Hi everybody, and welcome back to Season 3 of the Common Time podcast. We're so glad to have you here to continue bringing our conversations, insights, and inspiration for music educators everywhere. Each week, we'll highlight voices from across the music world and share ideas that you can bring directly into your classroom and to your ensembles. And now let's turn to our guest. Our guest today is Robert Saladon. Welcome, Robert.
Hello.
So Robert was the director of bands at Leander High School in Texas. He's now a recovering band director and he is now working as an arranger, a composer, clinician, consultant, and program coordinator. And I'm excited to talk with Robert. Robert is actually a former student for when I was teaching high school and he went on to be the drum major at UT Austin as the UT Longhorn Band. And I have a huge amount of respect for what he did while he was teaching. So I'm excited to talk with him about finding balance during marching band season, which is where we are right now. So, John, why don't you get us started?
Thanks, David. Hi, Robert. It's always good to talk to you. So from your years as a high school band director to where you are now, how has your understanding of what it takes to sustain yourself and your students through the rigor of a marching band season?
Sure. Yeah, I think that answer would be different if you would have chatted with me four years ago when I was still band directing. I think hindsight's always 2020 in this case. So I do want to put that caveat on all of my answers that I do have this perspective now on the other side of things, not being a band director, and although there are a bunch of things that I do miss about it, I think that over my 14 years at Leander, there was a pretty massive amount of growth. I mean, y'all probably understand this too, like being a young, eager band director, you want to dedicate your life to it. You want to put as much time as we can into it. And that's sort of the culture. And this is not to downgrade anyone that works hard and has a lot of passion for band directing. I definitely do. But I think that there was an evolution in understanding for me as an educator as I got older of what the priorities were, what was important to me, and that in combination had a lot to do with my personal life as well. I think for me, if I can go back and reflect on my time as a young band director and a young person coming out of UT, I was really excited and eager to kind of tackle this world that I was super passionate about. I think all of us as band directors come from this place of like, we had these amazing high school experiences or we had something that impacted us musically in some way that we want to go chase that thing over and over and over again. This feeling of musical fulfillment, whatever that might be. And for me, I was definitely doing that and I went into the experience at Leander. And for anyone watching this, I do think that there needs to be an understanding — it's the only place I ever taught. I got that job right out of college and I stayed for the 14 years I was there and had experiences as a third band director and all kinds of things while I was there before I was head director. But to kind of answer your question, I think that if I were to go back and talk about that experience, I think that the priorities shifted greatly as I grew as a human being and as I took care of myself and realized what the priorities were for me in my life. That was also a reflection of how I was treating the kids and the experience I was giving them on the day-to-day in the program. The beginning of this was like chasing success, like trying to find how do we get name recognition at Leander High School. A lot of it, I think if I were to reflect on it, had more to do with my ego and the ego of us as band directors, than it did the actual success of the students. And although we did find success and there was a lot of pride around the organization from the parents and the members and the kids loved band — I truly believe that — I don't think that we were necessarily doing it the right way all the time. And that also comes with the reflection of looking back and having that experience and making some mistakes and learning and growing and talking to people that I felt like were doing it right, wanting to chase that. And as my priorities changed personally, I started to put that outlook onto the culture of the band program. I think often we are looking at the experience of success as the primary driver for what a successful band program looks like. And so competitive success becomes kind of the driving force behind things. While I'm getting recognition, my program is winning things, people are praising what I'm doing as an educator, they're wanting my help — and a lot of that comes from an internal need to validate this. What is success? And so for me, I had to shift what that was. That came from a particular time — and you'll have to cut me off because I will talk forever about this — but that came from a particular time for me and our organization. It was after we had found some competitive success and we went to Grand Nationals in 2016 and had this incredible year and the kids were amazing in their performance and there was a lot of great recognition. I think we ended up like 6th place that year and I was coming home on the bus in Austin and just had this overwhelming emotional moment that had nothing to do with pride for the organization and the kids and everything we had done. I was just so physically and mentally exhausted that I didn't have any fun the entire trip. I was not enjoying what I was doing. I wasn't enjoying the kids' performance quality. All I was thinking about is like all these bands beat us and we have beaten them before and I feel we should have been ranked higher. Why didn't we medal and all these things that have nothing to do with kids' experience? And the kids, you know, got 6th place and got beat by their rivals Cedar Park and were eating pizza on the way home and didn't care at all. And I had this reflection of like, wow, I'm making this a little bit more about me and my success than I am about when a kid goes through four years here, what is the experience they're taking away? And are they getting a fulfilling musical experience that is about the overarching concept of music education and not are we winning things?
I was just going to say, so I mean, you're obviously reflecting back now and you've had kind of a defining moment in 2016. And so following that, obviously there are moments where you felt stretched after that. What shifted? How did you get through them having had that moment? Like, okay, I've been stretched, I'm not happy, now I'm moving forward — because those moments are still going to happen. They did happen again, I'm sure. So how did you — I don't want to say cope — but what was the mechanism that changed for you to get through that without the same feeling?
