Occasionally, I believe I’ve fallen in a time warp where weeks pass in an instant or time drags so slowly you think a thing will never end.
Along with working on SBO+, I’m also manager of a ballet studio, a director of the Colorado Jazz Workshop, and president of the Board of Directors of the Music Teacher Guild. Additionally, I am the busiest unpaid Uber driver in Evergreen, Colorado because I have three grandchildren with lots of activities.
However, from May 23 to May 31, there was …….. nothing. No classes, no rehearsals, no meetings, and very few driver runs. I had been looking forward to that week for months and yet sometime around May 23 I fell into a time warp. Instantly I emerged, somewhat foggily, on the afternoon of May 31 with a magazine to put out, rehearsals to plan, invoices to log, meetings to attend, clinics to prepare, and kids to drive! Not fair!!!
I sincerely hope you avoided this type of time warp and that you’ve had a chance to breathe before diving into summer professional development, lesson planning, and music camps.
In the Army, I would change jobs every few years and often would attend various leadership development schools in between the new assignments. Just as most of you have a new cohort of students to teach each year I had a new group of Soldiers, a new boss, and often a new country to adapt to. I quickly found that unless I wanted to fall into a different time warp, one where I would make the same mistakes over and over, I needed to use those transitions to reinvent myself in a way. I would take a hard look at the things I did wrong in my last job, initiatives that didn’t turn out how I’d hoped, and areas needing improvement. By the way, doing that is hard work. Then, I would really think about what I could do differently in the next job because I could somewhat escape some of my prior mistakes and shortcomings. I also used this transition period to ensure I did some professional reading to hopefully guide the next version of myself.
Included in this issue’s NAfME Neighborhood, Steven Pickard addresses this with his article, “Closing This Chapter and Looking to the Next in Our Ensemble Programs.” The only problem with his article is there is absolutely nothing constructive on how to avoid time warps.
