Banding Together

My son is in his school's band (middle school, 6th-8th grade). This is his school's first year with a music program in four years. The interesting thing for me is to watch him and the other students get on stage and perform or sit in the band room and rehearse. Not just the music, but their behavior, which is typically much more professional on stage than when I see them wandering around campus. I watch my son (and many other students) sitting straight, holding his instrument properly, concentrating, playing his instrument, taking feedback, practicing willingly at home, and am amazed at the difference. Band gives him something he looks forward to at school. If the school did not offer a band program, or if more of our school choice options offered a band program, we'd probably be moving to a different school next year. This is how important the band program is to him and therefore to my wife and I.

Our band director has been a major factor in the band's success. He has pushed the students to excel, coached them into improvement, committed over 4 hours per week of his own time (unpaid) for rehearsal... And that summary ignores all the other work he does outside of school arranging music, pulling events together, making things happen so the band can achieve things that make other band directors take notice.

Friday, the band performed at a local elementary school that is a feeder for my son's middle school. The music teacher there wrote a good article on her blog explaining her campaign to revive the music program at my son's school. This history was valuable to me, and she has my thanks for all her hard work. (http://www.schoolmusicmatters.blogspot.com/2012/05/kernan-middle-school-band.html)

Her post, other comments I hear, policies and rules I run into all provoke an interesting question. When I look at the level of maturity and professionalism these students demonstrate, the amount of work many put into the program, their passion, their focus, their ability to accept criticism and work to improve, I have to ask what other programs in school teach these skills or inspire a willingness to learn these skills? Probably not core academics. (Sorry, core academics teachers, but it's true.) So why are the programs that teach these critical life skills always first under the gun when the school looks for a way to trim budgets? Professionalism, responsibility, maturity, the sense that they work to achieve and achieve what they work for, these will serve students far better in the real world than some of the trivia core academic teachers are compelled to teach by one or another group's political agenda.

Maybe the state needs to offer incentives for excellence in some of these non-core programs where students can find their passion and explore a future that may be a road less traveled, that teach students these valuable life skills. Not everyone should be a scientist, mathematician, or engineer. (I'm an information architect with a degree in computer science and engineering, so I'm obviously not opposed to those professions.) To be honest, not everyone can be. It takes a particular mindset to be able to do some of these things, and not everyone has it. Some people can be and want to be musicians, artists, dreamers, creators. That also takes a particular mindset. We must support opportunities for all career directions or the world we live in will be much poorer. For that matter, many people in science and engineering are also creators, artists, musicians. There is an affinity between music and math--reinforced by my son's scores on statewide math tests, where he typically excels. Perhaps music should be seen as another aspect of a larger math education. Perhaps art should be seen as an aspect of composition and writing. Perhaps we should value people who create--be they engineers or authors, scientists or composers, mathematicians or sculptors--instead of those who manage, administer, oversee those who create, those who make, those who produce, but themselves create, make, produce nothing.

Enough politics, here are some pictures of the band warming up before the performance.

We not only have a concert band (pictures above) but a jazz band. Yes, this is one committed band instructor. (My son is leftmost in the jazz band.)