I called band directors who were doing this for a long time and sustaining this at a high level and posed this feeling I was having and asked questions. And one of those people was Nick Williams, who I know we all know really well. And he was a friend of mine through an organization I worked through here in Texas. And I called him and he was really blunt with me. He was just like, can you define what success is for you and your program? And I started going through all these things about, you know, BS answers that he could tell I was not truly believing. And he said, well, tell me where the majority of your money goes in your booster program and your budget and all of this stuff. And it was just really, really highly weighted towards the marching band design process and everything that we do in that regard. And granted, marching band is the most public experience, which is great — there's a lot to invest in that, I can defend both sides. But I had this moment with him and he was just like, you're not going to make it through this experience if you don't prioritize what success means to you. And so it was a reflection on that, asking a lot of people, and then going — for me, success ultimately had to be when a kid shows up, no matter how good they are at their instrument and what kind of person they are, that the experience they leave with is they love playing their horn, they love making music, and they enjoyed their time with us. So they have a positive reflection on me as an educator, whether I pushed them or supported them or challenged them or whatever it might be — that when they leave, there's not a bad taste in their mouth and they don't want to put their instrument away because of the experience I provided them. So there's a balance to that, right? And I think it was kind of that definitive switch that for me went, okay, let's look at every single moment in our organization on the calendar year and ask ourselves, is this something that we're doing because it's going to make kids better musicians and their experience is going to be great and the culture is going to be about family and growth and the individual? Or is it a competitively driven thing and we do it because that's what everyone else does? And so we sat down as a staff and went, if we could do this and had no labels on it — you had to go to UIL state marching contest, you had to go to solo ensemble, you had to check off all the boxes — what would the program look like? And we came up with some pretty awesome ideas that we started to challenge ourselves to implement over the course of many years. And although they might not have been something that was super popular to other programs around us, it was something that we had to just decide what was important to us and stick to our guns and go forward in this crazy Texas competitive environment. And on top of that, we wanted to be competitively successful too. It was important to our community, to our kids, to us. So how do we do both and find a way to balance ourselves and the kids? And it was kind of a journey over the course of a lot of years.
Right. You know, so then speaking of that — I mean, all of us are going through it in our own way, right? Like at the collegiate level, it isn't any different. Marching band easily dominates the fall calendar. So how do you make sure — or what advice do you have for people doing it — how do you make sure that the students still have an opportunity to grow as a complete musician and not just a marcher?
Yeah, I mean, that's the challenge, right? And I really struggled with that, to be honest with you. And I don't know that I would say I was good at it. I learned some things, especially over my last couple of years. And one thing to put a label on this as well is that I was going through this shift in my philosophy about band culture and education, and then the pandemic happened and there were a couple of years where we were just hard shut down, couldn't do anything. And although we did some things culturally for the kids and that's nice, it wasn't like the full force of the year. However, that last year that I was at Leander, it was a combo of coming back from the pandemic — first time full competitive marching band, full program, all going full force — and preparing and going to Midwest at the same time. It was a lot. And although it was challenging, I think that we did it really, really well. I think one of the things to answer your question is, if I could go back and do this all again, I would have concert band once or twice a week no matter what during the marching season, so that every kid was playing a concert horn at least once a week in a full ensemble setting where we were talking about ensemble skills, or they were in sectionals in some way — something we could do inside the classroom that wasn't playing mellophones and oboes, but playing saxophones. It had to be something that was about music. And then for me, it was the challenge of the balance of time for the kids. I didn't want to add more things onto their plate because I wasn't willing to add more things onto my plate. So we actually did not do master classes before school in the morning like a lot of schools do for region band and things like that. We would do all the listenings and everything inside the classroom. We were very fortunate to have several educators on our staff, so we had that ability. So it was just kind of a shift in our mindset of like, okay, well, I might not have so-and-so band director out in the band hall to split through marching band, but what they can do is have individual lessons with kids and pull out kids on their instrument so they're constantly playing their concert instrument and not just the marching band music all season. And then encouraging and supporting private lessons through scholarships and getting as many kids into that as we possibly can. The other part of that too, that we did for many, many years over the last six or seven years I was there, was doing chamber music during marching season. We would have a chamber contest in like December that all the kids would participate in. We would bring in judges and every kid would have to play in a chamber ensemble inside of their class. And that was something they were preparing and working on with us and their private lesson teachers and also just by themselves during marching season. So we would rehearse brass during a day and all the woodwinds would go do chamber music. And they would either be with a lesson teacher or private lesson teacher that we would pay, or a section leader would run it. But they're always just in this mindset of like, musicianship is a whole thing — it's not just we're going to go win marching band contest, you know what I mean?
It's great. Yeah, and I love that — I'm going to just say this — it's possible to have chamber music going on at the same time as marching band. Like it is possible. And I saw when you did this, Robert, and I think you and I had a conversation at some point in the midst of that, and I don't even remember how that conversation came about. But the idea of the experiences that our students have — we decide them. And you made some decisions at that time, like chamber music wasn't an avenue that you were using at all and you needed something for these students. And man, what a great way to bring — because chamber music, I wouldn't say most programs are doing chamber music at all, much less during the fall. So I just think that's a great avenue, obviously to keep your kids on their concert horns, but also just to keep that side of music alive and for some of them introducing that kind of music. You mentioned a second ago — yeah, go ahead.
