Today is the 45th Anniversary for wife Joan and me. Tomorrow is Father’s Day, which was mentioned in today’s podcast from Morning Wire. They mentioned the difficulty of those growing up without a father in the house, especially when it comes to later maintaining a marriage and family. I come from a broken home. So does Joan. We talked about that during college as we had heard the statistics of what sounded like our marriage would be doomed. And yet, here we are. I attribute our 45yr marriage success to three main things.
We were committed Christians and stayed active in the church, raising our family in the church.
Because we both experienced parents divorcing and the devastating effects that has on the children, we were committed to never letting that happen to our children. We were both at nearly every swim meet, baseball game, theater performance and concerts. There were a few times where we had to split because both boys would have something going on at the same time and sometimes in different cities. But we never just sent them off. We were there.
That we spent so much time working together in small office environments, the types of temptations that seem to creep into a lot of marriages were never present in ours. Neither of us ever considered anyone else. In our first three years of marriage, we taught at the same school and shared an office. Later, after John left education, we shared a business office for over two decades at QDP Corporation.
And we never let anyone tell us how to raise our children. We left education to start our family. Joan wanted to be a stay at home mom. My freedom of schedule allowed me to be at almost every t-ball, baseball, swim meet, and concert that either of our sons was in. I’ll never say we did everything right, but our sons are both successful in what they are doing. They have always, as have we, self-sufficient.
Are we experts? No. But ours has been a successful family for 45 years.
UPDATE: Be sure to read the parent comments at the end of this article.
Over a decade after high school graduation, he told his parents he was bullied as a high school freshman, not telling them at the time because he feared they’d make a big deal of it.
He DID go to a teacher who ignored or brushed aside his emotional plea. In his valedictorian speech at graduation three years later, when he listed the “Top 10 Things I Learned in High School”, one of them was…..
“….that my head really does fit in a gym locker.”
Still no response. This was before all the more recent publicity of the terribly negative lifetime impact that bullying can have….but
…there is no excuse for inaction. EVER!
Fortunately, this story doesn’t end tragically…. but that doesn’t make it right.
I was coming down the one-way street where we live. There is parking on both sides, but that doesn’t leave much room. Years ago, when I had a conversion van, I managed to take off someone’s mirror with mine. (Yes, I dealt with it.)
On this particular trip, in addition to normal cars parked, I encountered a lawn service truck, an Amazon van, a City Truck and one collecting trash…and I barely made it through with my car. I commented in a post that a fire truck wouldn’t make it and was reminded of a couple of Dad’s firetruck stories and events, one courtesy of my sister.
What happens when you block a fire truck?
Backdraft, a realistic presentation of real fire fighting
The movie, ‘Backdraft’ fascinated me. Dad was a 32-yr veteran firefighter in a full-time city department that had about ten “houses” around town. He was one of three “Chiefs”. He said “Backdraft” was pretty accurately done. I asked about the scene where there is a car parked in front of the hydrant and they break the windows and take the hose through the car.
“We would probably just use the truck to push the car out of the way. The car would be a wreck, but don’t put your car between my truck and our getting to a fire.”
Dad’s “Company 1” Fire House, @ 1975Problematic long driveway at Holmes High School.Entrance gate to Holmes High School. What you can’t see are the iron-works gates that matched the fencing to the right.
What happened when they blocked my Dad’s fire trucks?
Close to that in real life that involved Dad and his trucks happened at my high school around 1980 when my sister was a sophomore. There is a long driveway through the school and at times they would have problems with people speeding through there during school. On one particular day, someone chained shut the large ironworks gate. They weren’t supposed to do that, I’m sure, but those drivers and that long driveway could be disturbing and a safety concern.
There was a fire alarm and Dad was on duty.
When the trucks arrived at the school, they encountered the locked main gate. Guess what they did?
Dad never talked about that story, but sister tells me she remembers faculty talking about the Fire Department “busting the gates down”.
