Tag: band director boot camp

What is Band Director Boot Camp?

People keep asking me, “What is Band Director Boot Camp?”

Band Director Boot Camp is the program I designed for the band director who wants to:

  • Up-level your program now
  • Build a successful and sustainable music program that is respected in your school and community
  • Serve students by helping them become awesome human beings through the magic of music education
  • Make band a place where every student feels welcome and safe to be themselves
  • Spend more time teaching music and less time on all of the other stuff
  • Find a better balance between work and family life
  • Build a tribe with other like-minded band directors for support, encouragement, and masterminding
  • Cut through a lot of the pain and time that go with building a program with practical advice from someone with over 30 years of experience as a high school band director and mother of three

It’s true that between zero period jazz band, evening concerts, pep band events, trips, fundraising, and meetings, the life of a high school band director is never dull! There’s great joy to be had as you shape young musicians into awesome human beings, but there’s also a price to pay when you love doing it so much that your life’s work becomes all-consuming. How do you meet your students’ needs and still have a life of your own – without being so exhausted that you can’t enjoy it?

I found that when it came time for me to actually write the book I’d been thinking about for years, I was successful when I found someone to coach me through the process. It wasn’t about having someone else do the work – I did all the writing, but I did it with someone who has successfully published thousands of books, so I got it done in three months. Not only did I get it done in a much shorter time than if I’d tried doing it on my own, but my book reached Best Seller status and has launched me into coaching, teaching professional development, presenting at conferences, being a guest for webinars, podcasts and radio shows, and mentoring other music teachers. I was far more successful at writing a book and so much more because I worked with a mentor instead of trying to figure it out on my own.

Band Director Boot Camp is the same concept. I’ve taught over 30,000 classes in my teaching career, so I’ll teach you how to sidestep common pitfalls and energy-suckers and spend more time teaching music. I will be your resource and help you identify and reach your milestones, whether that involves starting a booster program or setting up your first big trip, while saving you hours and hours of time – and lots of headaches and stress!

After reading I Love My Job but It’s Killing Me, Dr. Tim Lautzenheiser said, “Most of us have learned many of these lessons [overworking and burning out] THE HARD WAY. We are convinced we can “push a bit harder” each time around…but – alas – we do burn up the engine in doing so. I want all the young teachers to read the book so they can avoid learning some of these lessons through self-abuse. This is a profound contribution to the entire educational profession.”

Band Director Boot Camp takes the principles of my first book and applies them to the life of a busy band director, giving you practical and proven strategies for being the badass band director you always dreamed of being!

If you’d like to learn more, check out this self-assessment to get a clearer picture of your goals and what is keeping you from reaching them.

Band Director Self-Assessment

Effortless Classroom Management: From Chaos to Calm in 21 Days with Today’s 21st Century Students

The way many of us were taught to manage our classrooms worked great back in the day, but things are different now and those strategies are not always effective in today’s world.

TODAY’S STUDENTS COME TO US WITH:

  • Anxiety
  • Depression
  • ADHD
  • Short Attention Spans
  • Awkward Social Skills
  • Trauma
  • A Lot of Influences that Impact Their Ability to Learn in a Traditional Classroom Setting
  • Addiction (phones)
  • Over-Stimulation
  • Lack of Proper Sleep
  • Lack of Proper Nutrition
  • Chaotic Home Lives

THIS IMPACTS OUR CLASSROOMS IN MANY WAYS:

  • Students have a hard time focusing
  • Students are easily distracted
  • Students are distracting to others
  • Anxiety, depression, and trauma keep students’ physiological and biological makeup in stress mode, overloading them with cortisol and other hormones that literally make it impossible for them to focus and learn
  • Not all students trust adults and are resistant to authority, which adds to the challenge of managing and teaching classes
  • Good classroom management typically requires an active process by the teacher to constantly keep students engaged, and that’s exhausting hour after hour, day after day

WHEN WE TEACH OUR STUDENTS A FEW SPECIFIC SKILLS, CLASSROOM MANAGEMENT BECOMES EFFORTLESS!

