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Reflections on Life. (Hint: It’s Short.)

The past few days have been really busy, including two performances of the UTA Maverick Marching Band’s 40th season without football. (Read all about that HERE and HERE.) Hearing UTA’s new Fight Song after each of those shows reminded me about Dr. Douglas Stotter, the Director of Bands who orchestrated the song for the MMB, and who would have turned 65 years old today had he not passed away suddenly last April. So in his honor, I’ve decided that for this week’s blog post, I will share a piece I wrote for a memory book compiled for his memorial concert last spring.

“I will admit that, when I heard Dr. Douglas Stotter was named Director of Bands at the University of Texas at Arlington back in 2005, I probably wanted to dislike him.

Mind you, I didn’t know him. What I did know was that Phil Clements was the Assistant Director of Bands at UTA from 1994-2004 and had served as Interim Director of Bands in the year following the retirement of Ray C. Lichtenwalter. I had become friends with Phil, both as the Voice of the UTA Marching Band and as President of the UTA Band Alumni Association at the time. And it seemed to me that Phil deserved to be named Director of Bands and have “Interim” taken off his title. When that didn’t happen, I was disappointed, and I may have wanted UTA’s new Director of Bands to be problematic. You know, full of faults and ego, and generally unlikeable. This person should only stick around about 3 years because UTA was merely a stepping stone to his next career objective. That way, whatever disappointment I felt could be justified, and I could wallow in bitterness and self-satisfaction and say “I told you so” about what was happening.

So here comes this guy, Doug Stotter, to my alma mater by way of Indiana University. Someone coming from a high-tone program in the Midwest just might be that person.

But Doug Stotter was the complete opposite of any and all of those horrible things, and he completely doused my disappointment and quelled any bitterness.

Affable. Amiable. Approachable. Self-deprecating. Humorous. Loved music. And I mean, LOVED music. Most of all, loved teaching music, and was great at it. Down-to-earth. Disarmingly nice. Surprisingly understated and composed.

Clearly, UTA was no stepping stone for Dr. Stotter. It was a career destination, sharing his knowledge of and love for music year after year, with quiet wisdom and humility. The music world often embraces loud, boisterous directors with showy conducting styles. I was never in a Doug Stotter ensemble, but I always got the sense from seeing him in front of his students that he didn’t need to yell at anyone, wear conspicuous clothing, or make grand gestures to get his point across. But don’t mistake lack of show for lack of preparation. Dr. Stotter’s ensembles were always prepared, and he conveyed messages clearly through eye contact with the performers, which is probably why he didn’t need grand gestures. His face was telling the performers, “we’ve worked on this, now play it.” He had a reserved acumen, a restrained energy that still projected passion for the music being performed. Love for music doesn’t always need to be shouted, and Doug showed that. The performance of his ensembles speaks to the effectiveness of Dr. Stotter’s teaching, and by that metric, it was remarkable. I didn’t attend every concert, but every time I did, I wondered, “Were we ever that good?” Because Dr. Stotter’s ensembles were SO good. And what turned out to be his final concert was truly sublime, an experience I will never forget.

But countless students can speak better than I can about Dr. Stotter’s love for and approach to music, and the lessons he imparted to his students. What I really value now are the interesting conversations we would always have. Sure, Doug loved music, but he had interests far beyond the world of band. I would typically encounter him the most during the marching season, usually in the pressbox before a UTA show. I was always impressed that Doug remembered my wife and sons and asked how and what they were doing lately. He also had knowledge of and interest in my own career, even though it had moved fair away from the music world. It’s a little ironic that we would see each other at marching band shows and talk about almost anything but marching band. Seriously, how many band directors would you expect to carry on a conversation about economics or educational assessment? One of my favorite MMB memories was the overnight to the Broken Arrow Festival near Tulsa, OK in 2016. The staff and I rode separately in a rented van that Doug drove throughout the trip. We had a stopover outside the Tulsa area for a rehearsal, and Doug and I ended up taking the van to pass some time driving around the area. We talked about a variety of things – sharing college band stories, discussing Kappa Kappa Psi, etc. He asked me about teaching a “traditional” high school class since he wanted my perspective on how it compared to a band class. It was probably only an hour or so, but it was truly engaging conversation. I only wish there was time for more, and I will miss my encounters with Doug immensely.

Thanks for subverting my expectations, Doug. I will always take comfort knowing that you got to conduct an epic concert right before you were called home. RIP”

I find it fitting that UTA hasn’t immediately replaced Dr. Stotter with an Interim Director of Bands and has, instead, enlisted a slate of guest conductors to work with their Wind Symphony throughout 2025-26 for The Dr. Douglas Stotter Artist-In-Residence series. An excellent course of action given the sudden nature of the situation last April.

Here’s a fundamental thing I learned from Dr. Stotter, and certainly in the course of my education career, as well: People Have Value, So Value Them. That doesn’t mean you have to be a super-gregarious extrovert shouting “let’s make a difference.” Just be kind. At his core, Doug Stotter was simply a kind person who wanted to help his students, and who was nice to others. He quietly showed people that he valued them. He happened to do so professionally as a band director, but anyone can achieve the same objective, no matter what their profession is.

Doug’s sudden passing also underscores another important lesson: Hug your loved ones, and let them know that you care. Show appreciation to mentors, colleagues, anyone who has had a positive impact on your life. Life Is Short, and you may not know when it’s the last time you get to speak with someone.

And just for good measure, one additional lesson: Because Life is Short, spend yours doing something you enjoy. I was deeply disturbed and shocked by Doug Stotter’s sudden passing, but I took solace in the fact that he got to do exactly what he loved at perhaps the highest level right before he left this life. And that realization was at least part of the impetus for me to retire from public education. There was no way on this earth that I wanted even a remote possibility that I could pass away in the midst of…testing. No. Way. There were other factors in my decision, but if you’ve read some of my earlier posts, you know how I grew to feel about the testing realm, and it was time to say goodbye. Know when it’s time to say goodbye in your own profession (or personal life), because we won’t always know when it’ll be our time to go.

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40 Years of “The Marching Band Without Football” – Part 2

Yesterday, I posted Part 1 about the UTA Maverick Marching Band, including a history of the successes and ultimate demise of UTA football, and how UTA’s marching band managed to continue without a football team to play for. READ THAT POST HERE.

TLDR: UTA football was a once-proud program that slowly crumbled due to stadium issues and poor win-loss records, which led to faltering attendance and financial losses until the program was cancelled on November 25, 1985. But the UTA Marching Band survived as an academic pursuit thanks to the vision of Ray C. Lichtenwalter and the support of President Wendell Nedderman and his administration.

Year 1, 1986 – the UTA Marching Band, “New Direction.” That was literally the name the band used on promotional materials and in the announcement script. The official band t-shirts given out during summer band camp were changed from “UTA Maverick Band” to simply “UTA Marching Band.” Maverick (Movin’ Mav) football was gone. Not only was the very act of fielding a marching band without a football team audacious, but the 1986 band performed a musically bold show: H. Owen Reed’s La Fiesta Mexicana. The subtitle of this piece is “A Mexican Folk Song Symphony for Concert Band.” Assistant Director of Bands John Carnahan arranged the music and wrote all the drill. Percussion Coordinator Michael Varner arranged the percussion. Colorguard legend Karl Lowe choreographed the guard. For the era, it was ambitious and forward-thinking, in keeping with the UTA Band’s usual approach. For a band that was used to doing body waves as the team ran onto the field and performing college football halftimes, it was, at times, too much. The show itself lasted over 12 minutes, far more than a college band was used to. The show was approaching the level of a drum corps production for the era, but without daily rehearsals to perfect it. The 1986 performance tour was also ambitious, because the band needed to prove itself to University officials that first year and show just how this thing could work. There were two different postgame performances at high school football games. There was a Saturday where the band played after Prelims at the Plano East Marching Festival before returning to Arlington to play after Finals at the UTA Band Alumni Marching Contest. The highlight of the season was a trip to Austin for the Westlake Marching Festival, where the band performed to the pressbox side, then turned around and performed again to the visitors’ side, since that’s where all the high school band members (and prospective UTA students) were sitting. One exhibition, two performances. That first year was monumental and exhausting, but it showed that the UTA Marching Band meant business and wanted to accomplish something special, something unique.

