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Greg recently commented on an article my site. As I typically do, I went to look at his blog Total Music Education and see what he’s all about.

His blog intrigues me. I didn’t have time to read through his entire site, but what I can gather is that he is a music education student in Minnesota. He’s still in school but is getting an opportunity to teach a local summer band camp. With the exception of his observation of the horn section in the camp, I haven’t found anything on his blog that is offensive. Haha.

Nevertheless, reading some of his experiences helped remind me how differently I see teaching beginning band now than I did when I was first starting out. My first experiences with begjnners were teaching private lessons. Private lessons are way different than actually teaching classes. So I wrote a response to his latest post that I felt would be beneficial to some of my music educator readers as well. Even if you don’t teach band, feel free to take what you can out of this.

For what it’s worth, I disagree with your advisers who have told you that it’s over if the kids like you before Christmas. I think You better smile before Christmas!

This is especially important as elective teachers. There are always other choices out there.

The successful beginning band student needs to make it through the year with these three essentials.

1. Rehearsal behavior skills
2. As much band weenieness as possible
3. Characteristic sound on the horn

In that order.

The first comes from your enforcing rules.

The third comes from your entertainment value. Once their behavior is under control, make them enjoy being around you. When they misbehave, they will miss the happy

The third comes from your spending tons of time in class on long tones. They won’t practice at home. Accept it and move on. :-)

So there you have it. My entire Beginning Band philosophy boiled down into three bullet points.

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I have been holding my tongue on this issue for over a month, but I thought I’d jump in and respond while I have time and am thinking about it.

@J Frap recently left a comment on my article 9 Reasons To Quit Teaching (And 10 Reasons To Stick) that got under my skin.

You should also add “part time job at full pay wages”. Thats a huge benefit, how about you take one year off from teaching and work in the real world, where you would make less money, only receive one week paid vacation, you wouldn’t be given ‘planning days’ every other week, and you would have to work on most holidays.

I think if teachers were forced to do this, they would run back to taching and thank God they have the opportunity to teach.

This obviously got other people going! As only he can, Mr. Teacher writes:

Mr. Frap,
In the words of Theodore Roosevelt, “You sir, are an idiot.”
I worked in the “real world” for 4 years before I entered teaching, and so I know the ins and outs of both careers. To call teaching a “part-time job” and to say that we get planning days every other week just shows a lack of knowledge on your part.
Sure, there are pros and cons to both career paths, but in my experience, I find that teaching is a MUCH more time-consuming, stressful, physically draining job than my old corporate job. Aside from the summer vacation, I got most of the same holidays off that I do now, I got a relaxed, 1 hour+ lunch every day, and I wasn’t on my feet, in the spotlight, being watched all the time, every day.
For all the people who think teaching is just an 8 to 3 job, with 3 months paid vacation, I would invite YOU to try truly teaching for a year. And then to rip off your eloquent ending, Mr. Frap (if that truly IS your real name), you would run back to your job in the “real world” and thank God that you didn’t have to be a teacher.
Hallelujah — holy crap. Where’s the Tylenol?

Wow. I want to address some of his ideas here.

I think you miss the point when you say that teachers have the opportunity to teach. Pretty much everyone has the opportunity to teach. Just as some people sacrifice years of their life to have the opportunity to litigate or operate, teachers sacrifice time to have the opportunity to teach.

Full pay wages?
There are trade-offs, of course. I make far less money than a surgeon does, or an advertising exec, or whatever. But I also get the advantage, as you point out, of having a bit of down time that many other career paths don’t have. Am I complaining about the money? Not at all. I get paid just fine.

Part time job?
Unfortunately, the “part time job” doesn’t really hold true. Lets do some math, shall we?

The math
Most teachers in Texas work 187 contract days. I will assume that someone with a “full time job” works 5 days a week 50 weeks a year. That’s something like 250 8-hour days or 2,000 hours.

As a band director, I am on a 202-day contract. I normally work from 7am to 5pm on normal school days.

I also work somewhere around 12 Saturdays throughout the year with football games, marching contests, region meetings, solo & ensemble contests, all region auditions, band trips (babysitting 100+kids at an amusement park is not a vacation), and whatever else. These are not contract days. The Saturday gigs tend to be longer and AVERAGE out to around 12 hours each.

We also have concerts, Friday football games, band booster club meetings, PTA meetings, Open House, etc. Those average more than 4 hours of my time 15 times a year.