Imagine what it would be like to have a classroom where you are able to:

  • Get students to fully relax in your presence
  • Guide them so their heart rates are relaxed and at a similar pace
  • Disperse the unproductive energy and noise that comes with a new class entering your room
  • Help students change from being in a state of over-stimulation and stress to being calm and relaxed in your presence, literally changing the hormones their bodies produce, allowing them to access their brains for discovery and learning instead of being in flight-or-fight mode
  • Invest four minutes a day that fundamentally up-levels the ease with which you teach and students learn

Here’s what Chelsey, one of the directors I’ve worked with through Band Director Boot Camp, says about the First Four Minute protocol I teach:

“Band Director Boot Camp was a game changer for me. It’s helped restore positivity and peace to the culture of my classroom, introduced many significant new protocols that alight with our school’s theme and mission, and has taken the headache off of me and given responsibility to my students. We are all operating in a healthier, more efficient classroom where each individual has a role and we feel safe within our four walls. We laugh as a family and I know they’ll continue on knowing that band was a place where they belonged.”

I’ve been using this new protocol in my classroom since 2016 and the results are off-the-charts amazing, both in my classroom and in my personal life.

  • Classroom management is a breeze
  • Students play in tune much better as their bodies are more sensitive to pitch when they are relaxed
  • They are more musically artistic and expressive
  • Nearly all tardies have been eliminated
  • Students are much more engaged
  • Performance skills (and scores at Regional and State festivals and competitions) are markedly higher across the board
  • Stress levels are much lower for students and teachers
  • Non-instructional distractions are eliminated or greatly reduced
  • Benefits carry over from year-to-year
  • Kids like the benefits on a personal and group level, so they are motivated to do this every day
  • Much higher retention rate of what they learn
  • Reduced heart rates and controlling excess energy results in much easier teaching and learning environment
  • Students and teachers tap into the intuitiveness of music
  • Teaching is much more fun and far less exhausting, resulting in a happier and healthier teacher and students!

If you’ve “tried everything” and are out of ideas for how to get your classes to self-manage their behavior so you can spend your energy teaching, then I’d love to talk to you about what I’ve learned and see if it could help you.

You see, I am on a mission to help music teachers build successful programs without burning out, and that starts by making teaching less stressful!

In a desperate attempt to save my own health so I could stay in my classroom, I learned some things that fundamentally up-leveled my personal health and led to a dramatic upswing in my professional success as an added bonus. My students and I have the benefit of incredible day-to-day experiences that revolve around making great music and memories together because our work together has become effortless.

The directors I have worked with to create and implement this strategy in their classrooms have seen dramatic results with lower stress levels, more job satisfaction, higher student success, and much more. In other words, they are loving their jobs again!

Are YOU ready to fast-track your music program to the next level? Let’s talk about it!

Set Up A Call 🙂

With you on the journey!

Lesley

The Biggest Mistake I Made When I Was Trying to Build My Band Program

From as early as I can remember, I knew I was going to be a high school band director. My dad was my high school band director and our family’s life revolved around that band program. I wanted to build the same kind of program that would be visible in the school, community, and beyond and I really wanted to serve students and their families in the process.

I did it … but it was often really hard. I was doing everything I thought I should do to take the program to the next level, but I was desperate to learn how to be an even better teacher without all the trial and error. I wanted to be a band director who was able to spend more time teaching music and less time managing all the drama that goes with the gig. So in addition to teaching full time, I’d attend conferences and professional development to build my skills as a teacher in order to help my students and the program flourish.

It puzzled me as to why I’d go to a conference, attend tons of amazing sessions, capture all kinds of ideas for everything from how to teach intonation and select literature to the nuts-and-bolts of percussion instrument maintenance and incorporating SEL components into my lessons, and return to my classroom gung-ho to implement all the incredible ideas so I could fast-track my students and my program, but after a week or two of trying the new ideas, we’d lose momentum and I’d slip back into old habits.

At conferences, I’d take copious notes and ask lots of questions at the sessions, so why was I having such a hard time successfully implementing these techniques in my classroom? How could I be a more effective teacher without working even harder? How could I work smarter?

