Serving Teachers, Students, Parents and Professionals Virtually Anywhere
John Gardner
19 yrs experience as a high school band director. 14 yrs as college adjunct faculty. 30+ yrs in the fundraising industry and 24 yrs as a small business owner. (Don't add all those up.). Experience in both the fundraising sales and education worlds give me a unique combination of perspectives in both. I love working with the youthful enthusiasm of today's teenage achievers and with those who work with them.
Also 6yrs as proprietor of VirtualMusicOffice.com, which offers a wide variety of virtual services including web/blog design/hosting/managing, social media management (scheduling posts/tweets for maximum impact and brand enhancement) and small business consulting - specializing in school product fundraising.
In a recent Professional Development event discussion involving middle and high school music teachers and an administrator, one of the question prompts had to do with what we expect from our students. The admin was mildly surprised when the nearly immediate response from multiple music teachers was – 100%. I saw him write that response in his notes.
But it is true. I’ve shared this video before, but it is a good demonstration of our level of expectation from our students. In a math or english class, for example, if you miss one out of one hundred, that is still a high ‘A’. When this director gives everyone in the band the opportunity to miss one (only one) note, you can hear the tragedy. Then he goes for the second note, which would still be a high ‘A’ in any other class.
The Virginia Beach Music Festival was a multi-day event that included competitions in Marching, Concert, Parade, Jazz, and Inspection.
Virginia Beach Music Festival in 1969 and 1970. Holmes Band Grand Champion in 1969
Normally a band year has multiple seasons. Summer and Fall are mostly Marching Band. Some competitions included an inspection element, which included standing at attention for about 15 minutes while someone went through with white gloves and inspected selected instruments and uniforms. Marching season transitions into Concert Band — and Jazz Band starts up. Late Spring and early Summer is parade season.
To prepare for Virginia Beach, all that had to be going on simultaneously.
During school, the concert band would rehearse. Jazz Band was after school and evenings were a combination of marching, parade and inspection practice.
The campus had a long driveway that we used, but would often go through a couple of the neighborhood blocks. Inspections involved Copenhaver’s paddle. We would stand at attention and he would walk in front of us, stopping to stare and to grab and check instruments. If anything was wrong, he’d say, “That’s one”, which meant he would get you with the paddle when he got behind you, which could be several minutes later. And if you moved when he whacked you, guess what. Right. I never got the paddle.
The first time Holmes participated in 1969, (my Freshman year) Holmes was Grand Champion. We returned in 1970 as “Honor Band” for the event.
Director Copenhaver was from Virginia and our two Greyhound busses stoped at a park near his hometown for a community-provided picnic. I remember one of the busses got stuck crossing a small creek.
Two memorable events at the hotel we used. First, was one evening during the week when Mr. Copenhaver was in the parking lot and looked up at many of us on the balconies and said,
“They know we’re here.”
Other than when actually winning an event, it was the happiest I recall him looking and sounding.
The other was an evening when a group of seniors came knocking on our door. I was in a room with three other freshmen boys. They were there for “initiation”, which normally included some combination of ice down the underwear with shaving cream there and everywhere else — and then locked out of the room.
The four of us (I think we all four), went over the balcony. The floors were close enough together that we could go from floor to floor…. Until we could jump to the ground.
I can’t believe I did that.
But I never experienced “initiation”. And I never did that to anyone else.
I don’t ever recall, as a student, having to spend school time on bullying or suicide prevention, tolerance, drugs, sex, active-shooter and lock-down drills. I’ve participated in mandatory teacher training on bullying. We provide “digital citizenship” training worth several class periods for using those free iPads we gave them. Schools test to test that teachers’ tests are testing appropriate levels, that teachers are teaching and students are learning.
WHAT students must learn today is so much more complex than what students needed to know back in a previous century. Below is a good visual. It would have been much easier to learn to identify and differentiate the crayon colors available in the 1903 vs today, wouldn’t you agree?
I just watched a podcast showing numerous student loan defaulters who consider themselves “under-employed” and carrying “unsustainable loans”, complaining about the prospect of having to pay them back after years of covid and other reasons for repayment pauses.
I responded. Hard-hearted? Or real? Tell me what you think (nicely, please).
