Mr. Davis Presents the Seniors

From the 2009 WHS Spring Chorus Concert.

more about "Mr. Davis Presents the Seniors", posted with vodpod

Food court lessons

Here’s the scene:  food court in a mall, choir director with 25 hungry high school kids on a field trip.  Everyone has choices about where and what to eat.  Represented at my table were Taco Bell, Sbarro, Saku Japan (my pick), Chick-Fli-A, and few others.

We’re wrapping up the meal when an employee from Chick-Fil-A approaches the student with the Chick-Fil-A meal and offers her a refill on her drink.  As she is leaving with the cup, I make a comment to the kids about going beyond people’s expectations in service and product, and how important it is to get people’s attention by doing what no one else will do (namely, not hiding behind your counter, waiting to be asked for a refill).

Get this:  the Chick-Fil-A lady overhears me, stops, and comes back to our table to ask the rest of us if she can refill our drinks as well.  

My kids are stunned.  I’m giddy.

After the refills were distributed, we talked at length about what just happened, and drew out these lessons:

1. Forgiveness is a powerful tool in customer relations.  In a real sense, the employee forgave us for not picking her store in the first place, treating us as if we had picked her, as if we were already her customers.  She did not exercise her “right” to deny us the service.
2. Can you say “leverage?”  Giving away a refill that costs maybe 10¢ in product in a way that will likely produce hundreds of dollars in future sales is “leverage,” class.  That’s L-E-V-E-R-A-G-E, and yes, you’ll be tested on your grasp of this concept for the rest of your life.
3. Doing flows from being.  Chick-Fil-A is not in the chicken business.  This employee understands that Chick-Fil-A is in the customer-acquisition-and-retention business.  The predicate in Chick-fil-A’s mission statement is a verb of being: “To be America’s best quick-service restaurant at winning and keeping customers.”  This woman wasn’t sleeping through her Chick-Fil-A training classes.
4. Doing the right thing is more important than getting credit (or a grade) for doing the right thing.  I pointed out to the kids that they were now drinking free Chick-Fil-A product from cups that advertised for Chick-Fil-A’s competition.  Chick-Fil-A had every “right” to get credit for outstanding service, but this employee was more interested in actually providing the service than in getting the credit.  
5. Advertising (or advocacy) is good, but doing the right thing by people is much more effective at changing minds.

It’s not exactly easy to impress high schoolers, but this Chick-Fil-A associate had the undivided attention of some saucer-eyed kids with a lifetime of purchasing power ahead of them.  

(If Chick-Fil-A’s paying attention, look up the manager at the Hamilton Place Mall’s food court during Friday’s lunch hour.  It’s promotion time for the blonde who gets it.)

Also, if you’re a CFA fan, you’ll love this.

Advocacy, or Why Choir? (part 2)

Advocacy bugs me.  Marketing doesn’t bug me, packaging doesn’t bug me, but advocacy bugs me.

This past week I accompanied 3 of my students to the annual Tennessee Music Educators Association (TMEA) conference in Nashville.  The students qualified to sing in the All-State Honors Choir, and got to sing under the baton of Anton Armstrong of St. Olaf’s College and Peter Bagley from the University of Connecticut.  They worked very hard and deserved the recognition and honor of being selected, as well as the priveledge of working with 2 masters of the choral craft.

And the payoff for their hard work was to be the final concert in front of their parents and chorus teachers, bursting with pride.  It was a wonderful, magical moment.

Right up until the advocacy part.

Before each choir’s performance, the emcee made it a point to advocate for music education, often in strident, combative terms:  ”If your school board even hints at cutting music programs in your communities at home, I hope you’ll stand with me and by God make your voices heard!  Yeah!”  Obligatory applause, and even an “Amen!” here and there.

It was weird.  It was annoying.  It made me want to go out and cut a music program somewhere just because. 

I understand that TMEA is at its core an advocacy group, and that the primary mission of TMEA is to advance and protect music education’s place and role in public schooling.  But must we turn a beautiful music concert into a pep rally for music ed?  Can’t we just let the concert make the point for us?  Can’t we just celebrate the kids and their work?

There will always be school boards that consider cutting music programs in times of financial crisis and stress, but no parent will stand up and take a bullet for a music program because of anyone’s advocacy.  

