Someone once told me, “you should start a blog”. I guess it’s the new “letter to the editor” for people who feel the need to expound on one subject or another. I can’t imagine who would be interested in reading the disparate thoughts of a musician, teacher, or whatever other “box” I want to put myself in, but anyway.... here it goes! I’m going to start off with a little satirical piece I actually submitted to The Instrumentalist magazine: they weren’t interested!
The Solution
I don’t know about the rest of you Band Coaches out there, but I’m having a tougher time each year getting students to commit to the time and effort necessary to insure the high-quality program we’re used to in my school. If I try to schedule a rehearsal of some kind before school in the morning I’m often told something like…”can’t make it – I have to lift.” It took me a while before I realized that what they were talking about was the requirement by the other coaches that they spend time in the weight room; and this is not just for football, but for cross country, volleyball, soccer, swimming and golf! GOLF!?
The idea of scheduling something after school in the afternoon is equally futile. In our school, (particularly in the fall and spring) by the end of the school day a good share of the students are gone; already on the way to the day’s athletic contest. If they’re not, they are tied up in practice sessions, usually until 6:00 at least.
How about evenings? By the time we try to put a few concerts in the calendar on the few days when there are no athletic events, there’s no time for such frills as rehearsals.
We have student-athletes (don’t you love that quaint little euphemism?) that leave school with the team before the end of the day and don’t get back sometimes until after midnight, only to start all over again the next morning at 8:00; nodding off in Algebra II by 10:30. Then it’s off to some not-so-near location where they are involved in private club sports: you know; year ‘round volleyball, basketball, softball or something else. Thank goodness for Red Bull!!
But I think I’ve found a solution and I’d like to run it by the rest of you Band Coaches out there. Last winter several of us Band Coaches were commiserating over the free hors d’oeuvres at a band festival when the idea came up: “Maybe we should start “Third Grade Club Marching Band”?! We had a good laugh and went back to commiserating, but later that night I laid awake thinking: “this is an idea whose time has come!”
Why third grade? Most schools around here start the kids on the traditional band instruments in the fifth or sixth grade, but the few schools left that have string programs tend to start students in the fourth grade. We’re going to get the jump on them! Why should they spend all this time trying to figure out fingerings, embouchures, breathing techniques, positions and all that when they could actually be out on the field or street competing against other band-teams and maybe actually winning something!?
How do we get started? You remember Harold Hill in “The Music Man” don’t you? We start by convincing the parents that this will be an ego-boosting, character-building, exciting experience for them. (The students I mean……..who did you think?) Then come the uniforms, the shiny instruments, the colorful flags for a few selected girls and the promise of travel on REAL CHARTER COACHES (no yellow school buses for us), complete with DVD players, reclining seats and uniformed drivers. We hire a staff: specialists in all areas of performance, including assistant coaches for physical training, counselors (for the whiners) nutritionists, and life coaches.
How are we going to pay for all this? One word……… SPONSORS! What self -respecting community enterprise wouldn’t want to get in on the ground floor of this exciting activity. If we’re lucky we’ll get a local bank or insurance company (they have all the money) to underwrite the whole venture. If it all falls flat, then they’ve got a nice tax write-off.
But don’t we have to actually teach these kids to play and march? Well, yes I suppose we need to do that, but let’s not get the cart ahead of the horse!
I hear you ask: “Aren’t third graders too young to be subjected to such pressure?” Nonsense! Let’s not pamper the little darlings! The sooner they learn that life is hard and that only the strong survive the better off they’ll be. They’ll thank us all someday for this valuable life lesson!
Now, understand that not every kid will be up to the challenge. How do we select those who play/march and those who don’t? Through an intense pre-season tryout program we will be able to see right away who’s got talent and who doesn’t. Those who “don’t have it” will be weeded out soon enough. Better a few disappointments at an early age than having them live with the delusion that they “have it”!
To those soft-hearted types who whine about “letting kids be kids” I say “Get over it!” Think of all the time we wasted as kids going outside on a sunny summer morning, getting some friends together to play baseball. We’d choose up sides, throw down some markers for the bases, figure out where the foul lines were and start playing. We might play for a couple of hours, nine innings, or until the pitcher’s mom sent his little sister to tell him to come home. We didn’t even have uniforms a lot of the time! How much better off would we have been with proper equipment, uniforms, a “regulation” field and adults to teach us the correct techniques for “WINNING”?
Just imagine the impact of “Third Grade Club Marching Band” on your band-team program. By the time they’re in 5th grade when others are struggling through “Hot Cross Buns” or some boring classical ditty, your kids will be seasoned performers ready to kick some other band-team’s butt! By the time they’re in the 7th grade they will have earned a reputation as band-team to be feared! By the time they reach High School……. well who knows?
But, you ask, after all this: “What if they don’t win?” Well it is true that for every winner there’s got to be a loser. But if we do a good enough job, we can teach them the valuable lesson so nobly stated by our patron saint here in Wisconsin that “winning….. is the ONLY THING!” After all, are we Packer fans or what?! If we can’t “buy in” to that simple idea then we had better be prepared to be replaced by another Band Coach who can take our band-team to “the next level”.
Anyway; what have we got to lose?
Rob Shepherd lives in Wisconsin and has been a Band Coach for over thirty years. When not coaching, he plays the Saxophone and the piano, occasionally for money but admittedly sometimes just for fun!
