The Music Teacher's Later Years: Reflection with Wisdom

By Elizabeth Peterson

(Meredith Music Resource). This book contains interviews with twenty late-career or retired music educators who established notable and distinguished school programs. Included are the most significant changes that occurred during their professional careers and, advice and words of wisdom dealing with literature selection, curriculum, classroom management, relationships with parents and guardians and overall program development.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Hal Leonard LLC
• Release date: Nov 1, 2016
• ISBN: 9781574634426

Book preview

Published by

Meredith Music Publications

a division of G.W. Music, Inc.

1584 Estuary Trail, Delray Beach, Florida 33483

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MEREDITH MUSIC PUBLICATIONS and its stylized double M logo are trademarks of MEREDITH MUSIC PUBLICATIONS, a division of G.W. Music, Inc.

Reproducing or transmitting in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any informational storage or retrieval system without permission in writing from the publisher is forbidden.

While every effort has been made to trace copyright holders and obtain permission, this has not been possible in all cases; any omissions brought to our attention will be remedied in future editions.

Copyright © 2016 MEREDITH MUSIC PUBLICATIONS

International Copyright Secured • All Rights Reserved

First Edition

November 2016

Cover photo by Dave Burbank Photography

Cover and text design: Shawn Girsberger

International Standard Book Number: 978-1-57463-442-6

Cataloging-in-Publication Data is on file with the Library of Congress.

Library of Congress Control Number: 2016917090

Printed and bound in U.S.A.

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Contents

Acknowledgments

Preface

1. Music for Music’s Sake! It’s All About the Music . . .

2. Follow the Rules, But Don’t Follow the Rules!

3. Keep the Big Picture in Mind

4. A Little Hook

5. Musical Mentors

6. Thirty Percent of the Kids Are in Chorus . . .

7. I Have to Go to Work or I Have to Go to School!

8. Know Your Clientele

9. Music Teachers Have to Love to Make Music

10. Be Fearless

11. To Instill A Love of Music

12. Setting High Expectations

13. Through Musical Excellence, Musical Enjoyment Occurs

14. Make It About the Music

15. I Have Succeeded When Kids Succeed

16. Setting High Expectations, Part II

17. Over 3,000 Students in Thirty-Plus Years

18. Every Hand Came Down

19. The Students Always Come First

20. Biology Camp Became My Inspiration

Conclusion

About the Author

Acknowledgments

This book would not have been possible were it not for the support of many people. Thank you to the music teachers (most of whom are retired or who have many years of experience in the music classroom) who were willing to share their stories, rehearsal ideas, advice, and strategies for success. Their dedication to the profession serves as a beautiful inspiration for all of us who teach and make music. And, a special thanks to my father who taught me that teaching is an art that involves engaging all learners in an active and participatory manner. ■

Preface

Recently, I saw the musical Pippin on Broadway. At some point during act 2, when the young prince Pippin is lamenting about his life, he says, And every time the King has to make budget cuts, the first thing to go is funding for the arts. The audience laughed and applauded. Perhaps, I am projecting my own thought process here, but it was as if the entire audience realized that the singers, dancers, performers, technicians, and pit orchestra musicians had studied art or music in public schools. And, perhaps the audience members appreciate the notion that the arts—specifically music education—do impact culture in society.

The media bombard us daily with the controversial issues surrounding education: budget cuts, teacher performance, pre-service teacher exams, Common Core, funding for the arts, the privatization of education, government control of education, and other issues. Yet even in this unstable climate, the music teachers in this book still managed to inspire, play, perform, sing, and touch the lives of many children through music. They included children at all ability levels in their teaching. They created programs that served their communities and enriched the lives of their students every day with beauty. They found ways to challenge the extremely talented, and they included those who were not as talented. Over the years, thousands of children were touched, inspired, counseled, challenged, and motivated to love music by these dedicated teachers. These teachers’ stories and career experiences reminded me—and I hope will remind you—of why we teach music.

To write this book, I interviewed twenty music educators, most of whom had thirty or more years of experience. The twenty interviewees taught in a variety of geographic locations around the country and they taught during a time and in a location where the large ensemble performance program was the focus of the school music department. One of my favorite questions to ask each person was: Describe your most memorable musical experience. I know this is an open-ended discussion prompt, and some of them asked if I was referring to an experience with their students or with their own performing. I said, Yes, as I was as curious about their teaching as I was about how many of them continued to perform throughout their teaching careers. Some recalled travelling with their students, while others cited memorable college or professional performances and their conducting mentors. Others talked about exciting and engaging performances that had transported their students to another place. All of them struggled when asked to recount a moment that represented a most fulfilling experience, as each person was clearly passionate about his or her music-making and music-sharing. Each person had found inspiration in innumerable teaching experiences.