The best strategy to ensure that music programs survive is not noise and preaching.  The best strategy to ensure that music programs survive is to have awesome music programs everywhere, music programs that provide tangible value to their communities, value that extends beyond the benefit of the participants.  Who are the people in your community other than the parents of your currently enrolled students that would notice or care if your music program was nixed?

What kind of music program would your community fight for?  

Maybe advocacy is just easier than taking a hard look at what we’re producing and re-vamping the product so that people will willingly throw themselves between our programs and budget-cutting school boards.  Maybe it just makes us feel like we’ve done something when for the most part all we’ve done is preach to the choir and irritate the heathen unconvinced.

Maybe I need to redesign the chorus program at West High…

On Conferences and Jubilees

I’m in Nashville for the rest of the week, attending the Tennessee Music Educator’s Association annual conference in conjunction with the All-State band and chorus clinics.  Ostensibly I’m “chaperoning” 3 of my kids who made All-State choir this year, but that’s akin to holding my yard accountable for growing grass.  They get a cursory check-in from me just so I can confirm they’re still alive and the lawn’s not on fire.

Last year this conference saved my sanity–I was in the throes of my first semester teaching high school chorus and not certain I’d survive the experience.  Getting away from the choir room and hanging out with fellow chorus teachers (many of whom were my classmates at UT back in the day) was so helpful and so refreshing.  It refilled my hope-bucket!

It reminds me of many, many Arts Conferences at Willow Creek that kept me in the game during my worship pastor days, so much so that I have to wonder if the main value of these conferences isn’t the content so much as the environment.  Being away from what’s “normal,” whether it’s schedule- or duty-wise or simply being in a different city, may be all it takes to reset the system back to hopeful joy in the “normal” flow of life.  

It’s a sabbath, a jubilee for people who don’t normally do sabbaths or jubilees.

I miss my normal, but am still so glad to be here.  Let some other people do the teaching for two days.  Let someone else lead the worship at Powell Church on Sunday.

I will simply rest and receive.

Until Monday….

Smartboard Attendance–shutting it down

Thanks to all who commented and were so enthusiastic about my little smartboard experiment (Post 1, Post 2, Post 3, and Post 4).  It was so gratifying to see others get some use out of my little brainstorm-turned-spreadsheet.

I did think it only fair to let everyone know that I’m not using it anymore.  The system just didn’t do what I needed it to do, namely, 1) enforce my tardy policy and 2) free me up to do other things, like teaching.

At its core, the problem was this:  this technology was not sufficient to enforce procedure, which, really, is the point.  The attendance tap was supposed to be the last in a sequence of entering-the-room tasks before taking one’s seat:

1. come in,
2. dispose of gum/food/weapons/drugs, etc.,
3. drop backpacks,
4. get music folder,
5. tap in,
6. take seat. 

It NEVER went that way. 

The students invariably took this sequence: 

1. tap in,
2. leave room to talk in the hallway with loser boyfriend/girlfriend until the bell rings,
3. drop backpacks,
4. get music folder,
5. take seat, dispose of gum/food, etc. only when called out by me,
6. stare in shocked disbelief at the smartboard showing their status returned to “Absent” because of their post-tap excursion to the hallway. 

At no point when using the smartboard to track attendance did I have a class-full of seated students when the bell rang.  I still had to yell, “Let’s go!  In your seat, you little…!”

The kids enjoyed using the smartboard so much that they would race each other to tap in ALL the names they could.  Some of this was innocent excitement and some of it was malicious system-manipulation (“But, Mr. Davis, Buffy just called me from the parking lot and asked me to tap her in because she’s here on time…”).  I found myself having to spend my time policing the tapping procedure, more time than I would have spent simply policing the attending procedure.

At the end of the day, the most effective attendance-taking method was my presence at the podium, refusing admission to students without a front-office-issued tardy pass who were not in their seats when the bell rang .  One day of that, and we did fine thereafter.

Teaching-lesson #273:  The teacher must enforce the policy.  Never push policy enforcement onto a system or onto a student helper.  It’s worth it to take the time to give the policy teeth, preferrably your teeth.

Oklahoma Preview

This was just too good to not post on both this blog and West High Choir Guy.  Today was our first choreography rehearsal for Oklahoma! and here’s what the kids were able to get done on the “Farmer Dance:”

(or click here to see it on Google Video)

Our daughter (we “adopted” her as part of an “adopt-a-college student” program at our former church) Michal Lynn is doing the choreography for the show and has got the kids working really hard already.  Isn’t this exciting?