10 hours X 202 days = 2020 hours
12 hours X 12 days = 144 hours
4 hours X 15 days = 60 hours
TOTAL = 2,224 hours

So the band director math works out. Now let’s look at classroom teachers. Keep in mind I’m not an expert, but I’ll go based on observations.

Many classroom teachers don’t come early to let kids practice or stay after school doing sectionals or anything like that. So we’ll say they are there from 7:30 to 4:00. They do grade homework, make tests, and write lesson plans. That constitutes somewhere around 3 hours a day somewhere around 150 days a year. They also have the PTA, Open House, etc. commitments somewhere around 8 times a year.

8.5 hours X 187 days = 1,589.5 hours
3 hours X 150 days = 450
4 hours X 8 days = 32 hours
TOTAL = 2,071.5 hours

So at the very minimum, teaching is comparable to any 40-hour per week job in the number of hours worked, it just happens to be crammed into 9 and a half months rather than the luxurious 12 month schedule that most employers utilize.

And for those of us who are teachers. Enjoy the summer vacation. And spring break. And 3 day weekends. And all the other perks. Speaking of 3 day weekends, these numbers assumed that all of the “full time job” people out there don’t get any holidays or days off other than two weeks vacation a year.

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Lisa writes:

I googled “bitter about teaching” and came up with your blog.  I was recently let go from a school I busted my a$$ in for a whole year (my first year) - constant criticism, cattiness, and pointing out and embellishing the negative things I had done while minimizing the positive (all the while they were telling me to stay positive!).

She concludes her email:

I just wanted to let you know that your blog picked me up a little bit.  I still have a lot of healing to do, but I’m glad that I’m not the only person that this has happened to.

What an awesome thing! In case you missed the story, here are a few articles that address the situation:

• Turning The Ship: Overcoming A History of Poor Teaching
• The Honeymoon Is Over: What Killed My First Job And 7 Tips For Getting Your Next Job
• Why I Hated Teaching During My First Two Years

My response to her email was pretty straight-forward. I’m sure that she is not the only one who has come to my blog because she is burned out of teaching. In fact, 100% of the people who have come to my site using the keywords “quitting teaching” or “quit teaching” tend to be among the most popular that bring people to my site. I think my reply to her can be instructive to a lot of people, so I’m going to include it here.

Here is my response in its entirety, for anyone else in similar circumstances.

Hey Lisa,

Thanks for writing. I’m glad my blog will hopefully be one of many things that help you decide to continue on the teaching track. Just because one school gave you a bad experience doesn’t mean that every school will. And just because SCHOOL gives you a bad experience teaching, there are plenty of other opportunities for you to continue doing the teaching thing without actually staying in a school.

I would commit to another year (or even better two) in a new district. Look for a job, find one (districts get desperate at the end of the year and will hire anyone who has a piece of paper that might even look like almost a teaching certificate), and go into it a smarter, wiser, braver soul than you were before.

Read my blog and a few others. Start your own blog and talk about your successes and failures. Go back and reread the successes. Look for positives every single day — even if that means you celebrate because you almost hit the trash can when you threw away the copy of the incorrect paper that they stuck in your mailbox even though three of the secretaries and one counselor already emailed the corrected memo to the entire school already. :)

Hang on, set up a blog, and get ready to learn this year!

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If you haven’t been keeping up with the comments on here, shame on you. Fortunately, I have been. Let me fill you in. You see, I have installed a new plugin that allows people to reply to comments that others make. The reply will include a link directly to the comment that was left. It’s working out pretty well for me.

I have noticed that as I reply to some of the comments, many of you have subscribed to receive other comments. And so my replies go to your inbox. And then sometimes people reply back. It’s working out well.

Recently, Stephanie posted a comment on my article No Child Left Behind: Doomed To Fail? In her comment, she suggested that educational reform was in order.

My reply began:

@Stephanie - Educational reform sounds good. So where does that educational reform begin? I am rather unorthodox in how I see things a lot of the time (could you guess that already?) and I am just sick of new programs that start up and never are allowed to run their course.

I’d love to see more people begin replying to other comments. Maybe not quite the same way that Mister Teacher did here, but it would be neat to see more interaction going on. Speaking of interaction, the oft-neglected SYWTT Forums have recently seen a little bit of life. I’ll leave them running through the summer and see if they take off or not. If I have to kill it, I will. Any thoughts on that?