Do you mind actually if I add on something slightly blunt? I think that there would be band directors out there that would say, well, I need more time — like I don't have time during the day to work on that because of all the marching band things and expectations we have to do, or that is going to pull away from the concepts that we need to teach inside marching band. And I would actually say it's the opposite of what we found. When we started doing more concert band during marching season and we were doing chamber music during marching season, we were able to transfer these higher level musical skills into the marching band ensemble. We were able to talk about playing with your trio like you're in a chamber setting. We were able to talk about the kind of tone quality you're producing and how you're aware of that, and the kind of control and dynamic contrast — like all these things that they get to work on in a smaller setting as a musician that now they put into the larger ensemble. And I think our marching band got better because of those things, for sure.
Yeah. You mentioned just a second ago that you would actually use student leadership in some of those roles with coaching and so forth. Can you talk to us a little bit about specifically what role your student leadership played in helping create the healthier culture that you're talking about during that season? And perhaps what lessons about leadership stick with you today? Because I know you've done a lot with student leadership, both with your program and outside.
Yeah, absolutely. I think that for me, I wanted the kids to take ownership over the program. I had watched band directors and seen people prior to my time there that were running things more in a way that was like, you have to do what I say because I'm the band director. And kids would question it and they would feel fearful to come talk to their band directors about opinions that they had about ways that they could make the program better. And to me, if I can get someone to take ownership over their learning experience, then they're going to contribute more to it. And they're not just going to be rule followers and they're not going to check off the box — okay, I passed off my music, I'm playing in tune, I'm showing up on time. Well, how do you get someone to want to care about the organization more and want to invest more time in it? And to me, it's involving those members inside of the process. And so we actually taught them how to teach. And this was not my idea. I work for an organization called Sassy Leadership, and that's something that we talk about quite a bit in that organization. And we teach people how to do that during our camps. But we went kind of tenfold on that in our leadership process. And we actually taught the kids how to do a process of teaching a basic one that would allow them to be effective when I split them off as opposed to just going, you're a section leader, go teach the first step. But we would actually have a process that they could be effective in it. So we would train that process. We work on that process all season. And then they would regularly get time to be able to work with their peers, which goes for me, like the biggest lesson of leadership is relationships. You will be more effective if you have better relationships with the people that you work with and you teach and the parents that you are leading, the administrators that you work with. To me, it's all about relationships. And that's putting your ego aside, putting your needs aside and like investing in the human being. And so when I show that as a band director and us as a band director team and to our members that we trust them to take ownership over the direction of the organization, they're going to want to put more back into it. That's when they're going to have like little 5 minute sectionals after rehearsal with the kid that is struggling with the chart. Or they're going to sit down in a practice room with a fourth band trumpet player and help them play their part in their feature that they need to work on. Or we had this one kid, for instance, this kid, Joey T Cat, she's out in the trumpet world doing incredible things right now. And he decided to just start a trumpet ensemble during what we call Pride Time at Leander. We'd have this little 45 minute period during the day that the kids could go wherever they want. And he just sat in the band hall and started playing duets with kids that were walking in. And it turned into an entire trumpet ensemble because he wanted to invest more time in an organization that he felt like he was getting to make an impact with, right? So it's like providing that freedom for them to want to do it. And they can see that their time that they're investing is actually making an impact on the organization of people around, right?
That's great. I love the culture and the student ownership aspect. It's remarkable. And so how that can change everything? So important. So, so then Robert, I'm just going to change directions slightly and it's about competition now. I mean people, I think we understand that there is a place for competitive music making in, I mean, if it's done well, it can be an effective tool for sure. However, I think though that we that often times directors kind of wrestle with how far to push for competitive excellence then versus or at the expense of students well-being. So how did you navigate that tension and do you have any advice for people that are going through that?
