And We're Not Going to Take It Anymore

There are a lot of people in the instrumental music world who are mad as hell right now. Making the calculated decision to use a pen name to deceive well meaning music educators seeking authenticity in multicultural music programming deserves anger.

But it also deserves action.

With the open secret no longer secret, more people are raising their voices in support of true diversity in music education works and I hope that the gate keeping publishers and organizations are finally starting to listen. With some of the events of this past weekend, it appears that may be so, but we can't let it stop here.

We don't have to wait for the major publishing companies to carry and promote diverse composers though. Make a commitment to finding and programming underrepresented composers. It can seem daunting, but there are some great resources that have already done a lot of the work including Jodie Blackshaw's list of band compositions by female composers and the Institute for Composer Diversity's databases.

Once again, we teach diverse students and they deserve to see and hear themselves in the music they make.

Bucket List

This summer marks 20 years since I started marching band as a freshman in high school. While I already knew I wanted to teach band by that point, everything about those four years of marching band brought the icing and sprinkles to my band nerd cake.

Oddly though (maybe not oddly, it was my least debt inducing option), I ended up at a college with no marching band. And then spent my first seven years at a rural school where I desperately tried to start a marching band summer after summer, but encountered a lot of challenges pulling it together with a high school band of 20ish and 5-8 were cheerleaders or football players.

To get my marching band fix, I worked other people's camps throughout college and my first several years of teaching. I'd have continued, but started feeling a little awkward as the age gap between myself and the other staff members continued to grow.

Once I took my current position as a full time middle school teacher, I'd resigned myself to the fact that I'd never be a head marching band director. Honestly though, I adore my job and with a kiddo now, enjoy the hours of a middle school teacher over a high school director.

Life throws funny things our way though and this year was no exception as my good friend Lauren (check out her blog here!) and I began putting out feelers for a maternity sub for her. With an early August band camp and a mid-August due date, whoever came in would have to cover all of marching season from camp through the final football game.

A few people indicated some interest, but had reservations about marching season. So we started throwing around the hypothetical of me maybe (heavy on the maybe) taking over the marching band. The more we talked though, the less hypothetical and more concrete the idea became.

But then came the final push from maybe to definitely. 20 years since I started marching band means about the same amount of time that my dad has been saying that The Who's rock opera Tommy would make a cool marching show. And wouldn't you know it, that was one of the shows on the table for the fall.

If I'm only going to direct a marching band once, it might as well be with that show.

And so I found myself packing up and heading off to band camp again a few weeks ago. It was an amazing week! I found myself in awe of the parents who do all the organizing and the staff who worked with and around my rustiness when it came to the marching side of marching band.

Thanks to some seriously hard working students a great visual tech, we got all three songs on the field! It was really neat being a part of their camp and traditions for the week and I loved seeing all the students I had in middle school all "grown up." Not only that, but I got to bring my daughter to camp include her on the fun.

We've only had a couple rehearsals since camp (including one where the sprinklers came on mid practice...), but our first non-camp performance is this weekend and then it's time for school and football games soon!!!

Fall is always an exciting and adventurous time, but with the addition of marching band and a student teacher (posts on that to come later), it's going to be a wild ride. My inner 14 year old band freshman though is PUMPED to finally be getting the chance to direct a marching band, even if it's just making sure that a well run ship keeps going forward.

I'm thrilled and honored that I get to be part of such a great program! While I'm not entirely certain what my overall teaching Bucket List looks like, this experience is definitely checking off one of the items.

Unexpected Benefit

For the second summer in a row, our building is under some serious construction. The end of the year  has been a frenzy of packing and moving and storing to take care of our instruments and equipment while the building was under work.

But then, this weird thing has happened. I couldn't go in to work over the summer. No library organizing. No jump on copies and paperwork. No inventory rechecks. No room set up or decorating.

I know a lot of that sounds terrifying. And I'll admit some of it was and will be again to start this fall.

But it's also been freeing. I've had to take my summer off.

That's not to say I haven't done some computer work. But it's been done on my couch, the deck, or my porch.

The further I get into my career, the more I'm finally realizing, it's OK to actually take time away. It's OK to set an away message on your email. It's OK to go days or weeks without doing anything school related. It's OK to not be planning or prepping yet.

So often we feel the need to justify our summers off by talking about the work we do, the classes we take, the set up for the coming year, but I think we need to stop justifying. The school year is busy. And as music educators, we have a lot of outside school commitments. Summer is for recharging. And not just talking about it, but actually doing it.

With summer break being just past half over here in Michigan, I'm just about ready to get back at it after time away. Who'd have thought that I'd end up being grateful for a situation that initially caused so much panic?