In a lot of ways, it makes me think of Pinterest – you know what I mean, you see a post on Pinterest that is way too cool to pass up, so you dive in and gather everything you need to make that Disney Princess cake (even though you’ve never decorated a cake before) and start the project. Only your cake doesn’t look anything like the one in the photo you saw. Instead, you’ve got a hot mess of frosting that makes the princesses look like they’ve been caught in a downpour. Even though you followed all the steps, your results were clearly not aligned with what you intended to do.

That’s how I used to feel after conferences. I would try the newest tuning technique or breathing exercises that someone was teaching at a conference, and I’d get good results…for a while. Then the students and I would slip into old habits and we’d be right back to where we started. It was frustrating for everyone.

As I got older and wiser (and tired of wasting precious time and energy), I took a hard look at why I was having a hard time implementing so many of these awesome strategies my peers were teaching.

The biggest mistake I made when it came to building my program came down to this: I’d take all these new ideas and try to implement them in my classroom and would get haphazard results. I wanted to accelerate kids’ learning so much that I’d overwhelm them with too much and we’d all get frustrated. After the novelty of whatever it was I was trying to implement wore off, momentum to keep working on it faded (on my part and for the students), and then I would assume the new idea didn’t work, when, in fact, it turns out when ideas weren’t successful, it was generally because I hadn’t thought through the crucial steps of how to implement them in a way that made sense in my classroom.

As you head to conferences and other professional development this spring, I’d like to offer a few pointers I’ve picked up over the more than three decades I’ve spent as a band director so you can fast-track your program to success … without burning out in the process.

  • Don’t try to implement every strategy you learned in every conference session at the same time!
  • Do pick one strategy that will have the biggest impact on getting you to your primary goal and make a commitment to incorporating it into your routine for 21 days. (For example, if you’ve attended a great session about how to teach students to learn to tune, spend a little time every day for 21 days practicing the new technique so you’ll be able to truly assess whether or not it’s having an impact.)
  • Consider how you will implement what you learn into your own program (vs. trying to just immediately implement the technique the identical way the person who introduced it did in his or her classroom) so it will be sustainable instead of just one more thing you tried that ends up not working.
  • Have a non-negotiable why behind the reason you are implementing the new skill or procedure so you aren’t tempted to just give up when it gets hard.
  • Think about your personality, your students, the way you teach best, and use those things to inform the best way for you introduce and implement new ideas so they are successful with your kiddos.
  • Find a trusted mentor who is committed to helping you hold yourself accountable and be there to help you through the hard stuff. There’s no substitute for collaborating with someone who’s achieved goals you’re aiming for and having them help you get there faster, easier, and with more sustainable results!
Livin’ the Dream! Here I am in the 1970s. My siblings were lined up on the couch with pretend instruments and piano music while I cranked music on the stereo and conducted them. I wanted to be just like my dad!

Teaching is hard work. When you have ideas or learn new teaching strategies, they can be game-changers … if they’re introduced and implemented properly. After all, isn’t that the ultimate goal when you attend a conference or PD? Don’t you want to take a new idea back to your classroom and see improvements for you and your students?

It can be hard to know where to start or what to do next to move your program in the direction you want it to go. That’s where I come in. I help music teachers build successful programs without burning out. I believe music educators can change the world, and it’s my mission on this planet to help music teachers build sustainable programs they can serve in for a long time. We have important work to do, and I’m here to support music teachers on their journey.

To schedule a complimentary 15-minute call to see if we’d be a good fit to work together, click this calendar link and let’s connect! I’ve got a couple of openings for motivated music teachers who are tired of trial and error and are ready for results!

With you on the journey-

Lesley

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What’s YOUR Super Power?

I Used to be Really Good at Classroom Management, But Things Are Different Now

For most of my teaching career, I had been really good classroom management.

As soon as attendance was taken each day, I’d get the kids’ attention so we could get down to business. I had clear expectations and the kids were almost always really good about meeting them. I was quite effective at keeping kids engaged and classes ran smoothly. It took a lot of energy to do this hour after hour and day after day, but the consistent efforts gave me really good results, so I continued to work hard to maintain outstanding classroom control.