Sure. Let me first say that I've been on both sides of that coin chasing this idea of winning everything. And I think winning is a little bit overrated to be honest with you. I think there are very few band programs that do it all the time consistently, and sometimes it's just out of your hands the way it works. I can tell you that when we won something for the first time, this was 2015 and it was my first year as a head band director of the first contest we went to, we won and we never won a single contest for the rest of the time that I was at Leander High School. And that first time we won, it turned into parents cheering my name in the stands which was highly inappropriate. And it turned into this expectation of like, we have to win all the time. And when that is the expectation, you are constantly achieving underneath that every single time. And so when you get third, for instance, at the next contest, now the sky is falling. And so I would hate to have to maintain that all the time. And it was a challenge that I had to learn. It's because I was creating a culture where the kids were more excited about going and winning things and when they didn't, it would feel like a failure. And kids are kids. I remember being like that in high school. And of course you'd want to win things in advance, the state and make finals and all this stuff. And when you're talking about that all the time and you allow that to be the culture in the band hall, you allow the parents to talk about that as expectation. You're preaching that as the expectation. While the judges are going to do this and we're going to get more points if we do this and you know, we're we got to beat blah, blah, blah band next weekend and we got to make finals and then it doesn't happen. Now you've done yourself a disservice and then the culture becomes about winning. And when it doesn't happen, then you're viewed as a failure and your job is extremely hard. And so for us, I mentioned to you this whole thing in 2016 when we tried to reset our program and what were our priorities. One of the things that we had to have a really hard conversation about was, is everyone here OK with, you know, never winning and potentially not being in the top five at places, potentially not meddling, potentially going to Grand Nats and let's say we're in the bottom of finals or we miss finals. Is everyone OK with that in order to achieve a program that we believe is like a holistic and quality program? And I had to get everyone on staff to agree to it, including myself. And it was a hard pill to swallow because we were chasing this success. And it is something that we enjoyed and we liked and it is good for recruitment culture, it's good for sustainability of the program, for parent involvement. They want to be more involved when they see something that's getting this, you know, name recognition, community success. And so it was a balance of how do we achieve that to an extent, but also constantly communicate to the parents and the kids that it's not about competition. It needs to be something we talk about every single day. What is the thing we're chasing? Why is it important that you put your feet in time and you make a great sound and ensemble place together? Why is that important? Why is it important that you show up to this on time? And so it started talking about more life skills, applying it to what they were going to do going forward in college or whatever they were going to do after school, and trying to apply that in a larger concept as a human being as opposed to we need to go win this thing in order to feel good about your time here, right? So there's a lot of talk about like, where do we spend the most of our time? And if you think about it, in marching band especially, I would say like 90% of your time is on the rehearsal fields. It's on the marching band fields. It's not at competitions, it's not the 8 minutes you go and perform. It's not on the bus rides. It's not at football games. Like 90% of it is when we're together, either in the classroom or on the marching field after school. So that needs to be where the experience is the best, where it's the most positive, it's the most uplifting, it's the most supportive, it's the most challenging, where we're learning the most. And it is not about the singular moments that we get our name called in first place or third place or whatever it is, oh, we beat our rivals, now we're successful. It's now what we're doing it. There's this book that I read called The Happiness Advantage. And one of the quotes that he talks about is if happiness is on the opposite side of success, your brain never gets there because you're always moving the goal posts to the next thing. OK, well, now we've gotten third. Well, now we have to get second otherwise we're not successful. And so it's creating this culture of like success for you today was you finally stood in the right spot on chart 25. You finally got your body weight centered. Like good job, success was you played that concert G flat in tune that we've been working on for forever. And I think it's like finding those moments and then making sure the parents understand that culture as well.
OK, let's, some training that has to be done there. Yeah, that's what I want to dig into. So because we have to realistically, parents, boosters, administrators, like it or not, they sometimes measure success by the score of the trophy. So, and you've acknowledged that and you've gotten your team, your staff to buy into the idea and maybe even your students like, hey, are we willing to say our success looks like this and that the growth of the students is important, etcetera. But how did you communicate that to those on the outside of the rehearsal space, the administrators, the boosters? Because you obviously need them to join that culture.
Yeah, yeah, it's a challenge for me. I was kind of the public face of the program, just being the head director and the one that was at all the meetings, giving all the announcements, sending the emails. I was the one that was in front of the parents when we do like our freshman meetings, whatever. And I would just make sure that I take every opportunity that I had in those moments to talk about the philosophy of the organization, to talk about what the program is going to do to benefit your child. That is beyond just, we're going to go win things. You're going to have a person in us that's going to help them pass their classes. You're going to have a person in us that's going to support your kid doing volleyball and band. And not a lot of organizations do that. You're going to have a person in us that's going to make sure that we don't add any extra rehearsal time. You're going to have someone in us — here's our leadership program and all the things that we talk about in regards to life skills, time management. And so you're talking about the things it's going to bring them as a human and not talking about what we're going to Grand Nats. And like our expectation is to make finals. But you're constantly reminding them of like the bigger picture of what this is. And then putting yourself in check as an educator to make sure that the way that you speak to a parent individually, the way that you're publicly talking about the band program never comes from a place of ego, never comes from a place of they have to be here because of this competition. And, you know, they have to show up on time and they can't miss rehearsal because we have a competition this weekend. And so now I'm putting the impetus on like this thing that's coming, like it's important you're here this week because of the competition. Well, why can't that kid also be, you know, in ROTC? Why are we making them only come to our thing? We're putting precedence of our program over everybody else's. And so it's kind of like looking at this holistic community wide view and making that the way that you speak to the kids as opposed to like putting all emphasis on this one moment in time.
Right. It's fascinating. Because your program was wildly successful with whatever you like to define that to be. But for everyone that's kind of listening knows exactly what that means. Like they sounded great inside, outside, artistic excellence. You ran, you care about student experience. I mean, it's all the things, right? And I think people listening, what we all do as people, want to find the secret sauce, right? Like what's the ingredient? And I think the student experience has to be that focal point of the secret sauce because if not, it seems like we're putting the cart before the horse in every possible scenario, right?
But that's why I didn't want to be there, yeah. You know, I mean, because if anyone wants to be there, they're going to be wildly excited, they're going to be motivated. Because who goes to band and says, you know, I want to be mediocre today, right?
