Let me begin by saying that this is not an affiliate post, so if you decide to purchase the book I make no money. I just really love this book and want to share it with all of you, like I share it with my students.
“The Boy, The Mole, The Fox, and the Horse” was recently gifted to me by the mother of a close friend. She is the type of woman who radiates warmth and positivity and who makes you feel like you are being wrapped up in a soft, fuzzy blanket the entire time you are in her presence. She wrote a darling note in this book and I’ll be honest, I almost cried when I read it. I held back the tears welling in my eyes because I was at said close friend’s house kicking off the summer and I didn’t want to be emotional.
As I am writing this I have shown a few other close friends the book and have been showing certain students pages that they need to see. So yes, it is summer break, but I am working at my school’s summer school and I see a lot of my students there because they don’t want to be at home.
The book by Charlie Mackesy centers around a boy who asks lots of questions and a mole who likes cake. They journey together and find a fox, whom the mole frees from a trap at the potential risk of his own life. The three later find the horse, who is very comforting to the trio.
Mackesy uses a messy style to this book. Nothing about the book is pristine or perfect as nothing in life is. At one point Mackesy incorporates some mess that his dog made walking over the pages and a tea stain into the book.
Asking for Help is Brave
This past year was the first time I ever took my band students to our local performance assessment. I read all the guidelines and all the rules before we went and I was positive that I knew every little thing that would happen and that I had prepared my student effectively.
Then came sightreading.
Now don’t get me wrong, I had been practicing sightreading with my groups and I knew that all of my kids could sightread confidently. But I misinterpreted the sightreading regulations for middle school band. We were going as class A (the class for beginners in their first year) and the regulations quite literally said “very easy.” My interpretation was that it would be a unison line from the back of a method book or something in the same range.
However, they meant “very easy” band literature. All the grade half music from JWPepper is class A essentially. They were not prepared for that and we didn’t do as well as we could have. But if I had just asked a more experienced band director who has taken plenty of groups to assessment then I would have known what to actually expect and I would have prepared my students better. I didn’t ask for help because my ego got in the way and it never occurred to me to double check with another teacher because I was afraid of looking like an idiot. But it costed my students greater success.
The Truth is Everyone is Winging It
I remember grading student work my first year of teaching. My thought in the middle of grading this stack of work was, “Who left me in charge of this?” “Why am I allowed to assign student grades?” “Am I really capable of making a curriculum and teaching the kids something about music that they might remember?”
It wasn’t until a year later when I was talking to my teacher friend in the front of the building that I discovered it wasn’t just me that had this feeling. He had that feeling too! A wave of relief washed over me as I realized that I wasn’t the only teacher in my building that felt like I had no idea what I was doing.
I think this is a great life lesson to learn because the truth is that none of us, or our students have any idea what we are doing. You don’t learn what you’re doing until you’ve had a lot of opportunities to figure it out.
I finally feel better about most aspects of my teaching practice and I aim to keep improving on certain areas each year.
Comparison is the Thief of Joy
Too often we get lost in the sauce of competition. We see our groups get proficients and other groups are getting distinguished ratings. The director in the next county just received a huge grant for instruments, your teacher friend in a different state got a new sound system for their program, and your middle school colleague just recruited one third of the incoming class into their ensembles classes. Whatever it is, teaching music will always feel like a competition.
If you keep comparing yourself to the teacher down the road or across the state, then you’ll never get to revel in all the fun and wonderful things that you’re doing right in your classroom with your students.
Focus on What is in Your Control
Deadlines, concert dates; all of these things are largely out of our control. However, we need not stress over all the deadlines and instead focus on what we can control to prepare for those deadlines. The chips will fall where they may at the end of the day and all that matters is that we tried. Directors, we need to focus on making sure students are having a good time while we have them chase for success or they will not come back to us from year to year.
In order to remedy the concert prep stress and make sure students still have fun I recommend making rehearsal plans for your concert pieces and unit plans for the musical elements you have to teach. A well executed plan will always be appreciated by your students even if they don’t know it. You’ll enjoy the plan as well because it’ll give a purpose to each of your classes instead of the typical listen and react model. (There’s nothing wrong with listening and reacting, but I am a firm believer that it shouldn’t be what you do every day).
Focus on what you can control to reach the outcome that you would like.
Displaced Pedagogy 