Changed For Good

Tags

change, gnp, music, UMass, UMMB

Tonight’s sunset was particularly beautiful.

It was not the kind of dramatic, fiery descent that typically grabs my attention, but rather a wash of pastel that seeped across the firmament and slowly faded to a deep indigo. I sat on my deck and watched its gradual progression, grateful for this unexpected moment of quiet calm.

Sunsets always make me think of my college band director Mr. Parks. Every weekday we used to gather at 4:40 on the athletic fields. We removed our instruments from their cases, tuned, and assembled in formation to rehearse our halftime show. He called out commands from atop a rickety scaffold tower, his voice amplified by tinny long-range speakers. He ran rehearsals with a unique blend of military precision and devilish humor. He demanded nothing less than our best every day, but he never missed an opportunity to witness and appreciate life’s little moments of beauty. Once in a while he would stop what he was doing and bark out a command: “Sunset appreciation, hut!” We would tuck our horns under our arms and applaud wildly for the spectacle. Band sunsets were always the best sunsets.

I think of him every time I see the sun go down. Even more so, I think of him when I see the sun rise, for this typically happens when I am driving to work for a before-school rehearsal. I am not a morning person by nature, so although I am the one who schedules the early morning rehearsals, I don’t particularly enjoy getting up for them. Once in a while my effort is rewarded by brilliant orange sunrise as I round the corner into the town where I work. I am always reminded of Mr. Parks, both because of his gratitude for life’s beauty and because he’s the one who taught me that some things in life are worth getting up early for.

Mr. Parks died quite unexpectedly in September 2010. It was a tremendous shock to all of us who had marched under him. He had directed the band for thirty-three years, which was longer than some of us had been alive. Irrational though it may have been, I think there was some part of each of us that believed he would always be there. I used to imagine that some day my children would march with him. If I thought it through – my present lack of children, my time frame for the production of said children, his age – I always came to the conclusion that the fantasy was unlikely at best. And yet I still sort of believed it would happen.

After a long and intense grieving period, I’m at a point now where the mention of his name nearly always makes me smile instead of cry. Still, it’s terribly hard to accept that the campus, my musical home, will never look quite the way I remember it. It is at once familiar and oddly foreign.

Transitions, I am learning, are rarely easy. Whether brought about by catastrophe or by choice, it is so very hard to witness the change of a cherished institution.

When I find out that one of my music students is going to UMass, my knee-jerk reaction is still to exclaim “Awesome! Are you going to join the band?” It is followed by a pang as I remember that my hero no longer teaches there, and neither my students nor my hypothetical children will ever meet him.

Then I remember that the band is still there. It is conducted by a new professor who is, by all accounts, wonderful. They still play the same fight song and wear the same uniforms that I wore. I don’t know if they still cheer for sunsets, but they certainly do look like they have fun together.

I think of all these things, and I decide that this student will never know the band that I loved – but he might just discover one that he loves. That is when I ask again: “Seriously … you’re going to join the band, right?”

Lesson Planning

Tags

college, plans, teaching, TESOL, UMass

It’s Good Friday and, regardless of your faith, I think we can all agree that it is good because I did not have school.

Which is not to say that it was a day off, for I spent the better part of it at my computer writing a lesson plan and supporting materials for tomorrow’s TESOL class.

Much like my earliest experiences with teacher training, I am required to write and teach sample lessons, on which I will be critiqued by my teacher and my classmates.

I forgot just how terrifying this is.

I keep thinking back to my first micro-teaching experience. It was the fall of my freshman year at UMass, and the assignment, for Intro to Music Ed, was to teach a five-minute lesson on the topic of our choice. We were told that it need not be musical. As I was working at a skating rink at the time, I decided to teach a lesson on how to remove and clean roller blade wheels. The only requirement for our five minute lessons was that we were to separate the telling and the showing of information. We were told that it is important to use these two methods of instruction separately so that our students would strengthen both aural and visual skills without excessively favoring one.

When the big day came, we split into small groups and took turns teaching our lesson. I delivered my lesson on skate care and maintenance. The professor announced that five minutes had passed and asked the class to evaluate those of us who had presented. She asked if we had successfully separated our showing and our telling.