Another common experience among these teachers was the changing demographics of the communities where they taught. Many had worked in small towns that witnessed a decline in manufacturing during their teaching tenures, which led to widespread job losses and changing income structures. As their community began to struggle economically, there was less support for the arts and music teachers found themselves having to advocate more actively for their programs. Also, many of them started teaching in the 1970s when the divorce rate began to skyrocket, which they believed undermined community stability and negatively impacted their programs. Students did not always have predictable family lives, places to practice, or the two-parent income that helped fund a strong music program.

While each teacher in this collection of stories was prompted with a specific set of questions, they also were free to elaborate on any specific topic they found important. Certain themes began to emerge and those themes are reflected in the discussion questions that are included at the end of each chapter. In addition to the question about their most memorable musical experience, I asked the following questions:

Where/when did you teach and please describe the community (socioeconomic, diversity, etc.)

Tell me about your philosophy of music education? What is it? Did it change throughout your career? How did it develop?

What are some of the biggest changes you have seen in music education during your career?

What are some of the biggest challenges music educators face today?

Based on your experience mentoring and supervising, how can young teachers best prepare to teach music?

Do you have advice or words of wisdom to share regarding music selection/curriculum? Classroom management? Relationships with parents/guardians?

If there was one thing you could do differently what would it be?

What follows are twenty different stories from these music teachers. These conductors and teachers dedicated their life’s work to making music with children through singing and playing. While they taught music and musical values, they did it through the performance medium of the large ensemble. What emerges from their stories is a clear statement on values. Their stories remind us that at the heart of every conversation about the present and future of music education—be it about administration, assessment, data, educational trends, or improvement—we must always value two things most: children and music. ■

1.

Music for Music’s Sake! It’s All About the Music . . .

Greg Rudgers spent most of his twenty-eight year career teaching band at Southside High School in Elmira, New York. Before moving to Southside, he had taught fourth-through twelfth-grade instrumental music in a rural community where he shadowed a master teacher who served as his mentor.

He described Elmira as a middle-American/middle-class community with lots of retail workers, prison guards, and hardworking people. In the late 1980s and early 1990s the city faced severe economic decline and quickly became a community where approximately eighty percent of the school population came from unstable homes. Students struggled with issues such as poverty, drug abuse, single parents, and parents working several jobs. The quality of life and education suffered and most people in the community found themselves scraping by day-to-day.

Mr. Rudgers believed that when students live in this type of survival mode, the music classroom and performance experience becomes a refuge. For such students, being part of an ensemble provides the routine and order that some of them lack outside of school. He knew that students would respond well to aesthetically valuable music, and he made sure that his approach to rehearsing was consistent, challenging, and musical. I believe that all students have an innate appreciation for quality music—people will respond to great art—and music rehearsals and the music classroom was an oasis for them, he said. It was a safe haven.

Greg also talked about his relationships with the students. He was interested in them as people first and as musicians second. He engaged them in conversations about their lives and personal interests but made a conscious attempt not to get too close to them personally. Greg tried to be consistent, kind, and respectful, and thus, he felt that he was respected. You have to be interested in them as people—musicians too—but band directors have the unique opportunity to get to know their kids, he said. I wasn’t their social worker but I could listen. He stressed consistency in his approach to rehearsal management and he held the students to high standards:

I had a tight structure and I didn’t tolerate bad behavior. Listening is important for me as the teacher and for them—I explained the expectations, and I was simply intolerant of bad behavior. I would have serious talks with individual students if necessary, saying things like, Let me explain this to you . . . and You gotta help me out here. I worked it out with each kid.

Mr. Rudgers firmly believes that honesty always works. A teacher needs to have a sincere and consistent approach, and that will earn respect. According to him, this dynamic hasn’t changed in today’s world.

Musically, Greg talked about skill development but believes that the success of any program is based on the genuine commitment to making music. He believes music is a spiritual experience—music takes hold of our spirit—and kids get this. All of his students, at any level of experience, could stand up and speak about the music they were performing. Students could analyze the pieces they were performing, were proud of the performance and the knowledge they gained while working on that repertoire.

