Classroom Teacher Archives - Page 2 of 2

5 Considerations to Making a leap of Faith

Leave a Comment / Classroom Teacher, High Schools, Marching Band, Music Department, Music Performance, Repost, Respect, Teaching, Teaching Music / John Gardner

by John Gardner

This graphic illustrates a scenario we all face, individually, in business, in school as well as in music ensembles. Most of us, at least once, have been to the edge, looked down, looked across and pondered the possibilities. It is easy to say you want to get better, but how do you make that leap to the other side?

Realize that not everyone WANTS to get to the other side.

Many are satisfied with the way things are, represented by this marching band member attitude:

I am okay where I am. I am not last chair, I can play my part reasonably well, I can pass the playing test. I see those people on the other side…..so much pressure, so much work, and for what? Band is a good social group. It is a good place to find a date, to make friends, to feel connected. I enjoy the bus rides, the longer the better. The band parent provided food at competitions is good and I like the freedom during the down time to hang with my friends and watch some other bands.

You are, after all, standing on solid ground. It is safe where you are. You KNOW where you are and are in your comfort zone. You look over the edge and see danger. You could fall, you could fail. You could get hurt.

WANT it….with everything that is within you.

You hear the musician who plays the more difficult solo or watch the marching band put on a crowd cheering performance. You see the elation at the award ceremony and YOU WANT THAT.

In “The Return of the Jedi”, as Luke Skywalker finally stands before his ultimate enemy, the Emperor says to the young Jedi who is viewing and considering his weapon,

You want this, don’t you?

Know that small, safe, baby steps won’t make it.

If you stand on the edge, look down and take a step, you will fall. The gap is wider than that and will require a running start LEAP.

Practice and Prepare to Perform!

Olympians don’t just show up at the games. Basketball players spend hours behind the scenes practicing boring free throws and doing exhausting repetitive fundamentals up and down the floor. The ice skater doesn’t decide at the start of the performance that a quad would be a good idea.

There is no short cut to success. You must be willing to pay the price.

The ice skater going for the quad is literally a “leap of faith”. There is never a guarantee of success, but repetitive practice, falling down, getting hurt, figuring out what went wrong and working harder to get better…..are necessary ingredients to establish confidence and competence to make the jump. A phrase I have used in rehearsals,

Like the ice skater who misses the quad, missing notes (steps, sets) in performance can hurt.

A good cartoon by Tone Deaf Comics illustrates part of this idea.

Commit to go….and then GO!

No more standing at the edge. No more looking down. No more considering the consequences of failure. Back up, focus on the other side, set your mind and then RUN hard at the edge. When the Israelites were crossing the river Jordan, the waters did not part until the priests feet touched the water, the point at which they demonstrated both faith and commitment (Joshua 3:14).

Once you commit to go, you have to “go all out”. Know where you’re going, practice and prepare, commit and go.

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Puppy Dogs and Clarinets

Leave a Comment / Classroom Teacher, College Prep, High Schools, Music Department, Personal experience, Public Schools, Sales and Marketing, Small Business, Teaching, Teaching Music / John Gardner

By John Gardner

There is a sales technique called the “Puppy Dog” close. It gets is name from the puppy dog at the pet shop scenario:

A mother and young child go into a pet store to buy a dog. They find one, but mamma says it is too expensive.

The wise sales clerk invites the mother and child to take the puppy home for the night….with the offer to bring it back the next day if they don’t think it is worth the price.

They will NOT likely bring the puppy back.

I fell for that sales close with a car once. My wife wasn’t with me when I stopped on the lot (intentional, so I had a way out of a pressure sales situation). The smart salesperson invited me to drive the car home to show her. SOLD!

I used the “Puppy Dog” approach with a clarinet student (I will call her Sally). The first time I heard her play was in a middle school concert. I didn’t know Sally, but I noticed her. It was 2-3 yrs later when I convinced her parents to let her study privately with me. She had incredible musicianship but was hindered by a mediocre instrument.

When I would ask about a step up instrument, she always responded about how busy her parents were. Knowing her father’s occupation, I knew PRICE was NOT the issue.

The music dealer let me borrow a top of the line clarinet for a day, with return privilege that I was not expecting to utilize.

I took the clarinet to Sally’s band rehearsal at the high school, instructing her to play it in the rehearsal and then to take it home that night to practice with at home and either return the clarinet or payment the next day. She handed me the check for payment in full.

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Teen girls were my weakness

Leave a Comment / Classroom Teacher, Personal experience, Storytelling / John Gardner

Ok. Ok. It is NOT what you’re thinking. C’mon, you know me better than that.

My problem was that I was having trouble hearing conversations, especially at school, which can be problematic. This intensified after a severe ear infection that never completely healed. My ears felt stopped up similar to what can happen when descending from a high altitude in a plane. There was a graduation ceremony, mid-infection, where I could not hear anyone. The other band director realized something was going on. Fortunately, school was out.

When a student, more often a girl, would come to me in a rehearsal, we would have to move into the office so I could hear without all the band noise.

One student explained it to another this way…..

He might ask you to repeat things a lot, and he doesn’t always get it right…..but you can be in another room and miss a note and he is on you immediately.

Voices were a problem. Wrong notes were not.

I was fitted for and received a moderately high-level pair of hearing aids.

They were supposed to be able to pull the voices out of the background noise, but that didn’t really work in a rehearsal setting. The band volume would often be painful. In church, I could hear the pastor better, but the congregational singing became too loud — so I stopped wearing them.

Fast forward two years past retirement, it was a large, noisy hotel meeting room with hundreds of people at tables of ten having conversations, which was the catalyst for unpacking the hearing aids and giving them another shot. There were several college friends at my table and I really wasn’t hearing any of them.

I got them out and tried to put them in….but something has died and the out-of-warranty repair cost would be several hundred dollars.