1987 saw the UTA Band perform Gustav Holst’s The Planets. Another musically ambitious production developed by the same staff, but the show wasn’t quite as long and the tour wasn’t quite as demanding. In 1988, John Carnahan departed, as did Karl Lowe. UTA hired Bobby Francis as Assistant Director of Bands, but instead of moving forward with the planned production of Rimsky-Korsakov’s Scheherazade, UTA instead performed selections by Aaron Copland, including Rodeo, Billy the Kid, and Appalachian Spring. There was a noticeable drop-off in performance. It was becoming clear that some of the stalwart students hanging on from the days of football were getting a little tired of band by itself. 1989 was a critical year for the band, as the goal was simply to recapture a higher performance level in a show that featured an eclectic mix of music from Jerry Goldsmith and Sandi Patty. (You read that correctly.) 1989 also featured the final shows wearing the uniforms UTA first wore in 1978, and after 12 seasons, they were showing their age, both dated and worn-out.

1990 was my fifth and final year as drum major (as a solo Drum Major, at that). More importantly, the season ushered in new uniforms – a significant investment by the University – and the genesis of the student advisory committee, which helped decide the music and general programming for the show. “A Fantastic Journey,” featuring Krypton Fanfare from John Williams’ score for Superman, along with music from Back to the Future, The Boy Who Could Fly, and The Last Starfighter, was not as high-brow as Reed, Holst, or Copland, but definitely accessible music with a connecting theme. The staff added Denise Williamson (now Armstrong) as the guard director, and the band’s personnel had cycled through to include students who really wanted to be in the UTA Marching Band not for the novelty, but because they wanted a chance to perform in college at the highest possible level. The powerful sound was back. The visual performance was elevating. Indeed, a fantastic year, and I was privileged to lead the ensemble as 1990 proved that the proverbial experiment from only 5 years prior had emerged as a legitimate program.

The remainder of the 1990s retained a similar pattern – music from The Rocketeer and Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves (1991), Jesus Christ Superstar (1992) – including an exhibition at the UIL State Marching Contest, and Cats (1993). Bobby Francis departed in 1993 to become Director of Bands at East Texas State University (now East Texas A&M), and UTA hired Phillip Clements (now the Executive Director of the Texas Bandmasters Association) as Assistant Director of Bands. Phil came in from the University of North Texas with DCI experience, and his expertise allowed the band to ascend even further. The music of Blood, Sweat, and Tears, the Who’s Tommy, and more…shows that combined musical excellence with exciting themes that the band could easily portray and audiences could really enjoy. In 1998, Dr. Jack Gibson, the band’s P.A. Announcer since 1978, decided to “retire” from the job, and I was invited by Mr. Clements to take over. I felt privileged yet again to associate directly with this ensemble and showcase their performances with my voice to conclude the 20th century with “Arabia!” (1998), Stan Kenton’s Adventures in Time (1999), and “Peace, Love, and Revolution!” (2000).

2001 was another watershed year in the history of the UTA Marching Band, as they traveled to Indianapolis to perform an exhibition at the Bands of America Grand Nationals Championships. The other BOA exhibition band that year? The University of Massachusetts Minuteman Marching Band, under the direction of the legendary George Parks. UTA’s show was called “Passion!” and opened with a rendition of Ravel’s Bolero, featured an assortment of Latin music, and concluded with Ginastera’s Danza Final. The most ambitious program since 1986, clocking in at 11 minutes, because, well…Grand Nationals, buddy. I will never forget watching the band rehearse inside the old RCA Dome at 1:00am on Saturday morning in preparation for an exhibition later that day. I will also never forget their epic performance, or enjoying a rather satisfying dinner with the entire staff at The Eagle’s Nest after the show. That momentum carried over into 2002 as the University financed another set of new uniforms for the band’s production of Moulin Rouge, featuring music from the Baz Luhrmann film.

Then came 2003, which was, in my humble estimation, the pinnacle of the UTA Marching Band’s performances since the end of football. By this time, the band had become a veritable machine. The members were all really mature and businesslike. If the buses were to be loaded by 3:45pm, everyone was seated and ready to go by 3:30. That kind of group. The show was called “Colors” and featured Samuel Hazo’s Ride, Van Morrison’s “Moondance,” and music from the Cirque du Soleil show La Nouba. The show had everything, and Moondance was the closest I’ve ever heard a marching band get to drum-corps-level energy. CHECK OUT THE SHOW HERE.

In the spring of 2004, Ray C. Lichtenwalter retired. He received many accolades and a David Maslanka work commissioned in his honor, all deservedly so after 37 years at UTA and 30 years as Director of Bands. Phil Clements was named Interim Director of Bands with UTA alum David Clemmer as Interim Assistant Director of Bands. The Clements/Clemmer team oversaw  “A Show You Can’t Refuse” in 2004, featuring music from The Godfather, and while it wasn’t quite the level of “Colors,” the band was still incredible. But come 2005, the University named Dr. Douglas Stotter as Director of Bands, and the marching band staff cleared out. No more Phil Clements, David Clemmer, or Denise Armstrong. Dr. Stotter hired an Assistant Director for the 2005 season who seemed promising, but he alienated students and eventually resigned literally one week before the 2006 summer band camp (what a lovely guy). Dr. Stotter ended up having to hire a different Assistant for 2006, then another one for 2007. The instability (along with certain decisions by the University) hurt the band’s numbers over these years and all but gutted the colorguard. The band still performed well enough, but for those who followed the UTA Marching Band since the end of football, “What happened?” was a common refrain.

In 2015, the University financed uniforms once again that were more traditional and featured the latest “A” logo of the school. The Assistant Director of Bands was John Zastoupil (now Director of Bands at the University of Tennessee), and his intent was essentially to rebuild and work toward what the band used to be. The band was now referenced as the “Maverick Marching Band,” or MMB, as UTA sought to rebrand slightly and emphasize the Maverick mascot again. Dr. Zastoupil departed for a promotion in 2017, and Dr. Christopher Evans (no, not the Captain America actor) signed on as Assistant Director of Bands, where he still presently serves. 

Dr. Evans, quite honestly, is someone who “gets it” and has sought to honor the legacy that the UTA Band has built since 1986. He’s previously worked with top-tier high school bands in Texas and is familiar with the demands of a unique college marching program like UTA’s, both as a performing ensemble and as a teaching lab for prospective band directors. He also understands the need for stability and is acutely aware of how even only a few shaky years can decimate a program. Dr. Evans has guided the band toward steady growth each year, even navigating all the unusual protocols of the 2020 season to accomplish a “virtual” exhibition season. The colorguard is still unusually small these days, but the band’s numbers and performance level have risen over the past decade. The MMB is now receiving additional funding from the Department of Student Affairs, and new uniforms are also on the horizon for 2026. In spite of Dr. Stotter’s untimely passing in April 2025, Dr. Evans has maintained a rock-solid foundation for the students, and I hope he gets a fair shot to continue at UTA as Director of Bands. It’s my privilege to showcase the MMB at each performance, and I look forward to many more years in that role as the band progresses further toward 50 years and more without UTA football. Here’s to a continued fun and rewarding journey.