We sometimes think they do. You know, the student — it's very interesting. I'm working on a project right now outside of just kind of on my own time called the Maestro Mind Blueprint. And we launched the first session of that last week with a kind of a pilot cohort group. And the first exercise we did with them was to have them define a student profile. And ultimately it's like, what do you want to develop in the student at the end of year one, at graduation, what has occurred? That's your North star. That is everything is based on what that student profile is. So then if I start looking at different kinds of outcomes that I want, well, I can build systems of routines to that. But ultimately the North star is still the student profile. Does it feed back into the student experience, which is all based on belonging before risk, like the idea of culture and trust. And if you want students to be able to feel seen, heard, be a part of this thing that's larger than them, they have to belong. And there's a whole topic there we could go into, which is not for today. But the idea though, that the student experience is so important. And I love that you've reframed that 90% of your time is in a rehearsal. That's it. And that's the relationship time you have with them. It's not at a contest when they're out there in the Superman suits. It's literally the relationship that's being built there. So I'm just so glad you said it. I wanted to repeat it because it is so true. 90% of our time is spent working towards something together, and it's not defined by the end, which is just a unique opportunity.
It's interesting, people ask me from time to time, so what's your favorite part about teaching the University of Michigan Marching Band? I'm like, honestly, the rehearsal process. I just love teaching students music. I mean, the performances are fun. We had a good one yesterday. But at the end of the day, I don't really care about the performance. That's not important to me. It's the educational moment, making great art with brilliant people, motivating them, guiding them through their life. I mean, that's what we do as teachers right now. I obviously don't want it to be terrible. I mean, let's get that out there. We all want this to be great. But I do think that anybody listening needs to really understand the point that the student experience, the performance quality — pick whatever topic you have — it takes a lot of time to curate it, to thoughtfully curate it, right. And then to execute the plan, it takes a long time, right?
Yeah. And you know, if you think about it with my experience as a kid, every day when I showed up it's that I'm just going to get beat down with reps and my band director is going to be intense and raising their voice at me. And there's no compliments coming back to the kids and praise for what they're doing. And we're good, that's nice. But then I'm not excited about showing up every single day. So there will be a cap on how much I'm going to give my band director and how much I'm willing to put into the program. And that's not to say I don't want to say that I was just happy go lucky Disney World all the time. That definitely wasn't it. But I had to like shift my teaching from like, you're doing this because I said so, to like, how can I get this kid to want to do this and try as hard as they can because they're excited about being good.
Exactly. Being good is fun. Let's not get that wrong. Being good is fun. It feels great when you have those magic moments in performance like you were talking. But I would, you know, I'd venture to say that more magic moments happen inside of rehearsals than they do inside the performance.
I agree with that sometimes, as y'all probably know even more than me because I could. You get to those performances and it doesn't go the way you want. And you're like, I wish this would have gone a little bit better tonight or I screwed up my conducting pattern here and that ensemble or the solos didn't sound great today. And all of these things contribute to your feeling about the whole process. You're definitely doing wrong and honestly, you're just kind of miserable when you're a band director after doing that to kids all the time. It just doesn't feel good. You don't walk away fulfilled. And once again, especially if like everything is about this singular moment and you put it on a pedestal and it's not what you want, suddenly now your whole experience is awash. And that's the opposite way that we should be doing it.
True. I mean I went to high school in Austin, TX, Westlake High School and Carrie Taylor. Carrie Taylor was my high school band director and yes, he was formative in my life. I was a mediocre tuba player at best. If he's hearing this, he's going to laugh and say we're terrible. I like this. I would say mediocre, still learning, you know. But what he did to me though, because he had very high standards, very high expectations, but he did it in such a caring and loving way that he took a mediocre tuba player. And I mean, he had no idea that I was going to — I had no idea I was going to turn out in the job that I currently have, you know, but I credit that to him because he was motivating. He cared about student experience. The performances were very good, of course, at least I thought so.
But you know, I mean, it's just, but the secret sauce, I think what we're all talking about is coming. He is looking through the, a lens of achieving success has to start with student experience. So then I'm just going to ask a question now that now that you've stepped back from day-to-day teaching, However, you are still teaching, just not every day in a classroom. So what stands out in hindsight as the non negotiables for keeping a program strong and sustainable through the marching band season since that's that's that's why we're talking today.