Greg’s philosophy of music was based on the virtues of music—learning about music as an art form—music has beauty, symmetry, and form. If you believe music has power, you must communicate this to your students, he noted. The focus wasn’t on trips, fundraising, trophies, or competition. He advocated this philosophy of music first to his community and administration, and truly believes that students will live better lives with music. This is an essential part of their human development, he said. It has to do with form—beauty, value, culture. Music adds inherent value to children’s lives. He still speaks passionately about the value and import of music every time he guest conducts. When asked about the biggest change he’s seen in recent years, he complained about the bureaucratic intrusion into the classroom. Greg said:

Teachers used to be fairly autonomous and are not so now. The removal of local authority over schools has been a disaster. Accountability is the sole focus now and schools need to function better. In terms of music education, things haven’t changed dramatically. However, there is more emphasis on the extrinsic aspects of music education: trips, fundraising, competitions, and school musicals.

Greg was most distressed about the future for young teachers. He cited one statistic about young teachers fleeing the profession within the first five years. They easily and quickly get discouraged as they enter the profession and many quit teaching because they feel the bureaucratic details are demeaning. Recent mandates for testing, assessment, and data-driven accountability, in addition to the many other challenges in education, have not helped new teachers. He also finds it disappointing that some music performance majors in college use education as the fallback career. Because a teaching career is difficult, he believes that good teachers have to really want to teach and that it should not be an alternative career choice because someone didn’t cut it as a performer.

Greg spoke about the practical aspect of teaching and stressed that all music teachers must be extraordinarily organized. From how students enter the rehearsal room to seating charts, names on music stands, music in folders, rehearsal and lesson planning, post-rehearsal assessment, and being proactive about everything; successful music educators, need to carefully manage all the details of their music program.

He paused thoughtfully when he was asked to describe his favorite musical memory. As the interviewer, I was thinking he would mention a performance with his high-school students, but instead, he talked about a concert with the Boston Symphony Orchestra. He was at Symphony Hall and Seiji Ozawa was conducting Mahler’s Second Symphony. For him, it was a transformative listening experience. He then recalled singing the Sanctus in Bach’s Mass in B Minor:

Sometimes I think Bach was God. And then, there are soul-wrenching moments in Wagner. Playing Wagner’s Gotterdammerung with Walter Beeler conducting was awe-inspiring. John Paynter could do it too—and Lauridsen’s O Magnum Mysterium. . .

His statement is evidence that he remained inspired by music, not just as a teacher but as a voracious music consumer. For Mr. Rudgers, attending all types of concerts, and listening to music, was the key to staying musical. Associate with musicians and attend the great pinnacle performances in your area to stay inspired, he advised.

Most of Greg’s musical memories were related to his experience as performer or listener. But then he talked about teaching music as an aesthetic experience in itself:

It’s a different experience as a conductor of high-school kids—there is a purely aesthetic response—like in the second movement of the Persichetti Symphony when the oboe enters—the social and emotional connection with that student is so strong and this is what produces the aesthetic.

Mr. Rudgers called it a begrudging affection of respect . . . it happens when everyone in the ensemble is ‘there’—it also happens when teaching. He described the time when a colleague, who was also an amateur musician, walked into the band room while he was teaching a clarinet lesson:

This history teacher saw three students who were not strong in their academic courses—they were on the edge of their seats playing clarinet—totally interested in music—completely engaged, and he had tears in his eyes.

The conversation kept returning to the reason that music is important to the human condition. According to Greg, it has to do with the spiritual connection made between humans. Music is a form of expression. This philosophy has clearly guided him throughout his career. He believes it is essential that young teachers retain their integrity as musicians:

What is it about music that has drawn you? Keep that essence in mind with everything you do. Music first. Keep the essential values: discipline, beauty, tension, and release.

Mr. Rudgers reminded his students of this through a poster he hung in his band room. It read: It’s about the music. It’s not about me. It’s not about you. It’s about the music. But, he cautioned:

There should be less activity as it is about music making. Yes, you can have fun on the bus—but it is easy to lose sight of the music—the intrinsic value of music—music as an art form—you know, the Bennett Reimer stuff.

Greg recalled one of his musical mentors, the late Ed Gobrecht, a professional bassoonist, who was also a professor of music at the Ithaca College School of Music: "He could make music out of everything. If you had three notes from Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star, he’d ask—what does this note do? Where does this note go? It was always about passion and