"After years of alleged misconduct, school chancellor John Wiley (13) placed the band on probation after a bus trip to Michigan last month apparently turned into an outbreak of Nerds Gone Wild. The school said band members "routinely engaged in hazing involving alcohol and sexual behavior."
The above quote was from an article written almost two years ago. The following link will take you to a story posted almost two days ago: http://rivals.yahoo.com/ncaa/football/news?slug=ap-wisconsin-bandsuspended&prov=ap&type=lgns. I've always said that when I get far enough into my career, that I would like to teach in a college music department. My reasons for this are chiefly that the majority of the students actually want to be there instead of being forced to go, the talent level is more advanced than at middle school age, and I could have more thoughtful conversations about music and how it works.
It seems, however, that I have glossed over the one HUGE downside to this line of work (see the above stories). It's not quite like teaching middle or high school students where if they do this kind of thing you can have get their parents involved immediately, or tell them they can't walk at graduation or some other type punishment. I'm sure these things are done at the college level, the difference is generally speaking these thoughts don't enter the minds of middle and high school students, and if they do the kids are too afraid of the consequences to act on their thought because those consequences are immediate due to mom and dad being right there. Put several hundreds or thousands of miles between mom and dad and said scholar, and the consequences of your actions don't seem as immediate and therefore are not really something to be overly concerned with.
Another aspect of this story that concerns me is the conduct of the assistant band director that is mentioned. It's something that is becoming all too common in the teaching field, I'm afraid. Although, more often than not, it's with a student, not a colleague that the teacher is involved with. These are some of the things that scare me as a teacher. To be wrongly accused because of some action that was misconstrued or a flat-out lie. It's one of the reasons I'm always super careful when talking with and dealing with students especially outside of regular class times.
On a different note, I was without internet here for about three days this past week. It's amazing how much e-mail and facebook junk can accumulate in your inboxes when you don't clear them out almost daily. I was happy that it only took me an hour and a half of phone time to get it back up and running. My girls were gone to Houston this past week, and I missed them dearly. We're all back together now, and we don't really have any more travel plans until the end of the month when Kayla will go to a quilting convention. Sounds like a rip-roaring time to me, but who am I to judge, I go to marching competitions! Speaking of which, we have our first one of those on Saturday, followed by the actual UIL event the following Wednesday. I'll let you know how we did. Guess that's all for now. Happy beginning of Fall from South Texas where it's still over 90 degrees during the day!
3 comments:
Hey! What you can do as a Collegiate director is to threaten to kick them off the field, then to kick them out of the band (which can affect their scholarships), and if that fails, you can take them to whatever discipline council is on the campus. In any case, you can really get them in a whole lot of trouble and potentially get them kicked out of school. The trick is to recruit well, and also to keep a VERY strict set of clear-cut rules that all people (including the director) have to keep. That's how the West Georgia band got a WHOLE lot better while I was there.
matt's right. they can screw themselves up big time not for just the time they're at school but for jobs later on down the line. if they get kicked out of school it makes it very difficult to get into another school and people do check references and school records more carefully than they used to.
will you please update your blog????? ha-ha
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