Your band is only as good as the weakest member.

The hardest part of getting a band together and keeping it together is when members have different skill levels. To put the band together, you have to find at least 3 people and each must have a different skill (instrument). Each must have an interest in a similar style of music. Then they all have to have similar skill level. The latter nearly never happens. You usually end up picking up a player because they simply own an instrument. Other times someone you like switches instruments just to stay in the band. Because of all of these caveats, you usually end up with a weak member.

Bands usually deal with this situation two ways. One, they get rid of the weak member to hire someone else. Two, they keep the member and work on them.

Usually if they go down route 1 they end up picking some hotshot player with great skill but can't get along with everyone else. The chemistry of the band dies.

Route 2 has it's headaches as well but at least you keep the chemistry have someone that I like to call the project player.

Route 2 means you'll send the guy for some lessons, or you'll teach him the parts. You'll stick with easy songs so he can keep up.

Sometimes people rise to the challenge, other times they come to their own realization that this situation is not quite right and will bow out on their own (leaving your band back to Route 1).

It's like this in a lot of schools. Good teachers are hard to find and administrators have to accept good enough. School systems and the teacher that work alongside these teachers must recognize the project player. They must help them out. Give out their best lessons and survival tips. Help them in and out of the class. Hook them up with a decent apartment, a good deal on a used car. Make them get their budget in order. With the proper support the project player could turn out to be a hotshot rockstar teacher. They probably want to be a good teacher but just need to know the how.

We've got to admit it that teaching is brain surgery with out the blood and stitches. It takes proper training, an internship, to make a good one.

For the good classroom teachers, this rule is important too. Your class is only as good as the weakest member. In these days of NCLB, we are accountable for the subgroups that are failing. These are the project players in the classroom too. The same goes for these kids. They need extra attention, differentiated instruction, scaffold learning and a damn good teacher. Someday they may be hotshot players as well.

If the administrators and the teachers in schools heed this rule maybe they will have some luck with the weakest members of the band.