I think balance first and foremost, you know, everyone knows that down here in Texas, we get a certain amount of hours that we get to rehearse. And I think that we tend to find ways to circumvent that rule and adding things in different ways. And well, now let's add an hour and a half master class before school. And like, can you start thinking about the kid experience of like, OK, well, I'm a trumpet player and I had an hour and a half master class starting at 6:30 or 7:00 AM in the morning. I just did 4 to 8 classes a day. And then I just did 2 1/2 hours after school and now I got to go home and do 2 hours of homework afterwards. Like to me, that is not a high school experience worth having. That doesn't feel good. And that is to me all about, you know, the competitive side of things as opposed it is to the holistic partner program. So for me, balance first. If I'm not willing to put in that amount of time myself, then I shouldn't be asking the kids to do it. If I am willing to put in that amount of time, it doesn't mean that everyone wants to put in that amount of time. So maybe I just need to like look at the whole thing and go what can I remove as opposed to adding. For instance, I see some band directors like their districts are doing like these like 2 days off in the fall. That's starting to become more of a trend down here in Texas where we get little fall breaks and they're putting rehearsals in these fall breaks. And it's like the break is there for a reason, for the kids and for the teachers. And we should be taking that time off and not adding layers to marching band that we don't need right now. So I would say that first in hindsight and then along with that, looking at the time to remove back. And then a lot of people get nervous about that and go, oh, well, but we need all these things for the kids to be successful. I need master classes for them to, you know, perform well at region band and develop as an individual musician. I would actually venture to say like, if you went back and like looked at the overarching experience for the kid, like removing time doesn't mean they'll get worse. Maybe you need to figure out how to become a more efficient and better teacher. And sometimes, yeah, to take some, right? I think that there's a hard pill to swallow there and I, I had to do that too of just going like, well, I need this time like we, we need this. We have to get better. We don't have enough time. We need sectionals. I need to do sectionals before UIL or pre UL is coming up in all this like anxiety and nervousness. I've got to get a one that is a driving force behind that. And like, maybe you just need to bring in clinicians that can help you be a better teacher so you're just more effective in the classroom. I think less time to me is better. I actually learned that even more so during my drum core experience. I started teaching drum core a couple years ago with the mandarins. And to see a kid suddenly get rest and then have all of this energy to give more on the field. And then our performances would get better after we would have days of rest. And in some drum cores do more or less than that at whatever it is. So then there's a philosophy behind it. But to watch that and go, wow, like I, I really should have like implemented that in my experience as an educator, well.
I can say here, even at Michigan, like my colleague Richard Frye and I like, I am like, we need every second, every second. We're not doing it. And he's like, let's give the students a block of time off. And our priest is, and I'm like, are you crazy? Right. We need this and this. We all get in it. Yeah. And he's like, dude. And he's been, he's been right 100% of the time. And I hate saying that Richard, you're right, but when the when the students even have 3 hours to just decompress, I think it's going to be helpful in the long run.
I think it's I agree. I think it makes a huge difference and you mentioned Drumcorp by with the Miranda. The mandarins were fantastic. This. Year really were. Congratulations. I was really, really blown away and in my rankings they were significantly higher than they ended up. But underdog? Will. Yeah, you're coming, man.
It's it's good. They their first sound like I was at the San Antonio show and like they played it was like, and the, the design of the show was just so clear, like you knew exactly where you were looking and listening every second of the show. And I couldn't say that about anybody else's show. Yeah, there were better like shows. Obviously they got performed at a higher level. There's there's some differences there that you know, if you're going on last at every show, you've got more rehearsal time, like you're not on a bus as much. Like there's a whole lot of things that happen with drum corps. But in terms of design and what was happening with Vandern's, I was like, good Lord, that's really good. That crew, I mean, Becca is brilliant. Yeah, I know it's a team effort. So yeah, Congrats to all of you.
But you're right about the time though, because I'm just reflecting on when we were with the Cavaliers, we taught the Cavaliers for about 10 years. And as an instruction staff, we were always wanting more time. And then there was there was one individual that was always advocating for the student performers and that was a Bruno Zuccola. And shout out to Bruno who passed away recently. Like he was such a driving force for every one of us. And I mean, like he was a human that not only could he watch a run through and have 85 things I mean, he could pick up, he, his awareness was like unlike anything I'd ever seen. But he was his first concern was always the student, their time, their health, are they eating? Are they safe? And that was downtime as well. Like how much floor time are we getting? And there were times we were, I remember a time we were in, this is a long time ago. We were at a school with the cadets and I don't know what had happened, but we got in about 1:00 in the morning and they got in after us. I don't know, when we got up at 8 rehearsal at 9:00, they had PT at six and they were in rehearsal and the boys were eating cereal on their sideline. Watching them rehearse. I walked down, I'm like, this is rude guys be doing this. But I'll tell you that those guys performed really, really well. But they did get a lot of time there was it really was something that was of concern with the staff. I'm like, look, they need the rest so they can perform at a higher level. And I know we just digress for a long time there, but really that's what we're talking about is taking care of the student. And to your point, like a, from a high school and middle school perspective, like we know that those developmental years, like kids need more rest and they need to sleep longer hours and we're pulling way more away from them and adding more responsibilities. And there's so much that they have to balance and they're expected of in their high school experience. Like I think about my last year teaching compared to my last year as a high school kid. I. The expectations were insane. I mean, they were just crazy.
And I, I think that number one over everything. And to go back to your question, John, I think the other part that I would just invest in is individual musicianship more that I would not put that aside, that the kid would be listened to a band director as often as they possibly can. I would encourage and support private lessons as much as I could. And that was definitely something I did, but I got better at as I went through time that would be a non negotiable that a kids experience wouldn't be in a fifty person, sixty person ensemble. And that's all the feedback they would get and maybe never get spoken to for that day. That's not music education to me. So I think I would find ways to do that while also not adding time. And then it would I think overall, I would just make sure that I would be taking care of myself as the priority. And I think that's that's a whole podcast, like you said earlier about the other topic, like we could talk about that for hours. But I didn't realize what my priorities were as an educator until I figured out what my priorities were as a human being in life. And like few years and years and years of therapy of just working on myself and then having this relation like real of relevation. Sorry, revelation of am I happy doing this and in the way that I'm doing it? And maybe I'm not happy with who I am as a person. And as I started doing that and prioritizing my family and my friends and having a life outside of the workplace and having friends that weren't banned, people that started to allow me to see the bigger picture when a parent came to me or like, hey, we're having a quinceanera and it's on BOA Austin. My kid can't be there. And instead of me, the old band director would have fought back into like, no, your kid has to be there. This has been on the calendar for an entire year. Like looking at the larger picture and being like Dan has is not important to that mother. What is this thing that she's been looking forward to her entire life with her child? And maybe my thing shouldn't take precedence over that and that kids goodness and being OK with that. It's a really tough and challenging thing to do.
