Tags: Personal, Teaching
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I recently wrote the most-commented article on this site to date about the number of hours teachers work and comparing those to standard business world people. As I write this one, I’m sure it will stir up just as many responses, though many of them will surely be in disagreement with me. Just keep reading, and tell me where I’m wrong at the end!

One of the comments to that article said something to the effect that “nobody works harder than teachers do!”

While I agree with the sentiment, I think it’s possible for our own passion to cloud our word choice at times.

Comments continue coming in about that article, and I saw an email right before I went to be last night about a comment by sciguy left on this topic. He explained that he had taught 2 years, he then went off to work in the business world for 10 years, he owned his own business for 3 years, and has been teaching again for the last 3 years.

His claim was that teaching is demanding, but it doesn’t exceed the stress or work involved in owning one’s own business. I had a sneaking suspicion that his comments were the truth.

I was disappointed when I checked my site this morning, didn’t see his comment, and then realized he had actually left it over on a similar post on Learn Me Good.

While I am keenly aware that our jobs are demanding and far more time-intensive than many people realize, the example I gave in my response was that of people in the medical field.

If I screw up in my work, someone gets some wrong information that I have to go back and correct later on down the road. If I don’t realize I’m wrong for a few years, it’s no huge loss.

If a doctor or nurse screws up, someone’s health (and potentially their life) is in jeopardy. Add to that the numerous long hours they work, and it can get to be a lot.

As sciguy brings to light, an entrepreneur is financially responsible for the success of the business. When you open your own business, if becomes your life.

And honestly, the job security of education is a pretty sweet deal too. I mean, people are going to continue making babies and that means ignorant people will continue to need to be educated.

When we walk into work each day — assuming we don’t do something stupid to a kid or break a law somewhere along the road — we pretty much can rest assured we’ll have a job until at least the end of the school year. That’s an assurance that most people in the business world don’t have.

I mean, even if a district is in a budget crunch (is there a district in the world that isn’t in a continual budget crunch? I swear I’m sick of hearing that over and over again!!!), they are pretty much guaranteed to keep you on the payroll until at least the end of the semester.

While it’s not the most lucritive job in the world as far as pay or hours or stress levels go, I think when we step back to look at the career honestly and in an unbiased way, we can all recognize that there is at least some level of cushiness involved with our line of work.

How many times do you think this conversation gets played out?

“What do you do for a living?”

“Oh, I go in to work at 9am, have an hour or more for lunch, have occasional meetings with clients and supervisors throughout the day, leave the office at 5, and spend the rest of the time doing whatever I feel like.”

“Wow, I wanted to do that when I was a kid. I totally respect you! It must be nice knowing that you are making a difference in the world.”

And yet how many times do we have the same question, tell them we teach, and get that response? We have it good, folks. Quit your whining and enjoy the rest of the summer!

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Update: 7/14/08
Miss K has an awesome comment that I wanted to respond to in the article so people who stumble over here don’t miss it. God read it first, and then read my response here.

@Miss K - I think you hit the nail on the head here. Passion. Dan Miller has a book called “48 Days To The Work You Love” that I have heard highly recommended. One of the coolest blogs I’ve seen it The Chief Happiness Officer where he talked about loving your work.

I wonder how many teachers get in the business and realize they don’t absolutely love the thought of waking up each morning to go and teach! How sad that must be. Could it be that those people who find themselves in that place are somehow trapping themselves into a system that requires immense amounts of diligence and motivation that they simply don’t have?

I have written a handful of articles that address this very topic in one way or another:

• 9 Reasons To Quit Teaching (And 10 Reasons To Stick)
• 25 Tips For Less Stress
• 50 Reasons Why I Enjoy Being A Teacher
• 50 Reasons To Love Your Job As A Teacher
• 65 Things You Should Do Right Now To Avoid Burnout
• Help! I’m On The Verge of Burnout!!! Do I Quit Teaching Or What Do I Do?
• I Give Up! 10 Reasons Why I Am Quitting My Teaching Job
• Invalid Reasons Teachers Quit
• On The Brink Of Quitting
• Shut Up And Teach!
• The Dip
• The Honeymoon Is Over: What Killed My First Job And 7 Tips For Getting Your Next Job
• To Shut Up Or Not To Shut Up? That Is The Question
• Tools For Success
• Valid Reasons Teachers Quit
• Where Have All The Good Teachers Gone?

