Today’s Task - June 28, 2022 One of the most valuable things leaders can do is to ask questions on the back end of the process to help them gain perspective and learn from their successes and failures. Too many leaders finish a task and never assess the process they went through. They simply dash [...]
Today’s Task - June 20, 2022 One of the more difficult challenges of being a band director or coach is learning to deal with criticism. Let’s face it. Every thing we do is on public display and everyone who has an opinion….informed or otherwise…..has an opinion. And they want to share it. Sadly, I have [...]
Today’s Task - June 14, 2022 My first teaching experience was as a long-term sub for a lady on maternity leave. The first thing I did was ask her for the names of her student leaders AND the most challenging member of the band. When I met with the students, I told them they were [...]
Today’s Task - June 8, 2022 When a director was asked about what he would say to a new band director he shared the following: We all know that you don’t know….and its okay! He went on to share something that I found to be true when I was a beginning teacher. We come out [...]
Today’s Task- May 31, 2022 Most educators will have their students for one year. Occasionally an elementary teacher will be repositioned and have the opportunity to work with the same kids a second time. Even high school teachers may have kids sign up for more than one of their classes. But if you are a [...]
Today’s Task - May 24, 2022 I remember it very vividly. We were on our way to a contest and after being unable to improve our scores the previous week, one of my students asked what I would do if they exceeded our week’s goal. I looked at her and said, “Beat the goal and [...]
Today’s Task - May 17, 2022 Things were going great….until they weren’t. My students were doing all the things I asked of them….until they weren’t. It was an important lesson I needed to learn. As musicians we spend years learning how to listen to what the music says and yet we don’t listen to the [...]
Today’s Task - May 12, 2022 It was 6 AM and I was on my way to school. I am not sure what made me glance to my left, but there, all curled up on the steps of a church, was one of my students. I quickly pulled over to see what was going on. [...]
Today’s Task - May 5, 2022 I asked them to “raise their right hand as high as they could” and they all raised their hand. Then I said, “now raise them higher” and they all reached higher. i immediately asked how that was possible. If you did, in fact, raise your right hand as high [...]
Today’s Task - April 26, 2022 If you want to improve your student leader’s growth levels, you need to create a culture that promotes leadership reproduction. When you do that, developing leaders can become the norm. In contrast, in an organizational culture where reproduction is not a priority, you will quickly suffer from a scarcity [...]