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40 Years of “The Marching Band Without Football” – Part 1

Last week, I acknowledged that I am a band nerd, and a marching band nerd at that. I also mentioned that I have served as the P.A. Voice of the U.T.-Arlington Maverick Marching Band since 1998. It is fair to state that the UTA Band has shaped my life. I have close friends from UTA to this day, all from my involvement with the band. I was Drum Major there for 5 years (one of only 3 people who served as DM for 5 years), and that partially led to my career in education. I learned leadership skills there that have influenced me throughout my life. I was President of their Kappa Kappa Psi (national honorary band fraternity) chapter for a year and am also a Life Member of the chapter. I was President of the UTA Band Alumni Association for 4 years. I met my wife in the UTA Band. And my P.A. work with the band was the impetus for my voiceover career. You could say band has been instrumental (pun intended, cue rim-shot) in my adult life.

It just so happens that this past weekend was Alumni Day for the Maverick Marching Band (typically referred to as the MMB), where they invite UTA alumni of all eras to come out and take in a brief rehearsal and a preview run of this year’s show. As part of that performance, I got to do a run of my pre- and post-show announcements. This year’s announcements acknowledge that UTA is celebrating its 130th anniversary, but more importantly to me, that this is the 40th season that the UTA MMB is performing without a football team.

If you’re not from the Arlington area, you might not realize or know that U.T.-Arlington has no football team, and if so, it’s likely you also didn’t know that they have a marching band without a team. Yes, it is unusual. 40 years ago, it was unheard of. And that is the purpose of this week’s post — to highlight some of the history that led to UTA cancelling its football program, the genesis of the current iteration of the MMB, and the ebb and flow of the band program through the past 40 years. Yes, it is another 2-parter.

To begin, let’s take a trip back in time to 1956. My parents were celebrating their first wedding anniversary, my oldest sister was born, and in Arlington, TX, the Rebels of Arlington State College won a national championship in football. Specifically, they won the Junior Rose Bowl, at the actual Rose Bowl Stadium in Pasadena, defeating Compton College to win the National Junior College Championship. Then in 1957, ASC won it again. College football in Arlington reached its pinnacle with that back-to-back feat 68 years ago, and it’s been downhill ever since.

A quick rundown of those intervening years: Arlington State became a four-year institution in 1959, playing in NCAA Division II. ASC was a founding member of the Southland Conference in 1964 and actually won the conference championship in 1966 and 1967. The 1967 team was the first to play as U.T.-Arlington instead of Arlington State College after the university moved from the Texas A&M system to the U.T. system. To conclude that 1967 season, the UTA Rebels, as they were called, won their final bowl game in school history – The Pecan Bowl in, of all places, Abilene, TX, at Shotwell Stadium.

Shortly after that Pecan Bowl victory, UTA’s student body began to get restless with the school’s Rebel mascot, its use of “Dixie” as the fight song, and the Confederate battle flag as a school symbol, including on the back of the UTA Rebel Band’s uniforms. The University ultimately changed its mascot to Mavericks in 1971, which it retains today. Along the way, UTA also struggled with stadium issues. Memorial Stadium was its on-campus stadium, with a capacity of 10,000, that was usually full during those winning seasons in the late 1960s. But school officials considered it outdated and wanted a larger venue to move up to a higher level of college football. So UTA began playing at Turnpike Stadium in 1970, which would be renamed Arlington Stadium when the Texas Rangers arrived in 1972. The Rangers took complete control of Arlington Stadium, at which point the Mavericks (also known as the Movin’ Mavs) began playing home games at Cravens Field, a high school facility in Arlington.

In retrospect, it’s clear that the stadium issues may have been the beginning of the end for UTA football. When they played on-campus at Memorial Stadium, the Rebels had a strong following. Move to a bigger venue that happens to be multi-purpose for baseball and football? How about a high school stadium with wooden bleachers? Watch the following and attendance dwindle. String together 9 straight losing seasons from 1970 through 1978. Watch the following and attendance dwindle even more. And as the following and attendance dwindled, football began to lose money. Yet UTA managed to get funding for a new 12,000 seat stadium that opened in 1980 – Maverick Stadium. The inaugural game against North Texas State (now the University of North Texas) saw a crowd of 18,000, with temporary bleachers added – this was fortuitous, since the stadium was designed to expand the width of both grandstands and even add a second deck on the east stands. I was there; it was an amazing crowd. It was actually the first college football game broadcast by fledgling cable network ESPN. So much promise, but UTA lost that opener 31-14 on its way to a 3-8 season in 1980, with its only home win before a crowd of 2,000 on a bitterly cold November night. (I was also there.) Maverick Stadium never saw attendance higher than 9,500 for the rest of UTA football’s history and never averaged more than 8,000 in a season. For a program with big-time aspirations, those kinds of attendance numbers were dismal. The team managed to win the Southland Conference once more, in 1981, but alas, that was the year the SLC champion did NOT earn an automatic bid to the Independence Bowl. No extra revenue or exposure there. The last official UTA football game in Maverick Stadium took place on November 16, 1985, a 29-14 loss to Louisiana Tech in front of 4,800 fans. (Guess who was there that day?) A week later, they concluded the 1985 season with yet another loss at NTSU. Then on November 25, 1985, President Wendell Nedderman announced that the University was cancelling the football program due to poor attendance and massive financial losses.

“Interesting story. The takeaway was that you were a fan of a losing team.” I lived 10 minutes from the stadium and I had four old siblings who went to UTA. And I grew up as a sports fan. OF COURSE I went to the games. But amidst the losses on the field, I found myself more and more intrigued by the band, especially after I started playing saxophone the same fall that Maverick Stadium opened. The UTA Maverick Band was mesmerizing to me. Gigantic sound, great colorguard, and what were considered cool uniforms for the late 1970s and early 1980s. “Tomorrow’s Sound, Today” was theIr nickname, and the band was actually ground-breaking for the time in terms of sound and approach. When Maverick Stadium opened, the east stands (opposite the pressbox) were actually the “home” stands where students sat. The band performed halftime to those stands, then they would play postgame to the pressbox (west) side. I found myself mostly sitting on the west side, so I would stick around for postgame, when the stands were empty and the band was extra LOUD. For a budding band nerd, this was nirvana. I knew I wanted to be a part of it. Once I ascended to drum major of my high school marching band, I had designs on being a drum major of the UTA Maverick Band. The reason I was at the last home game on 11/16/85 was because our band was invited to attend and perform at the game (obviously to put some more people in the stands). I was intent on impressing UTA’s directors with my own command of our group; I have no idea if they even noticed my presence, but I knew involvement in the UTA band was on my radar, for sure.

So when the announcement came down on 11/25/85, I pretty much figured that dream was over, and I was looking at breaking off from my siblings and attending a different school than UTA. Then something unique happened. Ray C. Lichtenwalter, Director of Bands at UTA, sought to continue the marching band in spite of the loss of football, but doing so at great risk. There was a movement among some fans to hold a pep rally in favor of football and opposition to President Nedderman’s decision, and these fans approached Mr. Lichtenwalter in hopes of having the band participate in the rally. Lichtenwalter declined these fans, cooperated with Nedderman’s decision, and instead requested that the University continue funding the marching band as an exhibition band. The fans who wanted the University to reconsider football were livid, and they let him know about it. But where had they been the past decade when UTA football was drawing fewer than 8,000 fans per game? Lichtenwalter was focused on how he could serve his students in a new era for UTA. The idea was that, for Music Education students at UTA, marching band was an integral lab environment where they learned how to construct, teach, and perform a modern marching band show in preparation for teaching high school band. Lichtenwalter justified continuation of the program as an academic pursuit as opposed to simply a spirit group that would naturally disband after the cancellation of football. It was a rather forward-thinking move on the part of Mr. Lichtenwalter, which is unsurprising. Lichtenwalter had taught at UTA since 1967, becoming Director of Bands in 1975. He was the brains behind “Tomorrow’s Sound Today,” modernized uniforms, and a new approach to college band at UTA. Over the previous decade, the UTA Maverick Band had evolved into something interesting and groundbreaking. Pursuing marching band without football as its own creative endeavor was simply the next logical step for the program.

