If you have ever been in a typical band or orchestra room at the beginning or end of class, you know how utterly chaotic it can get. Kids throwing music into their folders, quickly rushing to take off reeds, shoving horns into cases, and running out the door to get to the next class. Then one inevitably comes running back in because he forgot to take off his neckstrap or loosen his bow or whatever.

Then the next class comes in. Excited to see each other, talking, rushing to take their instruments out, soak their reeds, prepare music, get set up, and the list goes on. Every day, someone feels it is necessary to tell me they forgot their instrument…

So many hours can get wasted with regret. I hear people say all the time that they don’t regret anything they have done. Now I think there may be some validity in that statement, but at the same time, I think they’re just missing the point.

Every experience we have gives us the opportunity to become a better person. Our response determines what we learn from it. At the same time, there is great wisdom in realizing that we made a mistake somewhere along the way and regretting our decision — or indecision — at that moment.

Only in admitting we are wrong and gaining insight into how we could better respond in the future, will we be able to…

Life has with it certain milestones that we reach and we stop briefly to analyze where we are going and where we have been. I recently turned 30 years old and have been thinking quite a bit about a great many topics. I think I will occasionally share some with the readers of So You Want To Teach? as I think they may prove helpful for others.

Experience is the best teacher
As much as we like to claim otherwise, most of the greatest learning that happens in our life is from when we either completely mess things up, or else when we totally run into an amazing streak of good luck.

When I student taught, I was told…

Today is my 30th birthday. I have summer band this morning, and then not much else planned the rest of the day. I’ll probably end up writing a more substantial blog article about this later on.

On that note, I have been out of touch with the blogging world lately. I guess it has a lot to do with the fact that I have become quite busy in the “real world” and blogging takes a back seat to all of that. This has really been the case since April and many of you have probably noticed quite a downswing in the number of articles I have written. I also fall behind in reading.

When I first started blogging, it served…

Well, my summer has come and gone. I want to first of all extend my appreciation to all of the bloggers who posted while I was out. I am interested in hearing some impressions of the little experiment from the community here. If you posted something (and even if you didn’t), let me know if you enjoyed reading the other perspectives and the whole experience.

I had an incredible trip. It was nice to get away for almost 10 days. But alas, high school summer band has started up now. With that goes my summer vacation. I am simply wrapping everything up now and getting things under control as the new school year rolls in. I will do a sort…