“I went to a state university because I couldn’t afford a top-tier private school. I had some scholarships, but also worked at least one job every semester and accepted financial aid via work-study and loans. With my degree, I got the job I studied for, struggled a few early years to repay my loan, and continued with life.
Current trends are to borrow immoderate amounts for over-priced private, name-brand schools, bypassing the more moderately priced options, to get a useless degree or one that offers low potential for justifying the price or the loan incurred.
With an attitude and degree no business wants to pay for, they accept lower wage jobs and spend what they should be setting aside for their loan obligation to get tatted, buy the fancy new car, best phone, gaming, credit card debt and party life. And then they want ME to subsidize their lifestyle so they don’t have to pay their debt. All four of my family went to college. Three involved loans. All paid back. Pardon my insensitivity.”
Increasingly, hs graduates are opting to learn high-paying trades or going into the military, which offers opportunities to learn, study, and gain financially — with stability. Those are wise decisions in the current environment.
Accounts of recent separations of news personalities from their employers remind me of a time my boss told me,
“You can’t say that.”
Years ago, on a hot sunny mid-day, our high school was evacuated over a threat. One of my thoughts at the time was wondering what was going through the minds of those stopped in traffic as 1500+ students, teachers, and staff crossed the state highway en masse. After accounting for all the students who left class, we sat in the football stadium bleachers until the end of the school day when busses and parents picked up students from the stadium rather than the high school. The congestion and confusion on that side street was significant.
The afternoon was especially stressful to those who had to work through the safety protocols to ensure students left only with a legal guardian. How do you call the school when the school is evacuated? How and to whom are calls forwarded? And what about student records with parent/guardian names and information in an area without computers and connections? How do they sign out from a remote location? Parents were frustrated as everyone was trying to do the right thing in a setting we had never before experienced. I should note that the communication and information issues of that day were addressed.
My uncovered bald head was significantly sunburned in those nearly three hours. By the time I got home, my head hurt and I was angry, especially after learning all that was the result of one student’s prank. I made an ill-advised comment on personal social media that punishment should include affixing the offender to the schoolyard flag pole and allowing all who spent those 2-3 hours in the stadium sun file by to express thoughts of the experience.
I should not have said that and I deleted the post, but not before someone shared it with the building boss, who called me to his office the next day. With a copy of my post in his hand, he not-quite laughingly said that, although he might feel the same way, “you can’t say that”.
This is one of my favorite pieces I’ve heard at Duke Chapel, played as a postlude as and after the auditorium has emptied at the end of a service.
Click on a pic to enlarge
David in front of Duke Chapel
An Easter service
View from back to front
Flentrop Organ at the back of the church just above the entrance. 5300 pipes
Aeolian Organ at the front of the chapel. 6600+ pipes
Aeolian Organ, 6600+ pipes
Organ Symphony No. 5 in F Minor, Op. 42 No. 1: V. Toccata
Best if you listen with your volume turned up. There is a section in the middle that gets so soft you can barely hear it, and then it comes roaring back again. There is a several second reverb after the release of the last chord. Enjoy.
Here is an Easter Service in the Chapel. It begins using the rear organ. You’ll see the keyboard for the front organ during the processional. Be sure to skip to the Postlude if you don’t want to listen to everything in between. Here are some recommended stops to make:
9:46 Introit (Rear Organ)
13:40 Processional Hymn (Both Organs, ending with front organ)
I am NOT an economist, and neither are most of the people crying on here about tariffs and the stock market. I see it too …. and have been advised multiple times in the past by my financial advisor to “ride the storm and you’ll be okay”.
The markets have never been a flat line and have never been a solid, unbroken incline. In the last 5 years, my accounts have INCREASED about 60%. Put that next to the @5% recent drop.
Since 2009, which is as far back as my account program will allow, the bottom line has increased nearly 500%, yes, nearly 5x. Again, the recent drop, while hurtful, is not going back anywhere near where I have been in my balances.
The diagram is from MY ACCOUNT, not something I found randomly on the Internet. I’m intentionally not showing the dollars, but you can see the ups and downs, but relative increase over the last 15 years.
Other recent quotes that I find interesting:
“If tariffs are so bad, why do all these other countries have them?”