In the spring of 1986, I auditioned and was selected to be one of 2 Assistant Drum Majors on a 3-person team at UTA as they embarked on this unprecedented journey. As a result, I became the 5th of 5 members of the Ponce family to attend UTA in the 1970s and 1980s, and I entered an organization that would influence me in countless ways. But more importantly, the UTA Marching Band, “New Direction,” as it was called, began its own journey that would span more than 4 decades exploring music and how it could be conveyed through the medium of marching band.

Come back tomorrow to read how that journey has unfolded.

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Modern Marching Band: The Magical, the Mundane, and the Remarkable – Part 2

Yesterday, I posted Part 1 on this topic and attempted to scratch the surface of what goes into a given marching band season and why it’s awesome, why it’s magical. Read that post here. TLDR: When you consider everything that goes into learning to play an instrument, spin a flag, march, dance, execute drill design, perfect it, and do it all together…you will find few things that are more satisfying and personally fulfilling.

But guess what? Marching band can also be rather mundane. Consider the following:

  • There’s a football game every week, and at least half of those (more for some schools) involve travel. Riding a bus back to school at 11:00pm on a Friday night when you’re exhausted is not exactly anyone’s definition of fun.
  • There’s a drill team song to learn and perform every week. Don’t get me wrong – there’s nothing wrong with drill team, per se; they work hard just like bands and accomplish impressive things. But that stop-down every Thursday to rehearse with them plus the Friday performance also gets tedious over 10 weeks.
  • Stand tunes can be cool, but they can also wear mighty thin. Seriously, how many times can anyone play “The ‘Hey’ Song” and “Seven Nation Army” without going a little bit crazy? (Although to be fair, “Land of 1,000 Dances” never gets old, IMO.)
  • There are times during the marching season that become an enormous grind. Look at the calendar – we are literally in one of those times today, 9/17/25. When I taught drum major camps, I used to teach everyone this: The DM’s leadership isn’t that essential on the first day of band camp, or at the first performance, or at any contest. Everybody’s pumped for those times. It’s easy. No, the DM is most critical in mid-September, when the temperature is still in the 90s, the band hasn’t performed at any contests yet, the show is mostly learned by now but you’re working on all the parts where the ensemble is struggling, tempers are on-edge, and enthusiasm is low. THAT is when the drum major needs to be at their best, helping the group power through those grinding times.
  • If you have a good football team, marching season can seem to last forever because the season then goes more than 10 weeks.
  • Contests are cool, but they can also be a grind. It’s an entire Saturday gone, and you might have important assignments to complete for classes. Imagine working on homework in the stands while other bands perform because otherwise, it won’t get done. Plus, it might still be warm outside, so you’re sweating almost the entire day. Now imagine doing that every weekend for an entire month.
  • October often features weather that is windy and possibly rainy. This poses many challenges as you’re trying to perfect your show and losing rehearsal time to rain and possibly lightning, or simply struggling in high winds.
  • In all honesty, sometimes the shows themselves are really mundane. Marching band often relies heavily on imitation; everybody wants to do stuff that’s popular in DCI or among the top-tier bands at UIL and BOA competitions. The activity is beholden to trends, sometimes to its detriment. There was a period several years ago, for instance, where it seemed like every show was “Title: Subtitle, in four movements – I. Noun II. Noun III. Noun IV. Noun and Noun.” I would joke that I could simply announce everyone with “Please welcome the Average Suburban High School Marching Band,” and no one would even notice. Thankfully, we’ve moved beyond that phase, and the shows are a bit more imaginative these days.

I could delve into a bit of an old-man rant from this point forward because there are certainly other things that are frustrating about the activity: People often question whether marching band is valuable as music education because so much time is spent working on a limited amount of music rather than expanding students’ repertoire. (There’s an old adage that marching band could be called “Learning to Hate Music, Three Songs at a Time.”) Sometimes what judges reward is more style and less substance, which incentivizes schools to spend more resources on props and other extraneous aspects of the show. There are definitely socioeconomic disparities in marching band. By and large, you will find a strong correlation between the wealthiest schools and the bands that score highest at UIL and non-UIL contests alike. Marching band is awesome, but the activity is far from perfect.

But here’s the thing: In this activity, perfection, in the end, is a goal but not actually an objective. Every band will strive to perfect what they’re performing. None of them will achieve it at a 100% level for 100% of the time. And that’s OK. The act of striving for perfection in a safe and healthy environment, with people you grow to love, in service to music and a product that requires everyone’s involvement, IS the point. Each ensemble begins its season at a certain beginning place and works toward “the perfect place” for 3-4 months, and then it’s over. The journey and the work involved matters more than any result. Some groups will need a new trophy case to hold all their hardware. Good for them. Some groups will just be happy to advance to finals at an invitational, or to UIL Area, or to UIL State. Good for them. Some groups will expect trophies but be unable to capture them, or expect to advance to State and finish as alternates, or not make Area Finals. All for reasons they may not grasp because the judging system is inherently subjective, and their show didn’t receive sufficient points in the right places. It is not the same as losing an athletic contest, because you cannot necessarily watch the film or examine the stats and say “we would’ve won if only…” It’s the nature of competition in competitive marching band, and sometimes it leaves ensembles wondering what-if. There is no shame in that as long as they can look back at how their performance progressed through the season and how the members connected with one another – if you can look back at those things with satisfaction, then the scores do not matter. Sure, it’s disappointing; everyone likes to achieve high scores and win. But years from now you’ll think about the joy of the experience, not tab sheets or trophies.

And the experience should be joyful, because it is remarkable. Regardless of what anyone in their 40s or older may think about the music, the choreography, the props, the amplification, the costumes, or any other aspect of a modern marching band production, what the students accomplish is astounding. I’m in my 50s and marched in the 1980s and 90s. In high school, we primarily marching symmetrical drill on a fairly rudimentary level. In college, the drill was more advanced, and we added basic choreography in places, but none of it was like what you see today. The music, drill, and choreography an audience member will witness at a typical marching band contest these days should boggle their minds. I knew guys 40 years ago who would’ve gotten physically injured trying to do what bands do today. Who couldn’t produce a sound on their instrument marching modern drill. Who would cramp up, seize up, or fold up trying to play the music of the caliber that students perform today.

Music education has advanced, to its credit. The “marching arts,” as many like to call the activity, have also advanced. These are good things. Students get an opportunity to do amazing things and perform on an elite level. “But it’s not like it used to be.” Okay. Whatever. People used to teach band members to “pound the ground” when marking time. “Kill the grass!” They used to teach techniques that are now suspect. They used to haze new members and make them feel terrible and unwanted. Does anyone really think it would be productive or educational to return to those days? And while there are people who live for old-school military bands marching 6-to-5 from end zone to end zone and despise props and microphones and speakers and dance movements, a person’s preference for the kind of show should not detract from the remarkable work the students are accomplishing. Modern military bands are also great. Bands that perform HBCU-style shows are also amazing. Those styles have advanced, as well. Honestly, no matter the particular style of show, the challenge of any marching show from the 20th century pales in comparison to the demands of a modern show, where students might be flying across 40 different spots on the field while doing choreography and maintaining sufficient body control to play with incredible musicality. Complain about the shows, if you want. Respect the performers. Celebrate them. Band students are awesome. Band is still awesome. It’s remarkable.

