It’s normal to make mistakes. Here are the Top 13 Mistakes Director’s Make – and I’ve been guilty of all of them.
#13 – Not Planning Enough: You need to plan, plan, plan, have a calendar, whatever works for you. I need a visual calendar showing me a month at a time. I plan the entire year out. The longer I’ve taught the further out that I plan. As I write this it is November of 2024; I just printed out a 2026 calendar. I’m always the one begging HR for the next school year’s dates. I’m often asking in January! Sometimes I just needed to know the start date of the school year because everything was based on that.
#12 – Not Using a Metronome: The Metronome doesn’t lie. Sometimes my clapping does. Sometimes stick clicking does. The metronome? Never. Don’t use it forever. Wean the students from it. Don’t use it the entire rehearsal. I tell my students that I hate it as much as they do. As soon as we can maintain a steady beat, I’ll quit using it. I tell them that it’s a tool that shows us where we’re wrong, and helps us to be better musicians. And they seem to understand.
#11 – Lack Of Classroom Management: Become a student of classroom management. I stunk at this my first two years of teaching. I studied. I improved. I called mentors. I observed master teachers. I became an expert.
When I was interviewing for my second position, one of the questions was, “It’s the day before the final concert. The kids are totally out of control, running across the stage, not doing anything they’re supposed to do. What would you do?” I was silent for a good 30 seconds mulling this over in my mind. I answered,”I would not have let it get to that point.” All the interview team was relieved! I found out later that was a real scenario from that school. If something is not working, and you keep doing the same thing, that’s the definition of insanity. Find different strategies, look into what your colleagues are doing, have someone come in and observe. One caveat – if you have admin that don’t follow through on school-wide discipline, no technique or strategy will work very well.
#10 – Being either too rigid or too lax: There’s a balance somewhere in the middle, where you can have fun with making music, you can have some fun with the students, while maintaining professionalism. I’ve seen some people who believe in a totally silent rehearsal the entire time. I don’t agree with it. Maybe it works for some. In my rehearsals, we have times where it’s really strict. Then we have times where it’s more relaxed.
#9 – Bringing work home: When you leave school, you need to have a life outside of school and do something different besides teaching. I gave up teaching lessons for a while. Even though I could make really good money teaching lessons, it felt like a continuation of my school day. Now I perform quite a bit. And I enjoy that. That feels more like it’s a hobby, it’s something that I do, that’s totally different from what I do at school. I do not put school email on my phone. I can’t tell you the number of times I thought to myself, “I’ll check email before I go to bed”. There’s an email from an angry parent. I couldn’t sleep that night.
#8 – Taking Student Behavior Or Quitting Personally: I’m in my 27th year of teaching, and I still struggle with this! I’m getting better at it. I’m developing a harder shell to where I’m not too bothered by it. What I’ve discovered is that almost every single time when a student has quit, it’s made the group better. It might not seem like it at first. But there’s a negative energy that the student who doesn’t want to be there brings, I personally try to do everything I can to keep the student. But if they decide they’re going, I just let them go. And then I don’t talk about it anymore.
#7 – Replying To An Email From An Angry Parent Without Thinking: It’s so easy to hit reply and let our emotions pour through our fingertips. Strong emotions is what makes you a great music teacher. But we have to be careful to keep that in check. Run your response by a colleague. I often run emails by my choir colleague, asking how does this response sound. She can help me tweak it a little bit and make it sound better. Sometimes just wait 12 hours to respond. I do this with discipline decisions for students as well. I’ll leave school and make a note to myself that that’s the first thing I’m going to think about when I get there the next day. I give myself 12 to 14 hours to sleep on it and think about it. Sometimes I calm down and realize that a gentler, more forgiving approach is going to work better than the harsh approach I initially was thinking of.
#6 – Not Knowing When To Shut Up: As a new teacher, I recorded my rehearsals a lot. I discovered there were times I was talking for half the rehearsal. INo, no, no, don’t do that. Can something be communicated with the baton? Do that instead. Train your students to watch the baton. When they’re not following, cut them and simply say, “Nope. Watch the baton.” You’re forcing them to watch instead of telling them what it is that you’re trying to get them to do.
Sometimes it’s knowing when to shut up when we’re dealing with a parent. Sometimes we just need to listen. I was in charge of the Solo & Ensemble festival. It was hosted at my school for about seven years. We were in a new building. For some reason it was not showing up on Google Maps. We were in a new building but we took the old name with us. The old building became the middle school. GPS would send people to the old school, which was about a 15 minute drive away from the new school. Parents would show up late because they were misdirected. They were mad. They wanted to know who was in charge. Some of them would yell at me because the GPS took them to the wrong school. I have no control over the GPS! I learned to just listen to them. I Learned that what they were really worried about was that their child would still get to perform. I learned to say, “I’m so sorry that this has happened. Have your student go to the warm up area. We’re going to fit them into the schedule. When I learned to shut up and listen to what the real issue was, then the parents calmed down.
Know when to shut up when dealing with your principal. When your principal is trying to give you feedback, it’s normal to get defensive and want to jump in and say something. Often principals don’t know exactly what we do. Think of it as you’re training your principal.
#5 – Trying To Be Someone Else: Every program is different. Take things to the next level. Don’t compare.
I once brought in a retired director from a highly regarded program as a guest. I was in my 1st year at a school in which the band program needed serious rebuilding. I was the 8th director in 7 years! He came for a 90 minute clinic. He spent 90 minutes on the first two measures of the song. Most of the students didn’t even get to get to play. Now I understand what he was doing. He was approaching it as if my band were like the band he just retired from. Instead he should have decided – as a clinician – let’s work on some bigger picture things like tone and balance. I was too young and inexperienced to ask him to approach it differently. Take the program from where it’s at today and make it better tomorrow.
#4 – Relating the number of hours spent at school to success: There is very little correlation! You can’t be lazy, leave at noon, take long lunches, not plan, not respond to emails and think you’re going to be successful because you’re not. You have to know that there’s a point where you need to turn off your computer, leave school, go home and do something different. I once taught at a school that was 30 minutes from home. My son attended that school. He was in wrestling. School ended at 3:00; wrestling practice ended about 6:30. I thought I’d get a lot of stuff done!
There came a point where my brain wasn’t functioning. I was staring at the screen, and nothing was working in my brain. Yes, I did get a lot done. The first hour. Then there came a point of diminishing returns. I would leave my desk, walk, watch movies, read – anything except school related stuff.
#3 – Over programming: It’s better to do easy songs that the students can do well than to try to perform every song you thought was cool in college. Build to more difficult songs. Have easy songs and more difficult songs in the lineup.
#2 – Underestimating the Importance of Relationships with EVERYONE: Non-music colleagues. Arts colleagues. Parents. The Secretary. She’s the one who submits your payment requests! The janitor.
#1 – Letting Your Ego Get In The Way of Teaching Music: It’s all about what is best for the kids. That’s always been my guide! Not what is best for me or my ego.
I hope that the top 13 Mistakes new directors make has helped you to avoid these mistakes.
James is retired from full time teaching. He has served private, suburban, and Title 1 schools and now teaches half time at a charter school. Find out more about James at www.jamesdivine.net Subscribe to his podcast Almost Everything I’ve Learned About Teaching Band.
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