, the performances, the long hours—know this:
Your real impact is happening in the invisible moments.
The ones you don't plan.
The ones you don't remember.
The ones that feel small at the time.
Somewhere down the line, one of your students will make a decision. To try something. To stick with something. To believe something about themselves that they didn't believe before.
And part of that decision will trace back to something you said.
You won't be there.
You might never hear about it.
But it will be there.
That's the job. And it's bigger than any performance, any rating, or any score.
So here's to teachers like Bob Larabell—the ones who demand more, see more, and say just enough at the right moment to change a life.
And here's to you. Keep saying the things that matter. Even when you don't realize they do.
Thank you for all you do - Happy Teacher Appreciation Week! I APPRECIATE YOU!
Scott
p.s In my first book, I wrote a chapter about Bob. I shared it with him when I escorted him to the premiere of his movie. He sent the chapter back two weeks later, with corrections and a handwritten note that said, "You cabetter kiddo."
I treasure that note as his words still matter to me.