The More I Learn... (A Band Festival Reflection)

The more I don't know what I know.

What a weird Festival season this was. The last several years I've gotten pretty good at predicting my groups' ratings (I NEVER tell them what I'm guessing), but this was was proven wrong. In fact, what I prognosticated (in my head) ended up being the exact opposite of how things ended up, and I'll admit, it was a bit of a tough pill to swallow.

I am so excited for my seventh graders and their First Division! They soaked up every word from our clinicians like sponges and worked their tails off, particularly in the last two weeks to pull together all the details for the performance. Add in that an extremely late bus caused us to miss all but ten minutes of our warm up and it makes me even more proud of them.

The eighth grade earned a good overall rating, but the second division is not what I'd been predicting, especially with the C's mixed in on our grade sheet. They played challenging music, but as I've been reflecting about it the last few days I'm starting to think we (yes, me too...) were feeling a little too cocky. Warm up and tuning was just a little too relaxed and the focus that a performance usually brings never hit for the full ensemble the way it usually does. They had some really cool moments on stage, but those were outnumbered by too many negatives.

I know the rating is not the reason we bring them. But I won't say it's not validating to earn that higher one and feel like you did the right things with your kids to put on a good performance.

This year was another reminder that:

• predicting ratings, even just in my head, is a bad idea.
• there's a lot more I can do to be a better teacher.
• I should never underestimate kids.
• Overestimating them isn't fair either.
• The goal should be our best overall performance, period.

This is why we go though. It's not just a learning performance for the students. I learned too and will use this year's experiences to create better ones for my students in the future.