For a short time during my earliest teen years, without concern about walking to and into his home, I studied piano with a single guy who lived a few blocks away. During high school freshman year, I took lessons with a college girl who came to our school and went with me into a sound-proofed practice room. Later in high school, I would travel weekly to an area band director’s home for instruction. Concerns about safety transparency and reputation never came up.
But times are different now. Priests, coaches, and teachers are convicted of having inappropriate relationships with children and students, creating a sensitive and suspicious society that dissuades good teachers and students from participating in the time-tested tradition of individualized instruction.
The concept of innocent until proven guilty does not apply. No one can afford even an accusation. A School of Performing Arts that provides private lessons for area children put windows in all the classroom doors, instituted a parental sign-in/out procedure, and has a staff member walk in on every lesson every time. Band directors schedule lessons in busy offices or in large ensemble rooms full of distractions. College students video lessons with middle/high school students, not only for critique but also for security.
One band director told me that
…you don’t have to be guilty….an accusation can destroy a reputation and/or cost your job. And unfortunately, even after proven innocent, the doubts, questions and hesitations can continue to damage a reputation that took decades to build. Teachers have to be soooo careful.
The very nature of individualized music instruction almost mandates that student and teacher be alone in a room with a closed door. How do we take the legitimate safety concerns that student, parent, and teacher share along with the teacher’s concern for reputation (and employment) and still provide specialized, accelerated training?
SAFETY is everyone’s concern even if from different perspectives. Be aware and be careful.
TEACHERS…
invite parents to sit in or be nearby during lessons.
My experience: When I teach 1-1 lessons in my home, parents can relax in my living room while I work with the student in the dining room. A 6th grader’s mother would bring a book and sit in the room.
leave a door open or at least ensure it is unlocked and/or has a window. Enable anyone to walk in on you. That delay while you get up to open the door from the inside can cause undue suspicion or concern (and increase interruption time).
schedule lessons when others are around. Avoid evenings or non-school days when teaching at school or make sure someone else is home if the student is coming to your home studio. Do everything reasonable to remove any question andensure both student and parent are comfortable. Keep in mind that teens are increasingly cautioned to beware of one-on-one situations with adults. Respect that.
My experience: When a mother requested I work with her student over holiday break, I scheduled it at school along with an appointment for another teacher to drop something off to me during the lesson time. I left the band room door opened and set up the chairs in clear view from the hallway so passing janitors could see and hear.
video or audio record the session. Make sure everyone knows. Place the camera so both teacher and student are visible, but NOT in a way that makes the student uncomfortable or could set you up for a different kind of complaint.
My experience: When I teach lessons via Skype, I ask that the camera be pointed so that I can see either fingers, embouchure or both, so I am usually looking at a profile view of the student’s top front. When girls start adjusting their clothes, there is some discomfort. Be aware, empathetic, and be careful. Explain your reasoning — or move the camera to remove the discomfort.
if you have a regular coaching schedule, post the schedule. If you have a website with a calendar, parents (and students) are better reminded and informed.
PARENTS…
check references. In addition to safety, you want to make sure you’re getting a good product (teacher). If the teacher is an outsider coming to the school, the school should have conducted a background check. Ask.
sit in or be in the area, at least periodically. Sitting in an adjacent room can provide reasonable privacy while often enabling you to hear your child play. They won’t do that for you at home, right? Bring a book.
for virtual lessons (via Skype, for example), be in the area. You don’t have to stand over the child’s shoulder, but listen in and even walk in a couple times….say hi to the teacher.
STUDENTS…
meet a new teacher for the first time with a parent and in public.
go with your gut.
if anything makes you uncomfortable, speak up or get out. Nearly 100% of the time, you are either mis-interpreting or the teacher is completely unaware and will respond and adjust. Don’t destroy an opportunity based on your misunderstanding a teacher’s oversight.
if a parent is dropping you off, have a cell phone to call if the teacher is not there, you finish early (or going over), or you otherwise need parental pick up.