Progress!

For those playing along at home, I had a moment (embarrassingly, much more recently than I'd like to say) where I used female pronouns in relation to the composer whose music we were rehearsing. That sparked a moment where I realized that nearly everything I'd ever done with students was by a male composer. More on that and our Who We're Playing board here.

After my first board, we were able to have a slightly more expanded one with far more composers from a variety of backgrounds. With the first one being rather monochromatic, this was an improvement. Even better was when students were actually gathered around it and scanning the QR codes!

Following that came some further discussions and a lot of it centered around "The List" for ensembles to select required pieces for Festival/Contest/MPA/etc. So many of us rely on The List for repertoire ideas not just for Festival but performances year round as well. That brought me to this.

There were a lot of excellent suggestions (both Jodie Blackshaw's site and the Institute for Composer Diversity were GREAT resources to find ideas!) added to the Google Sheet that I was able to pass on to our State VP for Music Selection. Traditionally music suggestions have been submitted through a printed form in our state yearbook, so I was grateful he took a spreadsheet as it streamlined the whole process a lot. After I sent it on, he asked if I'd like to be a part of the Music Selection Committee which I was thrilled to do!

Our meeting started at 9:30 and we had the daunting task of reviewing nearly 140 pieces of music! I admit I was basically useless for the first hour or so as we listened to orchestra music. My one semester of strings my freshman year of college is getting further and further away. It was fascinating to listen to though and just listening to my orchestral colleagues discuss things, was able to learn a bit.

Going through the process with those who'd done it before was interesting. While I've learned through experience what approximate grade levels something would be classified as under MSBOA, the conversations were enlightening. For example, while an overall piece might considered a Class C or D, the presence of significant solos often bumped it a level.

Another conversation revolved around the idea that while we might have loved a piece, it might not be appropriate for The List. Works with extended aleatoric sections leave A LOT of room for interpretation that could be challenging for a rated performance. Another issue was music that required electronic instruments. One committee member brought up the fact that her older auditorium has almost no access to outlets onstage. Unfortunately this made it hard to add pieces by composers like Alex Shapiro even if we really liked the music. A different piece required a grand piano not just to be played traditionally but for additional effects that can only be done with a grand.

Around 4PM, after nearly eight hours of critical listening, here's what we ended up adding! The majority of everything added for band was by minority composers and all outstanding literature. I'm so honored to have been a part of the committee and excited for the step towards diversity MSBOA took. I'm particularly grateful to Matt Shephard, the VP for Music Selection who enthusiastically encouraged the mass suggestion of pieces and dove headfirst into sorting through them all with the committee last week.

It felt good to be a part of a progressive step forward in a real way rather than just talking about an issue! The List has so much power in so many ways when it comes to whose music is and is not played. Taking steps toward diversifying it will hopefully have a positive impact for a long time to come and I'm proud to be part of an organization that is making such positive waves!

THANK YOU again to everyone who contributed music recommendations!!!!!

Looking ahead, I'd love to learn more about how other organizations update their Lists. Please share what your state's process is so we can start helping each other make updates!

What I Did on My (Impromptu) Winter Break

In case you were living under a rock (which was still likely warmer than much of the Midwest), Michigan and surrounding states were smacked in the face by the Polar Vortex. Considering that the extreme cold came just after a snowstorm on Monday, we had most of last week off which left me with some time for some projects.

The week off came just after our state music conference which featured more sessions on diversity, equity, and inclusion than I ever remember occurring before! Because self-awareness is always a work in progress, it also featured performances from instrumental groups, including the All State ensembles, playing pieces by entirely men and few, if any, composers of color. The performances were outstanding, and I honestly enjoyed all the selections, but it really felt like a lot of missed opportunities.

After last year's personal revelation that my lack of awareness was part of the problem, it's become something I can't unsee. Programs of all white, all male, often dead composers are very much the norm from beginning band concerts to performances from the best high school instrumentalists in the state and our students deserve better.

All this got my wheels spinning about composer diversity again and brought me back to conversations regarding state lists for Band Festival (MPA, Contest, etc). Trying to program pieces for Festival from diverse composers is challenging. I know because I ran head first into the issue this year. Finding pieces from women or composers of color that also fit our ensembles was just this side of impossible. Neither of my groups are playing a required piece by an underrepresented composer because there were so few to choose from. They're actually all playing works by Carol Brittin Chambers, but one group is playing a march and the other is taking one as our selected which does not have to come from the Basic Music List (BML).

The BML is full of great pieces of band literature. It also serves as a great tool to help directors choose music for their groups. After spending both high school and college playing upper level lit for large ensembles with full instrumentation, I had no idea where to start choosing music for 19 students in a 9-12 Band. The BML gave me ideas on pieces, composers, and levels of music that would be accessible for my students.

