It has been 25 years since I taught full-time in a public school classroom. Having spent that quarter century in music teacher education at three different universities, I am not without some idea of what current band directors face in their daily lives, or so I thought. With that said, let me frame my thoughts to follow clearly. Music teacher education has made, and continues to make, major strides in effective preservice teacher preparation. This is particularly true in Oklahoma where numbers of perspective music educators are engaged in course-based and clinically-based experiences to help prepare them for their careers. Given the limited time, demands placed on degree programs from within institutions, and state-mandated expectations that impact the process of music teacher preparation, good things are happening in educating young music teachers. This article is not an indictment of that process, but more about my personal experiences to this point as I have chosen to return to the public school classroom.

My decision to return to the middle school band room was fueled by a desire to implement the innovations I had been researching as I prepared new teachers for the field. I started my preparations for the current school year considering all kinds of pedagocal and curricular approaches that I believe are most beneficial for the students in my care. The impact of audiation via Music Learning Theory (Gordon, 2007), music learning as Youth Development (Raiber, 2019), and social emotional learning in the music classroom (Edgar, 2017) were particularly important to me as I structured the beginning of our year. I looked at models of great middle school band programs I had observed. I also contacted great middle school instrumental music educators I had admired for years. I planned and prepared. As the school year started, my emotional state moved back and forth between excitement that was almost "giddy" and nerves about being able to model what I had espoused for so many years.

As we got started, I began to realize the world I planned to enter was considerably different than what I had initially anticipated. The first indication was a calendar meeting where my neatly designed curriculum took several hits in favor of fundraising, 8th grade recruiting trips, middle school football games, and site-based whole school instructional initiatives. By themselves, none of these are major issues, but in combination they can cause curricular havoc. Soon to follow where the number of IEP's and 504 documents I was receiving in my email, requiring that I sign each in agreement to accommodate each student's needs. There was considerable time spent devising a means to track these and consider the impact on the curricular outcomes I had initially designed. The third blow to the curriculum came in terms of schedule changes, as I was asked to consider changes for students who were initially assigned to one of three ensembles based upon musical achievement demonstrated through instrument auditions. These schedule changes were legitimate requests made in the students' best interest and their overall education. Nonetheless, each impacted the curricular decisions I was making.

As I continued to make adjustments to the plan designed to help these students grow as people and musicians, the practical and immediate needs to getting the "program" organized started taking its toll. Charms ate my life for an entire weekend. Don't get me wrong; it is a wonderful platform and plays an important role in organization, but the learning curve was a bit steep and there were incredible amounts of data that needed to be input into the system. I am still finding errors and inputting data each day. (Silently I was beating myself up for not making this a more prominent part of my previous teacher education curricula.) Then I got to the new teacher orientation, which was well-designed and thoughtful, but daunting given the amount of technology with which I needed to become familiar. Attendance, grading, communication, websites, payroll, GCNs, and teacher evaluation technology all needed my immediate attention. The curriculum took a back seat for yet an additional week as I worked through each of these to get a very basic understanding that would allow me to function within my school and district to some degree. I still had not done a lesson plan for my first day with the students, which was two days away.

School started and the next focus was beginning band instrument rental and getting that critical foundation set. Fortunately, my district has a process in place and the merchants we work with are awesome!! (I think we all know who I am talking about.) However, this started the wave of questions from parents about what would or would not work. Each request needed individual attention, because there was a unique family behind each with their concerns, desires, and abilities to supply what was needed. Yet another week was devoted to important concerns that did not further the implementation of my masterful curriculum. All was not lost, but it was getting increasingly hard to find time.

Classes are rolling at this point and I feel like I have spent as much time at the copy machine as in class. Handbooks, signature forms, inventory forms, and teaching materials all needed to be reproduced in large quantities. They also needed to be distributed to each student and collected once complete. They needed to be tracked and those who did not meet deadlines needed to be motivated to get these important materials organized and returned. This was all happening as we worked to establish a climate in each rehearsal that helps students understand the caring nature of the teachers in front of them while setting clear expectations for behavior and procedures. Teach, re-teach, reinforce, and individualize as is possible (remember all the IEPs and 504s), became the instructional process of each day. It's not the neatly designed curriculum I stared with in the summer.

The fundraiser became the next primary focus of my work outside the classroom. This required getting materials copied and organized for each student, presenting the fundraiser to each class (a full day without music instruction) and tracking returns. We collected and counted money. I am grateful for the incredible support of our community, but the responsibility for those amounts of money is considerable. With the fundraiser came a reward trip for students who participated. Planning this event included ordering food, garnering tickets, arranging transportation, developing detailed itineraries and communicating all the above to students and their families. There was not much time spent on forwarding that innovative curriculum during this time.

As the first quarter comes to a close, I am starting to get an idea of the things we might be able to accomplish. This means developing relationships with each student and attempting to build trust with them and their families. It means working with students reluctant to embrace the outcomes and experiences designed for them; winning them over one-by-one. I am tracking individual student achievement on their instruments and trying to develop means to help each move forward in their instrumental abilities. Parent communication gets primary attention, but administrators also need to be apprised of what we are doing. My administration is incredibly supportive, but those relationships must be nurtured continually. It's still a juggling act each day.

So, it's not exactly what I expected before I got there. It is awesome every day, but not really what I had thought it would be in my romantic embrace of returning to public school teaching. The reward comes in the moments when students take each small stride toward those lofty goals I set last summer. They are not on the neat path I had originally designed, but we seem to be finding our way through the maze, or at least I would like to think so right now.

We are excited to promote a new website helping students prepare for all-district and all-state auditions. The site -- https://www.allstateband.org/ -- was created by Tyler Vahldick, a Branson High School alumnus and graduate of the Manhattan School of Music. The site is completely free for student use and features video recordings of all of the Missouri All-State Band audition repertoire. Tyler has plans to add the material for the Oklahoma, Kansas, and Arkansas regions as well. Palen Music Center is proud to be the premier sponsor of this helpful site. Please help us spread the word!