My experience: It was during a storm and I was mid-lesson after school when the power went out. Emergency lighting came on, but not enough to continue.
if you are going to a lesson, tell your parents (or someone) when, where and for how long.
My experience: I’ve had an unnecessarily disgruntled parent when I scheduled some after school coaching with a student who never got around to communicating and mom didn’t know what was going on ’til the student didn’t get off the bus. My mistake was assuming the parent knew.
TRANSPARENCYhelps everyone.
Sometimes there is a drop off in parental involvement and in student/parent communication during high school. Teens want more responsibility and independence and both parent and teacher should strive to help them in those areas. Assumptions often cause problems, however, and most issues I’ve ever experienced in the triangular relationship with parent and student elevate because somebody “assumed”. Several years ago, I gave each of my business office employees a personalized, engraved magnet that said, simply:
Assume Nothing!
TEACHERS…provide a list of expectations and policies.
Payment. How much, how often and what happens when they don’t. Are materials (music) included?
Cancellations when you cancel, when student cancels, how much notice and what if there isn’t any?
Minimum requirements; lessons per month, practice time, materials such as tuners or metronome, a functioning instrument with adequate supplies (reeds, etc)…
Privacy. Don’t share student/parent contact info or details about what happens during lessons. That is why they are called “private” lessons.
Communication. Be easy to contact. Determine whether your communication is to be with the student or parent. Any written communication with the student should be copied to a parent, when possible, including texts, emails or other types of media messages.
REPUTATIONS are slow to build and quick to crumble.
Students and parents need to realize how important that is to the teacher, especially when their very livelihood depends on it. Younger or single teachers need to be hyper-aware, but no one is too old, fat, bald or ugly for legitimate concern and caution.
Without an element of TRUST, this simply cannot work. Hopefully, the teacher has ‘earned’ some trust from both the student and the parental. It is unfortunate that we hear via national news when trust has been abused. That is horrible. But it is also a very, VERY small percentage of people. My advice to all…. in a nutshell:
The reporting on the recent hostage rescue is maddening. Some of the button pushers for me:
CNN reports about hostages “released”. NO! They weren’t RELEASED, they were RESCUED.
A BBC reporter asks an Israeli government representative if the IDF should have given prior warning before the raid. ARE YOU KIDDING ME?
All mentioning civilian casualties. These hostages were jailed in RESIDENCES in HIGH DENSITY areas. Noa was in the home of a DOCTOR, where wife, daughter, grandkids were all living. They talk about the doctor“executed” in front of his grandchildren, and that other female adults in the house were “executed” or, at least shot. They weren’t EXECUTED, they were ELIMINATED.
They talk about the high number of Palestinians killed in the operation. There was a fierce firefight as the IDF rescuers tried to leave. Where did all these peaceful people get those weapons? Of course the IDF uses overwhelming force. You cannot say the casualties were innocents. Were there innocents among them. Probably….as per Hamas strategy.
Want a cease fire? It is easy. 1) Release the hostages. 2) Surrender. The fighting will stop immediately…and Israel will become as involved in rebuilding Gaza as allowed, and similar to the way the USA was involved in rebuilding Germany and Japan after we destroyed and defeated them.
Just listened to a podcast interview https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/gaines-for-girls-with-riley-gaines/id1696360492?i=1000657133794 with four of the five middle school (M.I.D.D.L.E. S.C.H.O.O.L.) girls who stepped out rather than compete against a boy in their track meet’s shot put. The girls were punished and not allowed to compete at (at least) their next meet. The parents have taken the school board to court (in progress). The girls have subsequently been permitted to compete.
The boy has since been accused of sexual harassment. I’m not even going to quote the accusation of what he was going to do to a girl with his non girl body part. If you want to see, here is a link and article… https://x.com/ReduxxMag/status/1789013744812515708
Girls should not have to compete against boys in sports where sex matters. (Compete in band. That is ok.) They should not have to worry about boys in their restrooms and locker rooms. They should not have to endure what these girls described and to be scared in what should be safe spaces.