However, it is definitely lacking much in the way of diversity. Last year I missed the deadline to recommend music to our state organization for the BML. This year I'm getting a jump start on it though and attempting to crowd source suggestions too by sharing this Google Sheet of pieces by underrepresented composers to pass on to the BML Committee. I know there are great resources out there such as The Institute for Composer Diversity and Jodie Blackshaw's list. But to have something added, our state organization needs specific titles. I've been living in the same grade levels of music for a while now, so getting some ideas from people outside the middle school band world would be outstanding. Several people have already added to the list and I'd love for more to join in! If you know of any level piece for band or orchestra on your own state list or something you've played that would make a good addition, please share in the comments or send me an email suggestion. I'll check it out and get it added. Or if you're a Michigan teacher, please add it right to the spreadsheet!

All this has also kicked me in the butt on getting our Who We're Playing display going. It's not quite what I envisioned, and nobody's going to Pinterest this one, but it's there now. I'm proud of our selections all being by living composers and each group working on a piece by a woman...but they're all doing pieces by the same woman. And our current composers are a little monochromatic. Seeing them all up there is really providing some accountability for me and I've already got my eye on some pieces so that we can do better for the spring.

Representation matters. Through working to change things in my own little corner of the Band Universe and collaborating with others to update our BML, hopefully more and more students can identify with the composers whose music they're performing. Please consider adding a selection to the Google Sheet above or sending me a suggestion. The smartest person in the room is the room. Help make our room more inclusive.

Once Upon a Time at Solo and Ensemble...

There was a 7th Grade clarinetist who'd been working hard with her partner on their duet. Her friend was a flute player and played the top line in the duet. The clarinetist played the bottom. They practiced and practiced and even set up time to work with their teacher.

The day of their very first Solo and Ensemble arrived and it snowed...a lot.

The young clarinetist and her mom showed up early but unfortunately received a call from her partner that she could not make it. Upon realizing that she could not play one half of a duet and receive an official rating, she was extremely disappointed but tried to put on a brave face so that she could play for comments.

Seeing her dilemma, the teacher working in the clarinetist's warm-up room quietly sought out the student's teacher to see if he knew of any students still around who could perform with her. Sadly they'd all played already and had likely left for home.

The clarinetist kept practicing so that at least her part would be well played and she could get helpful feedback from the adjudicator.

But wait!

Her teacher found a couple of 8th Graders from her school! They both happily volunteered to perform alongside the 7th grader and played rock, paper, scissors to decide who would be her new partner. The winner double checked with her family and they enthusiastically agreed to stick around to allow their student to help out.

With only 30 minutes to go until her scheduled time, the two got right to work as the 8th Grader learned the part on the spot and they practiced all they could.

Performance time came and both walked in as though they'd been playing together all along even though they'd just introduced themselves to each other half an hour before. Their family and friends all went in to provide a supportive audience.

Everyone was all smiles as they left the room following their performance and a few minutes later their work and cooperation paid off with a First Division Rating. Even better though were two girls and their families who'd never interacted before hugging and smiling like they'd all been friends forever.

And that, Dear Audience, is another story to add to the reasons that Solo and Ensemble is one of this story teller's favorite events.

Wave

Last Friday I didn't say goodbye to my students as they came in to get their instruments for the weekend. I was tired. Even though it had been a short week with kids due to PD and election day, I'd been going nonstop since the weekend before, including traveling on Monday and Tuesday. As they came in and out I worked in my office. I could see them, and said bye to a few, but didn't come out and make contact as they left.

One week later I made sure to come out of my office and give kids a wave, smile, and see you later. I will always regret not doing it the week before, because we lost a student last Friday night.

This has been one of the hardest weeks of my career and I'm sure there will still be challenging days ahead. I am still sad and angry and all the other emotions associated with grief but the past several days have also left me with a feeling of gratitude.

Gratitude that I work in a place where people understood that the band kids would need a little extra support.

Gratitude for friends at school who gave hugs when wanted and space when not.

Gratitude for amazing students who kept playing with wobbly chins and tears in their eyes.

Gratitude to the student's family for thinking of our band program in such a dark time.

Gratitude for the opportunity to make music with kids and have a positive impact on their lives and experiences.

Honestly, I don't know where to go with this post but to say love your kiddos, both the ones you teach and the ones you may live with. A student I hugged this week laughed/cried saying she never thought she'd be getting a hug from me. It was another reminder in a week of them to keep being human and remember we're teaching kids first, music second.

And smile and wave when they take the time to come back to your space at the end of the day.