Sure, there were always a handful of kids in each class who were excessively chatty or who couldn’t seem to stop playing their horns when I cut the band off in rehearsals, but 97% of the time, I was in control and things ran smoothly. At the end of the day, I usually felt pretty darned good about how my classes operated.

But as the decades have passed, teaching has changed. Kids today are different than when we were kids, and if you’ve been teaching for more than ten years, you know that teaching effectively in this day and age requires a different set of skills than how we were taught in school.

Teenagers haven’t changed – they are simply reflecting what they see going on around them. Having been exposed (or dare I say OVER-exposed) to electronics and other stimuli since birth, their attention spans and ability to focus on anything for more than a few minutes is staggeringly low. It’s not their fault, but that is their reality.

Traditional forms of classroom management and discipline aren’t always effective in today’s classroom.

Like I said at the beginning of this, I used to be really good at classroom management.

But now things are different. Now the students in my classes manage their own behavior and I spend my time and energy teaching music instead of responding to student disruptions!

Several years ago I made a significant change in how I approached teaching, and the results have been off-the-charts amazing!

In the 30,000+ classes I have taught in my teaching career, it is how I structure the FIRST FOUR MINUTES that has fundamentally uprooted everything about how my classes run and how students are learning and retaining what I teach.

I asked my students to share how the First Four Minutes have impacted our class. Here are a few of their responses:

  • We play better in tune because we can feel pitch and not just hear pitch.
  • We are more musically sensitive and expressive.
  • Hardly anyone is tardy anymore. (They don’t want to miss our routine)
  • Everyone is more engaged.
  • Our performance skills are improved.
  • The stress level is much lower.
  • Non-instructional noise has been eliminated.
  • Benefits carry over from year to year as students.
  • It’s easier to learn and retain what we learn.
  • We have a communal energy.
  • Music feels much more intuitive and easier to learn.
  • Band is a lot of fun because we can work super efficiently and make great music together. In my old band (where we didn’t do this routine), so much time was wasted on discipline and constant disruptions that I stopped looking forward to that class. I almost quit, but now that I’m in a class where we actually get to spend time playing music, I’m staying!

As a teacher, I have reaped the benefits of having classes where I get to do the very thing I wanted to do all my life – teach music! I get to do it in a setting where classroom management has become effortless. I no longer expend energy on “being in control” because I’ve learned to teach students how to take control of their own energy. And they do it. Every day.

I love one of my recent client’s comments where she said,

“I’m in a coaching cycle with this outstanding author and Bad Ass Band Director and ideas are constantly leaping off the pages in the book and out of our Zoom calls. Even strategies I didn’t know I needed are coming to life and finding a home in my unique and non-traditional classroom.“

Chelsey has implemented my First Four Minute routine into her classroom and it has been a game-changer for her, too. The reason it’s working is because we took the concept and customized it into a routine that works in her classroom and in her situation.

That’s what I do now – I help teachers create and implement a successful First Four Minute routine that helps them take today’s students and get them ready to focus and learn so they can teach content and not spend their energy “controlling their classroom.”

If you are a music teacher who is already running a successful program but needs an easier, more effective, and reliable way to keep kids’ attention and focus without having to give constant reminders, (you know what I’m talking about…”put away your phone”, “trumpets – stop talking”, “percussionists, wake up and pay attention”, etc.) then I’d like to talk to you.

I am looking for a small group of dedicated music teachers who have a 2020 VISION of taking their already good program to the next level by learning and implementing a strategy that will fundamentally up-level their teaching.

Because we are kicking off a new decade, I am offering a 50% tuition discount to anyone who schedules a strategy session with me by January 5. I am interested in working with teachers who are highly motivated to get results and who are open to achieving them in unconventional ways.

If you know you have a lot to teach your students and want to spend more time teaching and less time re-teaching and managing your classroom, I can help you!

Click the link below and let’s talk about your situation. If I can help, I will offer to do so. If I can’t help, I will be honest with you so you don’t waste your time or money.

Are you going to up-level in 2020? I’m with you on the journey. Schedule a call and let’s get started!

Hugs – Lesley

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