Why do middle school girls have to be the adults to try to protect themselves and their sport?
I have never followed Eurovision or Israel singer, Eden Golan. The reason it popped on my radar this year was because Eden Golan’s song, “Hurricane” faced opposition and succeeded while representing herself and her country admirably.
They forced her to change some of the words, and even the title. She renamed “October Rain” to “Hurricane”. Here is her performance at Eurovision. Through all the protests and jeers, when she performed, she captured the world.
They forced her to change some of the words, and even the title. She renamed “October Rain” to “Hurricane”. Here is the first-ever public performance of October Rain… See the comparison of the words below.
She had to deal with protesters (over 20,000 outside her hotel room) jeering and even childish acts from other contestants during a press conference for the finalists. The person next to her has head covered … and at the other end of the table is someone pretending to be bored.
In the press conference, you can see the head covered contestant next to her as she is asked,
Have you ever thought that by being here, you bring risk and danger for other participants and public?
She responded with class and grace.
Not only are there judges at the event, but participating countries can vote. Note that these countries had contestants participating, and they still supported Israel.
Israel had the #2 highest votes from around the world … and ended up 5th place overall.
After a heroine’s reception in her return to Israel, Eden sang the original song, “October Rain” before a huge crowd at Tel Aviv’s Hostage Square.
I learned late today that May 20th is National Band Director’s Day. I’ve had several directors who have impacted me different ways.
ROBERT CROWDER took over some of the elementary school bands when my initial teacher (more, in a moment) worked out to stay at the high school. Mr. Crowder was the first black teacher I had any extended contact with. He was so nice and soft spoken. He taught me at 10th District in grades 6-7. I was in 8th grade, at the huge, inner-city @2500 student Jr/Sr high when MLK was killed. Racial tensions were sky high for a while, including daily walk-outs 10 minutes before school end by hundreds of black students. I didn’t experience it directly, but apparently Mr. Crowder did a lot to help restore a calmer atmosphere in the school.
SAMUEL SANDERS was my Jr High director in 8th grade. I was 1st chair, but always goofing off in rehearsal. He pulled me aside one day and said something like, “You’ve got a lot of potential, but you’re going to throw it all away if you’re not careful.” That impacted me and I changed.
JAMES COPENHAVER taught me in his and my first years. I was in 5th grade and he just got the job. He didn’t like the way I held my horn. He sat down next to me, quietly explained hand position while patting me on the top of my head with his college ring turned around. I have great hand position still. Freshman year, he pulled me aside to say, “I understand you want to be a band director. That means you will have to go to college and I know your family can’t send you. You have four years to work on that clarinet, so that, by the time you graduate, you’ll be good enough that schools will pay for you to come.” He was right. I have so many stories about him. To say he was a strict taskmaster might be an understatement, but he did so many things to help me along. He got me scholarships to summer camps and connected me to the best clarinet teacher (below) in the area. He left after my sophomore year. He taught me to always strive, not only for excellence but for the top spot. I tried to pay him forward when I taught. It was hard because his tactics would be problematic today….but I get enough notes and feedback from students and parents that I know I impacted some lives.
RICHARD FOUST moved up from the Asst position for my last two years of high school. He was a great jazz musician. Overall, he kept the band strong through my graduation.
ROBERT RODEN was my clarinet teacher throughout high school. He was also a band director. He had the first chair clarinetists from two other area high schools in his studio. (Senior year he gave the three of us the same solo for festival). Mr. Copenhaver convinced him to give me an ‘audition’. After listening from his living room lounge chair, he offered me lessons with a condition. “You’re pretty good. I can help you get better, but you can’t afford me. I have a bad heart and am not supposed to do much hard work, so if you will mow my lawn, shovel my snow and do whatever else I need around the house, I will give you lessons UNTIL the day you show up here unprepared.” I have tried to pass that forward, but it is hard to find that level of commitment in the lives of super-busy teens. Mr. Roden died in the Beverly Hills Supper Club fire in 1976. There were @160 deaths. My dad was off duty, but at the fire helping fire fighters.