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Modern Marching Band: The Magical, the Mundane, and the Remarkable – Part 1

Last Friday, I worked a high school football game for the second week in a row. That’s no big deal, but for context, consider that, from 2004 to 2018, I did PA announcing for high school football, including 12 years from 2007-2018 where I was the exclusive voice of all games at a local stadium. Then I left that district and have only done substitute football PA work since. My last game prior to this year was in 2022. Being immersed in the high school football scene for so many years, followed by a respite, followed by back-to-back experiences, elicited some observations that I had not really expected. “Is this post about football?” Not really. High school football is high school football – a mixed bag, depending on the season, the teams, and the time of the season. I’ll post thoughts on high school football some other time, but today we really need to talk about marching bands.

I am, proudly, a band nerd. Started learning saxophone in the summer of 1980, and still play when I can. Also, I could specifically be considered a marching band nerd. Drum Major at my high school for 2 years, followed by 5 years at my university (I took 4.5 years to finish my Bachelor’s degree, so I marched that extra season.) I’ve followed Drum Corps International since 1984. I actually got into voiceover primarily through doing PA announcing for marching band contests, and I have been the PA voice of the U.T. Arlington Maverick Marching Band since 1998. (Yes, I’m also kind of old.) The point is, I’ve been in bands, I’ve led bands, I’ve showcased bands, and I’ve watched bands with an educated and experienced set of eyes and ears for 45 years.

“Oh, boy, here comes an old man rant about how silly modern marching band is because of how much it’s changed.” Actually, no. I will admit to having issued old-man-rants in the past about certain elements of marching band and drum corps, but I think my perspective is tempered now by a little more age and a lot more wisdom.

Straight-up honesty…Band is awesome. Marching Band is awesome. (Concert Band is awesome, too, but I’ll detail why in another post some other time.) Marching Band isn’t perfect, but that doesn’t change the fact that it is simply incredible. Why? Let’s start from the ground up. (“From the top,” if you will.) Learning to play a musical instrument successfully is, on its face, a magical thing when you think about it. The required physical dexterity demands a level of concentration many people don’t realize. But that concentration eventually becomes second-nature and habitual, to the point that even an amateur player is accomplishing something amazing. The player also learns to read music, decoding all the symbols and terms and changing the sounds they’re making to bring what’s on the page to sonic life. Now put that player in an ensemble, where they have to listen to everyone else, follow the conductor, and match it all up to create a performance.

Sounds cool, right? Great! Now, stand up, move your feet to the beat, then learn a bunch of new step styles to glide across a football field while still playing your instrument. Forward and Backward. Establish control of your body so that your legs can take you one direction while your upper body faces another, maintaining proper posture to allow you to blow through your horn or play your drum(s) accurately. Now learn to change the direction and position of every part of your body. Oh yeah…you also have to move from Point A to Point B in X number of counts, maintaining awareness of everyone else around you so that, when everyone is positioned properly, it “looks like something” from the stands. (In band terms, it’s called “form.”) And while you’re engaging in all this movement, you’re still playing, AND you’ve memorized all the music. All of it.

Prefer to ditch the playing part and just do visual things on the field? Fantastic! You can join the colorguard. Here’s a flag – you’re going to learn how to hold it in various positions, how to spin it, how to toss it in the air and catch it. Here’s a rifle; same skills but with a different shape and weight. Here’s a bunch of other equipment – more flags, sabers, whatever your instructor can dream up – and you’ll learn to use this stuff, too. We’ll teach you a bunch of movements using this equipment, and you also get to memorize all of it and perform it to the music played.

Now, everyone, we’re also going to learn how to dance. Not dancing like at a club, but actual ballet principles – foot positions, leg positions, general body movement. Colorguard, you’re going to go even deeper with these skills so that you can jump, spin, and perform other choreography together. You might literally lift and carry each other around at times. You might also have props on the field that you could stand on, move, step around, change, or march across. You’re also going to do this wearing uniforms and/or costumes, and we might have moments where you change something on your uniform so that the colors on the field look different. Of course, you also have to carry all the stuff you take onto the field back off of it, before the clock expires.

Oh! Before we forget – some of you need to step forward as drum majors, leading and coordinating this on the field. You will help manage our rehearsals, try to inspire and motivate everybody, and conduct all the music at the correct tempo and with appropriate style. You’ll be the proverbial face of the group, acknowledging the judges and audience, and generally representing what your band stands for. You’ll have some authority, but everybody on the field is also the same age as you, and they are your peers, so walk that line carefully. And be sure to help us keep our energy high when everyone’s wondering if any of this is worth it or is otherwise not on their best behavior.

So, we’re going merge all of these skills to learn roughly 8-11 minutes of music, movement, and choreography, start learning and rehearsing it in the heat of August, then work to perfect it over the next 2 months so that we can perform it by October. It just might suck at first, but we’ll work on it all to make bad stuff good and the good stuff better. Did I mention we’re going to do all this work before or after school? Did I also mention that you still have to go to class and maintain your grades?

By the way, every Friday, we go to every football game, and you’ll have to carry all your stuff with you to the game. You might not even go home after school and instead make it a 16-hour (or longer) day. Some of you will help load all the percussion equipment and large instruments on a truck. We’ll go into the stands and cheer our heads off for the football team, except for midway through the 2nd quarter, when we’ll head to the end zone to prep for our halftime performance. Then back into the stands for the second half. We’ll repeat that process for at least 10 weeks. And in October, we’ll spend time rehearsing every Saturday before we pack up and head out to a contest, where we’ll hope to perform twice. We may also have some other performances on October weeknights.

But wait, that’s not all. We’ll also learn music to play in the stands at football games, plus a different song each week to play for the drill team’s performance. Don’t forget the fight song, alma mater, and national anthem. Plus there may be additional music to learn as the season goes on. If the football team advances to the playoffs, we might learn a different show just to keep things interesting. And some of you will also still work on longer, more difficult concert music for the stage in addition to everything else.

Sound cool? Trust me, it is. But the whole experience, laid out like this, also sounds incredibly daunting. And…it IS. But it’s worth it, and it really is magical. The sense of accomplishment an individual performer gets as they learn the fundamentals, then apply them, then have a chance to hone them, then perform on a higher and higher level, is astonishing. The sense of camaraderie the entire group can develop as they work through a given season is unbelievable. The sense of belonging students and alumni can establish over several years with a school band program is indescribable. People like to say, “they work as hard as the football team.” If we’re just talking about time commitment and perhaps physical effort, that may be true. But band is fundamentally different from any sport. Athletic success is, for better or worse, measured on the scoreboard for all to see, and student-athletes can become disheartened by a losing season or gratified by a winning one. Marching band has scores at contests, but those can be terribly misleading because there are many more intrinsic rewards. No one knows the exact sum of effort and determination it took a given ensemble just to get there except the performers themselves. A band could finish last at every contest and still come away feeling like it was a magical season. And it is magical.

Come back tomorrow to read about the mundane and the remarkable.

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The Illusion of Learning: State and Local Assessment

I admit that I have experienced a fair amount of self-loathing for the role I held in education the last 12 years of my career. The first 19 years, when I was teaching, were the most fulfilling. I got to work with some fantastic students. Even the unremarkable students were teenagers, after all, and I like to think that they all figured things out over time and became contributing members of society. I don’t remember having any students who I thought were actually terrible humans. I had some truly gratifying moments in my teaching years, because instruction – the teacher-student rapport that you build over a semester, a year, or even multiple years in some courses – is the literal backbone of education. To me, it’s sacred. As I moved into campus-level assessment, I actually experienced the best of both worlds. For 5 years, I still got to teach one class per day, plus I had the pleasure of supporting my colleagues as we navigated the nonsense of state & local assessment. And make no mistake: it is largely nonsense. These tests provide an illusion that we’re tracking student learning, but mostly we’re just adding a bunch of extraneous activities that intrude upon actual instruction and slowly drive teachers insane. My focal point on the administrative side of things was simple – my job is to help you keep your sanity.