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I haven’t gotten a new cell phone in the last two years, so I am excited about this opportunity to upgrade. My decision to buy an iPhone was anything but spur-of-the-moment. In fact, I have been planning on getting one for just about 5 months. I was going to get it shortly after my band earned Sweepstakes at the UIL Concert & Sight Reading contest back in April. But I heard rumors of a new version of iPhone coming out then, so I waited.

I have been eagerly waiting for today since Steve Jobs announced iPhone 3G’s July 11th debut back in June. Since then, I have been able to plan lots of great classroom uses for my iPhone. I downloaded iTunes 7.7 last night and began to explore the App store. I found some real gems in there that will come in extremely helpful for my job as a band director.

There seem to be some worldwide problems with activating the things, but I’m learning patience and it should eventually be worth the excitement. So while I’m sitting here this morning looking at my brand new iPhone 3G, I thought I’d list some of the ways that I will use my iPhone in the classroom.

1. Band App ($9.99)
   This thing looks cool. It has a keyboard, bass, drum machine, blues progression thingy and a built in metronome. Great entertainment value here.
2. Guitar Toolkit App ($9.99)
   This one looks to be the coolest of the music apps so far. At least for a band director. It has a built in analog chromatic tuner, adjustable metronome, chord library (over 260 chords in this puppy), it produces tones to allow you to tune by ear. Plus, it has some alternate guitar tunings to make changing tuning easier. You want to play Drop D. No problem!
3. Tap The Beat App (Free)
   The name says what it does. Great simple program. The TAMA Rhythm Watch has had this capabaility for years, and I even remember college marching band rehearsals when the drum major would be called out “Calm down Joe. I clocked you at 164 right there. We were supposed to be at 160!”
4. WordPress App — Coming soon… (Free)
   If I need to add something to the band website, I can do it from the convenience of my iPhone. If I need to add something to this blog (never one the clock, of course), I can do the same thing. This is an exciting new app coming soon.
5. Voice Record App ($0.99)
   I have mentioned before that I like to record my band. I bought a little microphone adaptor for my iPod Classic this spring. It worked out well. Not the best recording quality ever, but it’s good. I like the idea of a built in voice recording app. I think I’ll play with this app some and see how it works out.
6. Facebook/MySpace Apps (Free)
   What? How does this help me? Well, it sure keeps me from running home during my lunch break to check MySpace of Facebook. I don’t do that all the time or anything, but there are some times when I am expecting a message and I would run home to check it. Now I won’t have to do that. How fun!
7. Safari
   Oh yeah, iPhone also has some built in tools that can really help. I was at an All Region band thing this year and one of the other band directors had an iPhone. He wanted to call a student at home to see if she could make it and be in the band. He pulled out his iPhone, logged into Gradespeed, got her number, and called her. Awesome stuff. Outstanding functionality for when I am on a band trip or whatever and need to look something up.
8. Camera
   It’s not the greatest camera in the world, but you never know when you need to take a picture. Having this in my pocket is an opportunity to do just that. My old phone’s camera was really weak, so this will definitely be a huge improvement on that. Plus, I buy a camera to take pictures. The camera function on a phone is just an added bonus.
9. iPod
   Oh yeah, it plays music. My kids like to hear the recordings we make, and they also like to hear professional recordings of the music we are working on. Just plug it into a sound system, and away we go.
10. Google Maps
    Again, band trips are great times for having a portable internet device in your pocket. The restaurant you had planned to visit is closed? Just use maps (with built in GPS), find the nearest place that looks like it will take a large group, and call them — all from iPhone.

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Tags: MusEduBlogging
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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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Tags: General
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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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