WM HARRY CLARKE was my college band director. The day I walked into the Fine Arts building for a visit, there was a music major at the door waiting for me, calling me by name and escorting me to meet Mr. Clarke. I learned a lot about conducting and rehearsal technique from him. One skill I never mastered was his ability to always remember names. We had a huge band and he knew everyone by name. That is powerful.
PHILLIP MILLER was my college orchestra director and clarinet professor. He was a good teacher, not such a good human. Other than telling me he had wasted four years of his life on me (when he found out I was an education vs performance major), the most memorable takeaway for me was that, just before I would walk on stage for a solo performance, his words to me were, “Make them stand up.”
I had no idea. Fascinating interview with Nitsana Darshan-Leitner of the Israeli Law Center who recovers hundreds of millions in lawsuits against countries and organizations funding and supporting terrorism. She has won against Syria, Iran, North Korea…. I hope she has an army of security. Currently in lawsuits against Google and Harvard. The MOST shocking (to me) was how we (USA) fund a group that was directly involved in the Oct 7 slaughter in Israel. “Lawfare” as a part of Warfare.
She also goes into the history of refugee camps in several muslim countries that were formed when those countries promised those living in areas to become Israel were going to be attacked by the Arab League….. temporarily…..and they are still there and not allowed to leave.
“If the notes are on the paper, it is your job to play ALL of them.”-John Gardner
Too often, when I have heard high school (and college) students perform a piece, there are then inevitable technical passages. Rarely do I hear long technical passages played cleanly and correctly. The word ‘slop’ comes to mind. The reason the performance contains slop is because the practice contained slop.
Here’s how a typical high schooler practices:
Start at the beginning
Play to the technical passage
Slop
Stop
Go back to the beginning and start over.
Repeat the above steps.
Cleaning technical passages
Stop repeating what you CAN play and concentrate on what you can’t. I suggest circling those 3-5 most problematic spots in a solo. Then, when you start to play the piece, instead of starting at the beginning, start with the problem passages. Play them first — and last, twice as often as the rest of the piece. Don’t always start at the beginning just so you can sound good.
Always, ALWAYS stop and fix it.
Break longer passages into smaller pieces
Play the first 4 sixteenths plus the first note of the next beat.
Do that until you can play it PERFECTLY 3 times in a row.
Play the next set of 4 sixteenths plus one note. Get it perfect 3x.
Play beats one and two. Perfect.
Play beat 3.
Play beats 1-2-3.
etc.
Slow it down, get it right, and then speed it up GRADUALLY.
Use a metronome (free apps available for iPod, iPad.
Start with a tempo at which you can play it perfectly.
Increase the speed on the metronome no more than 5 beats per minute.
Don’t increase until you are consistently clean and correct.
Change the rhythm. What you are doing is practicing small groups of notes quickly without playing all of them quickly at the same time. By reversing and changing these rhythms, you are playing different groups of notes quickly.
Play 16ths as if you’re playing dotted eighth/sixteenth combination, exaggerating the quickness of the 16th.
REVERSE. Now play pairs of 16ths as sixteenth/dotted eighth. This is harder to do.
Then play them as three triplet sixteenths and an eighth note.
REVERSE to play eighth plus three triplet sixteenths.
Practice your performance, record yourself, critique your performance, mark your music and repeat the above cleaning steps.
A youth baseball quote I recall from years ago comes to mine;
For a short time during my earliest teen years, without concern about walking to and into his home, I studied piano with a single guy who lived a few blocks away. During high school freshman year, I took lessons with a college girl who came to our school and went with me into a sound-proofed practice room. Later in high school, I would travel weekly to an area band director’s home for instruction. Concerns about safety transparency and reputation never came up.
The reporting on the recent hostage rescue is maddening. Some of the button pushers for me:
They forced her to change some of the words, and even the title. She renamed “October Rain” to “Hurricane”. Here is the first-ever public performance of October Rain… See the comparison of the words below.