I maintained that same mentality throughout the final 12 years of my career after I moved 100% into the realm of assessment. Whether we’re talking about the old TAAS or TAKS system, the current STAAR, or whatever TEA concocts in the future, the state assessment system in Texas is basically insane. We’re talking about a system where we give your son or daughter a single test each spring that is longer than anything they’ve encountered in an authentic classroom setting (also longer than nationally accepted standardized tests), from which we intend to measure whether that child has “learned” the content based on our arbitrary scale, and from which we also intend to determine whether that child has made adequate “progress” from the previous grade level. In multiple subjects. Then we’ll do it all again a year from now, even though the curriculum for those courses may be vastly different. Wow, for the system to work, that had better be one incredibly sophisticated set of multiple choice questions.

“Oh, but it’s not all multiple-choice anymore.” Yeah, sure. You can add in the choose-all-that-apply items, drag-and-drop, short and long “constructed response” items, but that doesn’t really make the test comprehensive. Those item types are ultimately window-dressing designed to suppress the notion that a given student has a probability of getting 20-25% correct simply by guessing. Any teacher can tell you a truly sophisticated gauge of student progress would track it class-by-class, if possible, on an authentic level based on the content. Instant, regular, consistent feedback is the most reliable. But fewer, infrequent tests with a greater number of items on each are always less valuable in tracking student learning and facilitating better instruction. Always. Regardless of the item types. While nationally accepted standardized tests, like SAT and ACT, are infrequent and extended, they are intended to capture a snapshot of a given student’s academic readiness for college, and schools consider them as part of a broader picture of the student’s profile because they know the tests aren’t perfect. No university in the world puts all of the proverbial student eggs in the testing basket.

And yet, somehow we do exactly this in the United States from grade 3 through high school. The current system has the federal government requiring states to use high-stakes, flawed assessments to answer the question, “Is our children learning?” Agencies like TEA spend millions consulting with testing firms to create these tests, which are then used for all the purposes already mentioned, and whose results then determine the majority of each campus’ and district’s accountability rating for the year (it will take a series of posts or podcasts to deconstruct what a mess the accountability system in Texas is). Now, I realize that certain statisticians or psychometricians may argue for the validity and reliability of STAAR, but this post isn’t arguing those issues, nor am I exploring the notion that the tests are inherently biased against certain demographic groups. For me, the bottom line is that the system as presently constituted is, on its face, detrimental to students and the teachers attempting to educate them because the very notion of an annual test for children simply cannot be considered the end-all-be-all in determining whether they are learning, whether they are making sufficient academic progress, or whether the campus and its teachers are meeting any practical standard of performance.

Yet here we are. And the fun REALLY begins when district administrators get a hold of some data points, develop an addiction to buzzwords like “data-driven instruction” and “rigor,” and decide they want more, More, MORE in the name of determining whether students are performing throughout the school year. Enter Local Assessment, a veritable obsession for many districts (my last district included) as they embark on a quest for – let’s be honest here – some kind of predictor of their accountability for the current year. Sure, student learning is an objective, but the real goal is the score and letter grade we can trumpet in board meetings, news releases, and social media. And it’s created an entire cottage industry: the “benchmark test” that attempts to imitate STAAR in content, format, and difficulty so that students can literally practice…testing. Not necessarily the skills embedded in the coursework, and certainly not skills that might work across different courses. Nope. Testing practice. Texas law currently limits districts from administering more than two benchmark tests in a given school year. (And, voila!, TEA developed their own “Interim Assessments” – two per year – whose sole purpose is to predict a student’s STAAR performance for the year. More on that sham another time.) But hey, that’s OK – your local school district will simply purchase and/or develop a series of smaller tests and call them something besides “benchmarks” – curriculum assessments (CAs), curriculum-based assessments (CBAs), quarterly assessments (QAs), insert your own title and initials here – these tests are all specifically designed to circumvent Texas law on benchmark testing. Sometimes these tests are actually quite short; other times they may require “shutdown testing,” as my last district called it, so a good portion of an instructional day (or maybe all of it depending on what class you teach) is burned away. Short or long, this testing is administered outside the normal testing that occurs in a classroom, meaning that instructional time is interrupted simply for the sake of district-level testing and data. Teachers and students become pawns for the central office bean-counters.

“That should be acceptable if the data is used to inform teachers about student performance and improve instruction.” Absolutely! As the great Kenan Thompson once said, “I mean…it should be.” And sometimes, it happens. SOMETIMES. When I worked under Dr. Teresa Stegall (see last week’s post), we operated under a mantra where “assessment should inform instruction.” But too often, the data is altogether ignored at the campus level, or worse, it’s used in a punitive fashion. Teachers are punished because of their students’ performance. Principals are called into meetings with lofty names like “Cadence of Accountability,” where they have to present their data on the most recent CBAs, defend their numbers, and lay out a plan of action if those numbers fall below expectations. Often, such meetings are incredibly adversarial, where central administrators are almost hostile toward campus principals. I know this because I used to support these principals as an assessment & accountability coordinator, either preparing them for an upcoming meeting or assisting them in the aftermath. The stories could be brutal and actually changed my perception of certain central administrators. The process often seemed like the old joke about “the beatings will continue until morale improves.” No productive or supportive environment, but plenty of accusations and ridicule to go around.

Do you really think, after suffering through such adversarial garbage, principals then go back to their teachers full of energy and support? Maybe the most noble ones do. But more likely, the message and tone received from central office is passed to teachers through badgering and negativity. Then we wonder why morale is down and teachers look to escape to other districts, or out of the profession entirely. But do we ever consider that “maybe this isn’t working?” Heck, no. “It’s what we’ve always done.” (At least for the past two decades.) This is the cycle that high-stakes assessment has begotten. And even as TEA, or the legislature, or the federal government, promise reforms and simplification, what I like to call the “testing industrial complex” (shout-out to the great President Eisenhower) continues to churn and roll along. And no one will have the actual courage to step up and admit that it’s harmful to students, that more and more testing literally crowds out time for teacher-student rapport, for teacher-teacher collaboration, for…you know, instruction. The politicians at the national, state, and local level would rather point to incremental gains that might be illusory and call them “miracles.” And the companies profiting from the system will be happy with that.

This whole sham lies at the core of whatever self-loathing I’ve experienced for the past dozen years. Yes, I tried to rise above the fray. I used hash tags like #respectinstructionaltime when communicating with teachers. I intentionally used humor to establish rapport with staff, letting them know that, as a so-called assessment professional, I understand how the proverbial “necessary evil” of testing was soul-crushing for them because it was sucking away time from the literal reasons they got into the profession. I even got into minor trouble at times for my humor (yet another story for another time), but I make no apologies, because my job was to help teachers, or principals, or fellow administrators, maintain their sanity. I stick by that. But I also stick by the belief that someone in a position of true authority needs the courage to stop this insanity. In the meantime, I ultimately decided that the grind was a bit too much, and not worth having it crowd out the time I wanted for other things in my life. No apologies there, either. And no apologies for using my voice to call out the system as the illusion that it is now that I am no longer constrained by it.

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On Leadership

I’ve been thinking a lot about leadership lately. No doubt some of the impetus is reflection on my own personal and professional experience, but I’ve also seen recent news items: one superintendent changing districts, another retiring, a campus principal and long-time friend receiving national recognition for a simple act. I’ve also heard personal stories from several other friends and acquaintances in leadership roles about their life changes. As someone who’s unabashedly and unapologetically philosophical, things like this get my brain going.