In earlier US history, up until they were replaced by income taxes in the early 1900s, the USA used tariffs to raise revenue and to protect the young, new manufacturing businesses on the East Coast. Here is a link to that article: https://time.com/7268866/history-of-tariffs-trump/
It is Sunday 1 of a pastorless Sunday at my church. The prior Sunday was the last one for a pastor and his wife who moved back to their home state of Alabama to minister in a larger church. In the meantime, my church will use deacons and others to fill the pulpit.
Following is a near transcription of the first six-minute introduction. In the process of asking, “What will it be like for the new guy?”, I share my experience being the new guy in my first teaching experience.
It’s June, 1976, and I’m the new band director standing in front of my high school band for the first time getting ready for the big annual 4th of July parade in the thriving metropolis of Pekin, Indiana. Population 1000.
It didn’t take long after I got there for me to discover that I was going to have a major problem. I took the band outside and began to line them up.
“I want the trumpets on the front row, shoulder to shoulder.”
A hand goes up.
“Mr. Gardner, Mr. [Name] always lined the trumpets up 4 steps behind the percussion.”
And so it went, section by section as I was placing them, with each one telling me what I was doing the same as or different from the guy who was there before.
Later in the summer, we go to band camp where we learn our marching band show and I hear,
“This is not the way we did it last year. This isn’t the way we’ve done this before. This is too different.”
We go on our first band trip and I hear from the parents,
“Last year, they were allowed to get out of their uniforms after their performance and you’re going to make them sit there, in uniform, and watch their competition?”
From my principal on my first teacher evaluation,
“The former guy had a tighter grip on discipline than you have.”
At the State competition, which was our next to last contest I heard this;
“Last year we got 7th in the state and this year we only got 8th. And last year we won 1st Place at a contest and this year the best we’ve done, so far, is 2nd.”
I was about ready to quit because it just never stopped. Over and over again I kept hearing about last year and last year’s guy and the way they had done it before…until we went to the last contest.
That first year, somehow we managed to squeak by and we got a 1st Place trophy. But it was not until that trophy that the attitude there began to change….to,
“Maybe, just maybe, you know a little bit about what you’re doing.”
I’m going to tell you something statistical, to make a point.
Joan and I were at that school, well, I was there four years, she was there three.
Our fourth year there, we had nearly 25% of the student body in the music program. That would be like a 500 member band at [Local School].
And that last year we won 27 First Place trophies [and caption awards].
But I was almost a total failure there because nobody would give me a chance. All I could do was be compared to what was there before.
And so, this morning when I ask the question, “What’s it going to be like for the new guy?”, I’m speaking to you as someone who has been the new guy.
Here we are on Sunday 1 of a pastorless condition.
Hopefully, it won’t be this way for too long, but the shortest time it can possibly be will be about a month to a month and a half – if we vote on “the new guy” next week.
It will be a difficult time for us. We feel a sense of personal loss. We became attached to [outgoing pastor and wife]. They became our friends…and they’re gone…and we’ll miss ‘em, and that hurts some.
Some people might feel a little bit of anger. “How could they possibly desert us?”
What will it be like with the new guy? Will he yell and scream from the pulpit? Will he talk football like Bro [name] did?
It will be a revealing time and we will find out who comes to this church because of the fellowship, who comes to this church for worship, and who comes to this church for the pastor.
What will it be like for the new guy? What kind of church will he find when he gets here?
….
I’m here this morning to take a look at two places in Scripture where there was a New Testament Church that lost a leader…..
As we consider these two churches through the writings of the Apostle Paul, who in both cases, was the leader who left, I want to ask you to consider some things……
[short list]
….and which one is closer to the way we are here at Huntington Baptist?
If you read this post and would like to hear their entire 20-minute sermon, it is a private video available upon request.
Also, I will be adding this story to the EHS setion of my “Stories Through My Ages” book.
I just watched a podcast showing numerous student loan defaulters who consider themselves “under-employed” and carrying “unsustainable loans”, complaining about the prospect of having to pay them back after years of covid and other reasons for repayment pauses.
Accounts of recent separations of news personalities from their employers remind me of a time my boss told me,
The diagram is from MY ACCOUNT, not something I found randomly on the Internet. I’m intentionally not showing the dollars, but you can see the ups and downs, but relative increase over the last 15 years.