My classmates looked apologetically at me and reported that no, I had not. That was when I first discovered that teaching is harder than it looks.

I’ve come a long way in the last fourteen years, but I’m still nervous about tomorrow.  So today I spent hours studying the TESOL manual, searching the web for homophone jokes, and brushing up on language learning methodologies.   And frankly, I don’t want to spend another second at this computer.

So I’m going to cut this blog entry short for tonight. But if you’d like to test your knowledge of homophones, including everyone’s favorites there, they’re, and their, knock yourself out.

Practice with Homophones

There Their They’re

And Now …

Tags

college, gnp, Jim MacRostie, sadness, UMass, UMMB

Each day after work I log on to Facebook to find out what is happening in my social circles. Most days I read about teething babies, dinner plans, and what’s going to be on TV later. Today was markedly different: my news feed contained numerous tributes to the late Jim MacRostie, beloved by many as the voice of the Minuteman Marching Band.  He passed away this weekend after a long battle with Parkinson’s Disease.

For thousands of UMass students and fans, Jim MacRostie’s voice was part of autumn’s Saturday soundtrack. As the band took the field at every home game, his thundering voice would echo off the walls of the stadium:

And now … the Powerrrr and Class! of New England … the University of Massachusetts … Minuteman Marching Band!

His voice was an integral part of the band’s performance. He even traveled with us for our out-of-state performances, for our show just wasn’t the same without him. Even our highly charismatic band director could not fill his shoes.

My first interaction with Jim MacRostie was as a freshman in high school when I acted under his direction in a production of “Show Boat.” The distinctive voice that made him a legendary announcer also made him a positively terrifying director. Readers who are familiar with his signature sound will understand what I mean. It was not a voice that you would want bellowing at you because you missed an entrance. I regarded the man with respect but timidly kept my distance.

As a college student I would come to know him as the voice of the organization that was dearest to my heart. Each time we took the field to the sound of his thundering introduction, my pulse quickened. I loved the guttural growl of his “power” and the staccato pulse of his “class.” I was tremendously proud to be a part of what he described.

Life in the UMass Minuteman Marching Band – or the UMMB, as we called ourselves – was defined by ritual. Together we cultivated the habits of posture, carriage, and tone production that created a cohesive whole out of hundreds of parts. From the first day of band camp we practiced good habits as basic as how to articulate a note together. (“You set, you breathe, you play.”) When we took a break from rehearsal, each section would carefully line up their instruments in perfect succession – every horn angle was the same, whether resting in the grass or positioned against our lips in performance. We practiced taking perfectly measured steps, turning on a dime, and stopping and starting together. We practice these skills over and over again until they became habitual.

Our rituals extended beyond our musical work to shape the way we interacted with one another.  If the trombone section leader declared “sun’s out, guns out!” on a hot day, every member of the section rolled their sleeves up to their shoulders. The trumpets called themselves hogs (give them points for self awareness) and loudly chanted “Hogo! Ergo! Suuuuuuuum!” before every performance. Other traditions were shared by every section of the band – when our director insisted that we run through a section “aaaaagain!” to get it right, we cheered with wild enthusiasm (because it was preferable to rolling our eyes.) We ended every rehearsal and every performance with a chant declaring our pride in the UMMB.

As a freshman I closely observed the rituals as performed by the upperclassmen. Some were explicitly spelled out while others were taught by example. At the time I happened to be pledging the band sorority and was required to memorize an assortment of trivia about the band’s history. I came to realize that I was part of an organization with a proud history – one that I would learn to carry inside myself. I was becoming part of a tradition that was older than me, and that tradition would continue long after I graduated.

For the first few years that I came back as an alumnus, the landscape was virtually identical to the one I had known. I took comfort in the familiar sights and sounds of the UMMB. I could almost see the faces of my classmates on the new students who I had never met. Our director was still there, pulsating with the same maniacal energy that I remembered. And still every performance began with the legendary voice that, to all of us from a certain era, was synonymous with the Power and Class of New England.