I happen to love leadership. Not from the standpoint of having the illusion of power or the ability to make decisions. I just love stepping up and helping a group get things done. Throughout my academic career, I gravitated toward leadership roles, from being on the old Safety Patrol in elementary school to serving as president of Kappa Kappa Psi, my honorary band fraternity, in college. When I was in high school, I became a drum major of the marching band, something I did through college. 7 years total as a drum major, plus 16 years teaching drum major/leadership camps to high school students. Those 16 years as an instructor are really why I became a teacher, because I enjoyed the learning process so much as I helped students discover their own abilities as leaders. It’s fair to say leadership as a pursuit has helped shape my life.

When I moved to central administration, I pursued a Master of Education degree in Educational Leadership (naturally). I actually had never previously anticipated getting a Master’s degree. I saw myself remaining a classroom teacher for roughly 30-40 years, then walking away. I didn’t want the disciplinary and other hassles that came with being an Assistant Principal, nor the politics that came with almost every position higher than that. But even as a classroom teacher, I was always willing to step up as a campus leader, so when the opportunity to split my work 50/50 as a teacher/“data specialist,” I took it. Campus Data Specialist meant I managed the state and local assessments for the campus. Not a lofty title, but it was leadership – getting things done, and helping teachers and students deal with a thankless but required task. Eventually, I moved up to District Testing Coordinator at central office – also a leadership role, now getting things done by helping campus administrators manage their own thankless but required tasks. And hence, the desire for an M.Ed. to help me fulfill the role better, and maybe move up the ranks if that was in the cards.

“Are you about to segue into a blathering list of all the things that are important qualities of a leader?”

No, you can find that kind of stuff with a simple web search and get all the leadership info your heart desires. What I can offer are a few simple guidelines about what good leadership is, based on my background and experience, along with some examples, good and bad, that I’ve encountered in my career.

So, the rules:

  1. Leadership boils down to two things: Inspiration and Influence. The leader inspires others toward the organization or group’s goals based on their conduct and character. The leader influences other sometimes by directing people to do specific things, but mostly by setting an example and doing those same things themselves.
  2. The central purpose of the leader is to get the appropriate things done for the group or organization and its members. That often means delegating to others who answer the proverbial call, but sometimes that may mean doing certain things yourself, and you’d better be willing to do it. There’s really only one question at center of the leader’s focus regarding decisions, actions, directives, or behavior: “Does this benefit the group or organization and its members?”
  3. If there’s an essential quality of leaders that should reign above all others, it is Humility. Once you’ve convinced yourself that you know all, or you’re above certain tasks or rules, or you should be the sole arbiter of everything, you’re lost. That’s not leadership; it’s power. Humble yourself and recognize the value of everyone in the group or organization.
  4. There are multiple “right” ways to do everything. Flexibility is essential for leaders. If you’re not willing to change things up, then you’re not learning. And if you’re not learning, you’re stagnant. Organizations are like rivers: the water’s going to flow as long as there’s a sufficient source. The leader’s role is really to elicit the flow from the source and guide it in the proper direction. But just like a river, the organization can meander over time as needed because of different approaches toward the goal. That’s not dysfunction, it’s progress.
  5. There’s really no such thing as a “servant leader” separate from “other” leaders. ALL leaders, if they’re doing it correctly, are serving the group or organization and its members. The term “servant leader” is just virtue-signaling lingo based on the notion that leadership is about power, so somehow the “servant leader” differentiates themselves. It’s a little disingenuous because it assumes the worst in people in leadership roles.

Having made those observations from my own experience, I am happy to say that the majority of the supervisors for whom I served were more good than bad as leaders. My first principal was a flawed individual, but his heart was in the right place, he meant well, and he was generally flexible about how to run the campus and made adjustments over time. My second principal was opening a new high school and was very much the picture of inspiration and influence. She thought more big-picture and allowed others to hammer out the details, and that collaborative approach and helped establish a strong culture for the campus. Principals 3 and 4 were similar to my first principal in that they were good-hearted and flexible, and both were remarkably free from serious flaws. So yeah, I experienced a relatively charmed professional life at my first two campus stops.

Normally, I don’t identify my specific campuses, districts, or any individuals in my posts because this blog is not about grinding axes; it’s about sharing insights and experiences. But I will occasionally break this rule to call out particularly positive individuals for their contributions to the education profession in general and to me, personally. Today I’ll break the rule three times. Here’s the first one: Dr. Teresa Stegall. She was my first boss in central administration as the Director of the department in which I served as Coordinator. In a word, Impeccable. She embodied every one of the five rules I listed above. The picture of grace and humility. I suspect she maintained such a great attitude because she had literally fulfilled every duty in the department by herself at one time or another in the past, and she had empathy not just for the department members, but for people across the entire district. She knew my own strengths and played to them, including making use of my interest in voiceover. She was also willing to do the work, as well, like the time she asked me to take an online course in Microsoft Access to enhance my skills, then took the course herself along with me because she knew she would also benefit. Her character was, and is, unimpeachable, and she remains both a friend and mentor to this day.

Dr. Stegall ultimately retired from her position as Director, and after some reorganization by the district (another long tale for another post), the department simply didn’t operate the same. So I left that district after 25 years for potentially greener proverbial pastures. And while the upper administrators in my new district were excited to bring my personality and skills to town, I soon found that the new leader of that department would be the absolute worst leader I encountered in three decades in public education. I won’t call out this individual by name (frankly, it may as well be Voldemort, because we do not speak that name), but I recently ran across my exit letter to district Human Resources upon leaving, and Holy. Cow.

The exit letter was very factual and intended to document as many problems with inconsistent and poor leadership of the department as possible. 9 pages, 5,300 words. (!!!) I won’t bore you with details, but here are a couple of highlights to give you a sense of the issues:

  • I was hired in part because I brought an innovative approach to training and communication, including better layouts for department documents. When I revised a state assessment annual overview to increase its visual appeal, I was told, “Well, the one we had seemed to work just fine for 7 years.” Uh-Huh. Lack of flexibility: check. Lack of humility: check. Lovely. Passive-aggressive, too? Bonus.
  • On another occasion, I requested a testing check-in document from a previous year and was told, “I’m not going to share last year’s because you’ll just change it, anyway.” Wow, throw in some more passive-aggressiveness as the cherry on top.

And where Dr. Stegall appreciated my voiceover aspirations and worked to involve them in my work, Lord Voldemort here seemed to resent them because it meant I wasn’t taking tasks home and working until 9:00pm like they were. What a disaster that year was.

Fortunately, the proverbial skies parted the following year as I returned to a high school campus and served under the next leader who I shall highlight, Laigha Boyle. She was easily the hardest-working principal for whom I ever worked and aLeo embodies the rules I listed earlier. In fact, if there’s a flaw in Mrs. Boyle’s approach to leadership, it’s probably that she was a little too willing to do some things herself at times. But I know as she progresses in her career, she’ll develop more willingness to delegate. I wish her luck, as she has departed Texas public education to continue her career in New Mexico.

