"Take a Leap of Faith!"

We are at the halfway point of the school year, what some call the "doldrums", or the "dog days". In the music educator's world, that can mean many things, one of which is planning for the future: next year.

I want to urge you in your planning to look for ways to do something new or different; something to challenge yourself. Find a way step out of your comfort zone to offer something new to your repertoire and new to your students. This can be something small that you picked up at a recent conference, such as a new warm-up technique, or something a bit bigger, like a new piece of music that you would like to work on with one of your ensembles.

Or it could be something BIG! It can be something that alters your program. For me, I took a couple big steps in the last few years of my teaching career. Six years ago, I began diving deeper into the world of audio engineering and that led to adding an "Intro to Audio Engineering" class to our course offerings. We were able to do this by only offering Guitar for a single semester rather than both semesters.

A couple of years later, I decided to add a "Modern Band" class to our school's curriculum. "Modern Band" is the term for what essentially is a Rock Band class that uses the popular music of the past 50 or so years as the basis for the ensemble. The reception from students, parents, and the school community was overwhelming. Within the framework of the class, students became more engaged as I allowed them to bring in the songs that we would work on in the ensemble. Throughout the next three years, they brought in around 75 percent of the music we studied. They brought songs from the entire spectrum of rock and roll - from the 1950s through the 2010s - everything from Elvis and Beatles to the Eagles, David Bowie, Nirvana, Green Day and the Foo Fighters. They drove the curriculum in a highly collaborative setting. They became the experts on the songs they chose.

Modern Band also offers the opportunity for greater student creativity. They can begin the songwriting process with you "steering the ship" - guiding them with chord progressions and melodic content. You essentially take on more of a mentoring role rather than driving every musical decision. It is liberating for you and the students.

Both changes pushed me outside of my comfort zone and became a great source of inspiration for my teaching. The enthusiasm that I experienced bled over into my other classes and ensembles. It became a win-win situation all around.

Take a leap of faith and do something different in the future!