Yeah. And then I would as a director, maybe I can speak to this like for head directors out there, I wish that I would have invested more as a mentor into the people that were working with me and providing them opportunities to learn from other people than myself. And I think young educators that are, I think that's one of our questions coming up. Maybe that's this is a good transition for that.
But for young educators that are out there, I think the number one thing you can do is seek a mentor to help, to be the person that you can ask questions to all the time that you can bounce things off of. To balance in the beginning and understand that you're not gonna be able to tackle and take over the entire world and be the best on day one. But there's a lot of learning that has to be done. And from experience, I think we've all been these cocky young band directors at some point. And I know that for me and the boss that I worked with, I was so challenging for him and I wanted to be better and I thought I could do it better than him. And then I got in my first year of headband directing and I learned really, really fast that I had no idea what I was doing. And it was, it was really like a challenging wake up call for me. And so I think there's like some humility as a young educator, like how much knowledge can you get and learn from the people working with you And who can you seek out to gain advice from and go observe and go watch and ask questions to that are going to allow you to like just become the best educator you possibly can be. That isn't. I'm going to add more time to the kids plate so I can achieve this thing and get recognition right.
Yeah, I was going to wrap up actually our like kind of our final question was going to be about sort of a, well, if you're a young. Well, listen, I'm going to ask it because I want to focus a little bit on, you mentioned just a second ago the difference between when you graduated high school, what you were being asked to do to what kids are being asked to do now. And we have individuals that listen to podcasts that they're about to student teach or just started their first year of teaching. They're young is AI mean it's easy to become overwhelmed by the demands of the fall. And we've talked about all of that aside from a mentor, which I think having a mentor is I wish someone had told me when I first started teaching, find somebody outside of your group and seek like mentorship in them because I would have, I would have grown, I would have learned things then that it took me 20 years to learn. So that is fantastic advice. Aside from that, are there like, I don't know what to say here, advice or different perspective for that first year teacher that you could pass along to them about? Yeah, it's going to be overwhelming, but. Right, So what? Are your thoughts?
Yeah, it's. I think I want to go back to this humility part. It's going to be overwhelming. And when you approach being a band director, like I know what I'm talking about and I'm going to take over the world here and I, you know, I'm going to be the best educator I can possibly be. And then you put these blinders on and you kind of like dig yourself into the organization from a time perspective. And you're staying up there until 10:00 every single night. And on the weekends, you're answering all your emails and doing all these things. Well, this is what band directors have to do. I'm watching the people around me. They're doing this too, and they're talking about band all the time and they're putting all their time in and doing all these extra things. Like I would encourage you to be the person that prioritizes when you're not in the band hall, to not think about bands as much as you possibly can. To find ways to have experiences that bring you fulfilment that have nothing to do with education and music. Maybe it's music in a different route, but to be able to remove yourself fully from that experience will allow you to actually have a better perspective when you show back up and feel refreshed and give more to your students and more to the staff and be able to work the hours that you want to work. But you have to like at some point, like put up some boundary in your life and understand that this in the end, you have to listen to the people around you saying like, you know, as an elder, like I learned from my experience too, that the most important thing in my life was actually my relationship with my spouse or my relationship with my family or I really loved, you know, rock climbing. And I gave that up and my health went away and now it wasn't feeling like to constantly prioritize that. And it I would encourage people also to have conversations with people that aren't band directors and like compare your life to theirs. And I had some people that were like coding that were good friends of mine and they were working in tech here in Austin. And they would hear about all the hours I was doing and the things I was doing on the weekends and that I would come home at night and I would answer more emails and do more projects and complete all my tasks. And then I'd get up in the morning at 5:30 and go back to the van hall by 6. Like they would hear that and be like, why are you doing that? And how much do you get paid? And I'm like, I had to have this perspective that like not making myself feel guilty, like, well, the students need me. They need me to do this because no one else is going to do it for them. And that's nice, but the kid is going to graduate in four years, and a couple years later, they're not going to be thinking about this. They're going to be doing something else. And they're like, yeah, you want to make a great impact and everything, but we are not, we're not brain surgeons that have someone on the table that is in a life or death experience here. This is teaching bands. And although it is important, what is more important in the end, and you get to the further into your life, you're going to realize what's more important. As I wish I would have had all these other experiences that weren't my job. And 90% of people out there work eight to five, 9:00 to 5:00, and they shut it down and they go home and they get to do all these other things out in their worlds that have nothing to do with bands or their job. And they find a lot of fulfillment outside of the workplace. And I think that we need to make sure that we do both of those things as full forced as we can go and be a band director and work really, really hard. But then go do this thing and like, if you want to play pickleball, go do it as hard as you possibly can and make it great. If you're into whatever, like go do that as well full force and like have some sort of balance because you're not going to make it. You're just not. You're going to burn out. It happens too often. Too many people do. You will burn out if you're not prioritizing your health, your mental health, your physical health, having fun, like finding what fulfills you. That is beyond fulfilled because people recognize I'm a good band director. That's a hard conversation to have with yourself.