The campus looks a bit less familiar every time I go back. Even the band is not quite the same as what I remember. They have a new home now in a building I never knew, although I did play a small part in getting it built. They have a new director who, by all accounts, is excellent even in the shadow of his predecessor’s legacy. And Jim MacRostie’s voice will no longer echo off the walls of the Warren P. McGuirk Alumni Stadium. In fact, it hasn’t in quite a while – he retired from his announcing duties several years ago. I have never quite gotten used to the sound of someone else’s voice. I always hoped he’d come back to announce one more show.

His legendary voice – along with that of our beloved band director – is forever silenced. But for the rest of my life, both will be imprinted on my memory. And both still fill my heart With Pride.

The Absolute Right Place

Tags

creative efforts, gnp, music, teaching, travel, UMass, UMMB

Today was an unusual day at my high school. A recent graduate from my music department returned to his alma mater along with seventeen of his closest friends, otherwise known as Ithacappella. Brian was a devoted member of our coed a cappella group. When he joined the Jewel Tones as a sophomore he was truly a singing novice; when he graduated he was an anchor for his group (in the very best sense of the word.) Now he is a freshman at Ithaca College and part of a legacy of truly great collegiate a cappella singing. And today he and his brothers in song visited our school, led some workshops, and finished the day with an electric performance to a packed auditorium.

In other recent developments, my new student teacher had her unofficial first day today. Technically she starts on Monday, but she came a few days early to enjoy the aca-fun. Around 9:45 pm as concertgoers lingered in the lobby, I told her that she was welcome but not expected to stay. “Oh no,” she said, “I’m staying until the very end. If I’m going to do this job, I’m going to really do it!”

I think I like her.

Having a student teacher gives one cause to reflect on a career – the highs and lows, perks and pitfalls. As we drove to a nearby restaurant for a brief dinner break we passed one of my former students walking down the street. This prompted a conversation about the transition from high school to college.

Without a doubt, visits from alumni are a perk of the job. The first wave starts around Thanksgiving, and over winter break they come in droves. They often look different, sporting a new hairstyle or the dreaded Freshman Fifteen. They come full of stories from college, some of which they will share with me and some of which they know better than to share. Usually they are content.  I told my student teacher, “You know they’re in the right place when they come back looking like themselves, only magnified.”

I can think of a few times in my life when I felt that way. The first was in my high school band room, surrounded by friends who made me laugh, the occasional boy who liked me (!) and a teacher who inspired me. It was the first time I realized that music – my raison d’être – really could and probably ought to be my life’s work.

A few years later I moved nine miles down the road to the University of Massachusetts, knowing full well that it was the only place on earth where I was supposed to be. The four happiest years of my life were on that campus. I settled among the best musicians I have ever played with, friends who I would come to consider family, and an inspiring team of professors who kicked my ass in the most supportive way possible. The most inspiring of all was my marching band director George Parks. He was, in fact, the reason I went to UMass in the first place. Of all the things that amazed me about him (and believe me, there were more than enough to fill a blog post – and yes, there will be blog posts about George Parks) what made the strongest impression on me was that after more than twenty years, he still seemed to be in exactly the place he was meant to be.

How lucky was he?!? Who among us can say that we are doing exactly what we are supposed to be doing with our lives? (Of course, he would have said that luck has nothing to do with it, but here again I am trying to write a different blog post. Not today.)

The thing is, I was there to learn my trade, and to learn how to be an adult, and he was my primary role model. The day I met him I became addicted to greatness, a sense of purpose, and the deep satisfaction that accompanies it. I have spent the rest of my life chasing that feeling.

I chased it across the state for a new job after graduation. I chased it across an ocean and down cobblestoned streets where people talk funny. I chased it into the arms of a truly special guy. I found it in all of these places. Holding onto it has proven to be a bit trickier.

I’d give anything to go back to UMass and have a chat with Mr. Parks to find out how he cultivated that feeling in the same spot for thirty-three years. I’ll never have the opportunity to do that, for he died quite unexpectedly doing what he loved (a heart attack took him from us just after a performance with his band.)

It is both a blessing and a curse that he taught me to relentlessly seek passion and inspiration in my life; to regard the word “enough” with distrust.

I guess that’s why I teach high school. It’s exciting to be surrounded by people who are just on the cusp of finding the place where they are supposed to be. There is nothing more satisfying than seeing someone discover that feeling. Like watching Brian on stage tonight.