I can’t wait to see this show!  We open Thursday, October 9.

Here’s a Thought….

I’ve been writing my student handbook for the chorus kids at West, trying to set up the next year well for my students and for my sanity.  This past week I focused on grading policy, and I had an awesome epiphany–one of those perspective-skewing thoughts that will make a huge difference in how I run the choirs this year.

Here’s how it came–I was setting up a typical grade weighting system for a high school chorus, much like what I had inherited at WHS and used last spring semester:

• Performance Attendance:  20%
• Class Participation:  50%
• End-of-Course exam:  15%
• Other exams:  15%

“Performance Attendance” amounts to a term paper in any other class, and any more directors have to weigh performance participation so heavily just to ensure that the kids will show up and sing for the term concert.

“Class Participation” is a subjective measure of the quality of a student’s effort during rehearsals.  It’s weighted so heavily because rehearsing is the nitty-gritty work of chorus or band.  Directors use this as a stick to enforce good rehearsal practices–not talking, being on time to class, maintaining good posture, having a pencil with you at all times, following the director’s instructions, etc.

It’s also weighted so heavily because chorus directors like rehearsing better than, well, school.  At least I do.

And here’s the epiphany–I had reduced the measurement of the students’ actual chorus competencies to a mere 30% of the grade, and had reserved 70% of the grade as a rule enforcement mechanism.  Got a slouching kid who won’t open his mouth and sing with the rest of the group?  My response was to cut his participation grade for the day and let it go, as if cutting his grade was going to show him a thing or two.

And don’t you dare miss the concert, because I’ll fail your sorry little…

The problem last spring was this–the kids who were consistently not complying with my classroom expectations of active participation, no gum, etc., were the kids who didn’t really give a rip about their grades.  Losing their 5 participation points for the day didn’t exactly phase them.

What I’m trying to do now is to parse out and separate the behavioral measurement / feedback issues from the performance measurement / feedback issues.  In other words, when a student does not actively, positively participate in the class, I want to treat it as a discipline problem, complete with a demerit system, calls home, and trips to the principal when necessary. Grades are a separate system measuring a separate reality-can the student sing and read music?

The new grade weighting will look like this:

• End-of-Course Exam: 15%
• Exams (Written and Singing):  50%
• Performances (Qualitative):  25%
• After/Before-School Rehearsal Participation:  10%

The biggest change this brings is that I’m going to have to ramp up my measuring system, adding in regular singing exams to assess student progress toward vocal goals.  It also means that I’m going to have to ramp up my discipline system.  But I’m most excited at the thought that my grading system no longer will have to bear the burden of also being my discipline system.

That’s good for both grades and discipline.

More Smartboard–Weekly posting demo

Here’s another video demonstrating how to post the weekly attendance totals to the aggregate sheet for the term:

More Smartboard–Daily posting demo

Here’s a video demonstrating how to post the daily attendance activity to the weekly aggregate sheet:

 

More Smartboard–Usability vs Security?

It’s been brought to my attention by the IT Swami and my principal that students can game the system by tapping each other in or tapping themselves in and leaving. I’ve thought about how to mitigate against this possibility, but there’s that darn usability/security give-and-take-thing rearing up again (it should be said that the Swami gets paid to really care about system security).

My previous system had a similiar problem–I had a seating chart for each class day, and would cross out the names of students that corresponded to the empty chairs on the risers at the beginning of class. I didn’t really care if they were or were not in the room–”not seated” means “not ready to go” means “absent.” The system called for students who weren’t seated when I started to walk over to the chart and mark a “T” by their crossed-out name so that I would know they were merely “Tardy” and not cutting class, sparing them an unpleasant visit with their principal.

Of course many of them took the opportunity to simply erase my “absent” mark. The ones I caught received a thump on the head and a discipline referral before I got wise and simply lopped off the eraser of my roll-taking pencil. But the point is this–the accuracy of the system wasn’t as important to me as was the fact that I didn’t have to stop what I was doing (teaching) in order to check in tardy people myself. I accepted a certain amount of system-breaching if it meant that the system freed me up to be a better teacher.

This system is designed for usability over security, but more than that, it empowers the students to be responsible for their own attendance stats. I’m counting on the idea that students will generally rise to the opportunity to act like adults when given meaningful responsibility.

Some won’t, but most will. And that’ll be good enough.