Invite Your Mom To The Gig

I'm always amazed when I see a local band play, that their parents are in the audience. I don't care if the band is tattooed, pierced and spouting lyrics that would make a sailor blush, there will be a conservatively dressed middle aged couple there supporting their musician son or daughter. They will usually clap, yell and whistle louder than any other fan in the place. They usually know all the words, even to their original songs that now one else has heard of before.

Parental support is important to a band and to a classroom. For most parents, this is exactly the kind of support they want to give. After a student or band has put in hours of hard work learning, practicing and polishing their skills, they want to share it with their parents first and foremost. It's even better if their are others around cheering them on. It really becomes a public celebration of the learning that has taken place.

If students in your classroom do something worthwhile, something they have learned, practiced and polished, invite their parents to the gig. Make it something like a gig. Put them onstage. Have some people applauding them. Let them tell how much work they put into it. Make it a public celebration of learning. This will benefit all parties involved. Their parents will be proud to see their kid show off. The kids will see that learning is appreciated by other and is worthy of celebrating. The school will benefit by seeing that the fruits of their labor (the entire staff's labor) led to something tangible, more than a grade. The school has created an actual product that an audience can look at be entertained by, appreciate and celebrate.

Warm up with an old favorite.

In my previous post, I discussed what I discovered about arranging the order of task in practice and in class. This is just a little addition to that.

I find practice starts best when we warm up with a favorite tune everyone knows and can play well. I tend to call it knocking the rust off. But the band gets in a groove, everyone is happy and smiling. We need familiar, get loose. Comfortable. It's kind of like an athlete warming up before the contest.

In class, kids need a warm up that is comfortable, familiar. They need an opportunity to get loose, stretch. It does not need to go so long that they tire, but just enough to knock the rust off.

Do the hard stuff first, then do the easy stuff when your tired.

Actually, this is a lesson I learned from my brother-in law, the carpenter. While working with him, he taught me how he puts the tasks of his job in order. He does the hard stuff first, then does the easy jobs when he is tired. I used this stroke of genius in band practice, then in my classroom.

I used to start practice off by just running through the set in order. We'd play 10 or 20 songs then start to learn new ones. By this time most of us were toast. We were ready to go home. Learning was impossible. The band would get frustrated and leave feeling terrible about the practice.

After learning this lesson, we changed our practice so we were better able to learn. First we'd play an old favorite to knock the rust off and get our confidence up. Then we would tackle the new songs while we were fresh and confident. Two or three songs could be learned quickly, easily and with little frustration. The band would then run through our old set in order. We could play it in our sleep, and after a long day of work or dealing with our family we did.

In school we often build lessons so the kids have to do the most challenging work at the end of the lesson. Once they have read, listened, worked in a group, learned a ton of new facts, we ask them to do higher level thinking skills. Just like in practice, they are toast, meet with frustration and end up feeling terrible.

Lessons need to be reorganized to be most beneficial to the learner. Try having the kids do the hard stuff first. Save the practice and reinforcement of old knowledge to the end.

Don't Break The Instruments

Many a rock band has staked their claim in fame by smashing the instruments. The Who, Jimi Hendrix and Nirvana came to the conclusion of a show by smashing the very instruments that got them there. It was beautiful, for them. It was part of their art.

It symbolized what they did in music. Break through. It worked for them. Anyone else that tried were marked as imitators. It just looked stupid. If your name was not Pete, Jimi or Kurt.... It was.

Lots of teachers get into education because of a frustration with school. I was one of them. I sat in a desk for 12 years thinking I could do it better. Then I got the job and found out I couldn't. I found I could just be me in the job. I couldn't imitate or smash my predecessors. If I did, I would look stupid.

When we started the band, we had three rules. Be in tune. Be loud. Don't smash the instruments. The last rule was initiated because we were poor. We worked hard for our instruments. We could not afford to replace them. They meant a lot to us. Many of us owned them since we were kids. Some were treasured gifts. But after some thought, another reason rule #3 worked is that we would look stupid. We can't imitate those that smashed. We would be imitators.

In the classroom we are often handed curriculum guides, materials that are other teacher's lessons. You can't teach another teacher's lesson. Just like you can't imitate someone else's act (Pete always swore Jimi stole his bands act, only Jimi could pull it off). Somewhere in the teacher guides you have to find yourself and interpret the lesson. It's like a cover song. Someone else made it popular, you have an opportunity to put your twist on it. Take what you like, leave what you don't, add something of your own and create your art. Your lesson. Teach your lesson. Don't smash the instruments.