It is. That's wonderful advice. It really is. And I'm just thankful that we've had you on this, on the podcast to talk about this because it's so important. And I'm immensely proud of you because I remember the 2016 moment for you and you made a choice and you stuck with it. And I, I remember even just thinking through like every single band director has that choice every single day. We all do, we all choose, we choose what's it going to look like moving forward? And you, you made a choice. And that's it's honestly one of the reasons I wanted to have you on the podcast because I just knew that what you what happened for you in the change for your program, the other program didn't get worse, it got better. But that was something that I think our listeners could, could grow from. And that's so anyway, I'm immensely proud of you.
Yeah, I. Appreciate it. Thank you very much. Thanks for having me on.
Yeah, absolutely. But now that we're kind of wrapping things up, we ask all of our guests a couple of questions, follow up, follow up of course. And I will take the first one. We have talked about quite a bit of these possibly already, but do you have a soapbox topic?
Oh, soapbox topic. Yeah, I do have stuff like talk, and this is from my experience being a designer now, and mostly what I do is arrange music. I think the band directors like to blame the design of the show for their lack of success. And I would argue that making finals has more to do with your kids being excellent than it does the staging of the color guard. And if the voices of the instruments are perfectly placed where they need to be and the pacing of whatever, I'm not saying that there isn't some issues from a design world on that.
Yeah, that's important too, no doubt.
But I think I would encourage people to fire people less aggressively and quickly, and maybe invest in just making the kids great. As a band director, what can you control every day is putting kids feet in time and making great sounds and everyone playing their instrument proficiently and watering down music for kids that needed to be watered down and setting them up for success on the field. And all the things we just talked about I think are wildly more important than small design elements. So I would just encourage people to, like, invest more in their kids. Obviously, we want great design. That's so important. But I think from a marching band perspective, the groups that are just excellent at the end of the day are the ones that are competitively successful. So I think if you want to be competitively successful, like become the best teacher you possibly can so you're giving great information to your students all the time. I think that should always be a priority. That's my soapbox.
Yeah. It's a good soapbox. So the next question is, do you have a particular book or books that have been inspired you in your journey? Don't have to be music, just something that we pass along to our listeners.
Sure, you know, this is interesting that you asked me this question. I was not a reader for a long time because when I was at Newman Smith High School, I took all these AP English classes and all these things and I had to read by force and I hated it. And so I really did not read very much until the last year and a half of my life when I really like tried to make it a part of my structured day when I would wake up and get on social media and then I'd be pissed off all day. And so I was like, what can I do to like set myself up for a better day? So I just like grabbed a book one day that I was interested in. Now I read every morning. So that has helped a ton. So mostly I don't read like health and wellness books and like leadership books and things like that. That's not something I'm super into, but I'm into this House of the Cerulean Sea series that is really incredible and beautifully written. But I would say if something inspired me, go check out the Happiness Advantage. That is definitely like more of a self help book that I think is really incredible. And it's this guy who has done studies on the brain of how happiness and encouragement and, you know, setting schedules for your day and mindfulness and things like that are actually more effective when it comes to your job and the people you're leading. And it's really, really beautifully written. So I would say Happiness Advantage.
Happiness Advantage. We'll add it to our list.
Acker, Sean. Sean Acker is the author.
OK, great. Thank you. All right, Robert. So for our final question, arguably the most important. So what's your favorite time signature?
Oh gosh, I'm going with five four this year and poor Westlake High School actually write their music now when you said that about Carrie Taylor, like Carrie is one of my north stars as a band director here in Austin. For sure. I write for Westlake now and we're doing — y'all are going to be so mad at me, but we're — I turned a Jazz standard into 5-4 and it's going great. It's been really, really, really good. We're doing Blue Rondo a la Turk which is like written in 9-8 that we're now in 5-4, but they're doing great. So I'm going to go with five four.
5-4. Feels. Yeah, I love it. Well, the correct answer is common time, just to be clear.
I get it, yeah.
Now, Robert, this has been such a wonderful conversation. Thanks for joining us. Your insights and you know, your thoughts on this really important topic, I think are they're just spot on. So we appreciate your time and appreciate you being with us.
Awesome. Thank you so much for having me.
That's it for today's episode of the Common Time Podcast. And thank you for spending time with us. We hope that today's conversation will give you something useful to take back to your students and your program. And if you enjoyed this episode, make sure you subscribed so you don't miss what's coming up. And if you know another director who might benefit from this, please share it with them. Also, don't forget you're able to nominate a music educator for our Standing Ovation program. The link to submit is in the show notes below. Thanks again for joining us on the Common Time podcast. As always, keep making music and keep making a difference.