But I will save the best for last: Jason Mutterer. You might have heard the name. He is a long-time friend and colleague of mine going back to the late 1990s when we were the only two male World Geography teachers at a dedicated ninth-grade campus for a larger high school. We actually entered the profession the same year, 1994. I tapped out after 31 years, but Jason is still going strong. He endured a fair amount of political nonsense on his journey in educational leadership, but he’s now the principal of the high school we both helped open in 2002, and he went viral on a national (and perhaps worldwide) scale this summer. Check it out if here you haven’t watched it. That action on his part – hand-writing a note to every senior for graduation – reveals his character, his commitment to his campus and its students, and his approach to leadership, in general. I’m certain his faculty and staff can tell stories that reflect his commitment specifically to them. I’ve known of his compassion and character for roughly three decades, and it’s been gratifying to see him persevere through hurdles in his own career, and now to see him receive well-deserved recognition for what is ultimately a simple but powerful gesture. It was a few months ago, but it still resonates, and it inspires others. But if you want to see the real reason Jason is such an effective leader, go to the 4:45 and 7:15 marks of the linked video and listen to him. Humility. “There’s a lot of people who could sit in this chair today.” He deflects the focus away from himself and talks about how his entire staff connects with students, how so many educators are doing similar things to serve their students, and we should celebrate them all. He managed to gain a free trip to New York and an appearance on the Today show, and he used the platform to showcase and uplift others. That, friends, is a leader.

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Ode to Presentation Skills

Let’s talk Presentation Skills. You should probably get some if you will present something to a group of people. Or at least if you ever intend to do so. Even if you won’t give any formal presentations, there still may be some value in knowing how to present something – a topic, a philosophy, an argument, even your career or life story. You never know when the moment will arise where it’s necessary to convey a message in a coherent, organized manner.

I attended a voiceover conference this past weekend and sat in on several presentations. It was pretty much all “sit-and-get” with opportunities for questions. As you might expect, it was a mixed bag. But then, these were primarily voiceover artists whose profession regularly calls for them to interpret and deliver the words given to them, not necessarily write their own stuff, so I took a forgiving mindset into the presentations. One presenter eschewed any slides on-screen altogether (quiet hallelujah) and just talked through his points and ideas. That was admittedly a risky approach, but he was knowledgeable enough that he could proceed in this way and help everyone in the room gain useful information. Others committed some proverbial cardinal sins of presentations. Clearly they were not quite polished enough, but that was fine for this particular conference.

The experience reminded me that I have given hundreds of presentations. I’m good at it, maybe even great. Last year, one of my colleagues, after a presentation I made to our faculty, suggested I should become a professional presenter (not sure there is such a thing besides emcee work; there’s usually an area of expertise as a foundation). It’s definitely a skill I’ve cultivated, but I had to get good at it: I taught government and economics for 19 years, classes that were required for graduation but were not exactly at the top of any student’s  wish list. Then when I moved toward administration, I specialized in testing for another 12 years. Testing, where the topics really got mind-numbing…I mean, “challenging” – mostly compliance-oriented training on such wildly popular topics as test security & confidentiality, testing irregularities, testing procedures, student accommodations, and so forth. No one was ever busting down my door begging for a presentation. Sometimes I did get requests from specific groups needing specific training on specific topics that I understood and they didn’t. But even then, the topics were Sahara-desert dry. The point is, I developed strong presentation skills because I knew that if I Ben-Stein-ed my way through it (you know Ben Stein, don’t you? “Anyone…anyone…Bueller?”), my audience is gone almost immediately. I had to be engaging, energetic, and focused on what the takeaway of this nonsense I’m talking about is. Otherwise it’s just boring political and bureaucratic talk, or “the dismal science,” or that awful testing stuff we have to do every year.

I have also attended hundreds of presentations, many of which were excellent, but most of which, honestly, were somewhere between mediocre and brutally bad. Some even seemed impressive but were actually terrible, like the time a curriculum supervisor was supposed to be talking about her district’s correlation between its curriculum development and assessment, but she A) talked so fast and B) spent so much time lavishing praise on her own district and its leadership, I wonder how anyone was supposed to decipher any kind of point from it, let alone glean ways that their own district could use this information. I found myself just wanting the PowerPoint in PDF format so I could try to figure out anything I could actually use. Just stop talking already and please let me read instead.

Did you see that dreaded word in the previous paragraph? PowerPoint. Insert your own shuddering reaction here. Don’t get me wrong – PowerPoint, Keynote, Google Slides, Canva, Prezi – they’re all wonderful, powerful tools capable of enhancing your presentation. But they are tools. At the end of the day, no one cares how impressive the builder’s hammer was; they care about what the builder actually built. And set of PowerPoint slides is only as effective as the message the presenter delivers with them. Transitions, animations, little GIFs embedded in Canva, etc. – they’re all nerdy and sometimes cool things in the programming, but they don’t make the presentation itself any more interesting. Sometimes they actually distract.

By now, you’re probably asking, “Okay, since you’re such a pro at presentations, what should everyone be doing to be like you, smart guy? HUH?!?” The answers are simpler than you might think. From my experience, a good presentation comes down to 5 core ideas:

  1. The old adage, “Begin with the End in Mind.” Don’t just start making slides or writing down notes to read from. Ask yourself, “what ideas or skills should people attending my presentation gain?” Someone who spends their time listening to you ought to get value out of that time. What value will you provide? Plan the takeaways for the audience before you plan the bullets and graphics and speaking points for yourself. Educators should easily recognize these as “learning objectives,” and you need them before you start deciding what to show and say.
  2. If you’re using slides, keep them limited, relevant, and visually engaging. No one, and I mean NO ONE, enjoys experiencing “Death by PowerPoint,” where the presenter hammers everyone with slide after slide, some of which they don’t even bother to feature. Better to have too few slides than too many. For slides that are primarily text, follow the 6×6 Rule (Maximum 6 lines of text, maximum 6 words per line), but be willing to break it if you need to. Use graphics when possible, but make sure the audience can decipher them and that they actually add to your message.
  • Side Note: I used to know a central administrator who insisted that PowerPoint presentations by administrators, particularly campus principals, should be graphics-only with zero text, because “the audience should be listening to words, not reading them.” This was one of the WORST takes I ever heard in my education career. (I believe the technical term is “horsesh**.”) Obviously, don’t beat people down with overloaded text on a slide, but graphics-only slides are useful for effect. They are NOT the norm.
  1. PREPARE what you’re going to SAY. Do Not Read your Slides to your Audience (unless they’re a bunch of toddlers who cannot read yet). Your job is to SPEAK TO the points that appear on-screen. Offer details, tell stories, embellish – these things engage the audience. Reading what everyone can already see is BORING, and it’s brutal for the audience. But I know why you’re reading the slides; I’ve been there. You’re not really prepared to speak. You drew up a slide deck, you don’t really know what to say with it, so you’re just turning your eyes to the screen and reading what’s there. Yes, that is better than fail-smiling to the audience because you’ve got no words, but only by about 0.03%. This is why PowerPoint literally has a Notes field for the Presenter view. If you have to, use it. Better to read prepared notes from your laptop at the podium than reading the words on the screen that they see. But YOU have to PREPARE those notes. If you’re not using slides, then you’d really better be prepared to speak, unless you happen to have the natural ability or the experience to start talking and find your way to a coherent message.
  2. Be Energetic, but Slow Down. There’s a thing in education known as “wait-time,” usually reserved for moments when you pose a question to students and need to pause and allow them to answer. Even in a sit-and-get presentation, wait-time is still essential. People can only process so much auditory and visual stimulation in a given timeframe. If that means you have to cut slides and speech for time, so be it. Edit yourself. Your content isn’t so important that 100% of it is absolutely critical and necessary. Figure it out. Speeding through things just to get through all your slides is poor presenting.
  3. Know your Technology. Use your Technology. If you’re personally managing the slides, know how to advance and reverse them ahead of time. It’s frustrating for your audience when you keep saying “Whoops” and struggling to find the correct frame. And USE THE MICROPHONE. You know that person who says, “I’m loud and ya’ll can probably hear me, so I’m not going to use this.” While it may be true that you’re loud, I’ve already stopped listening now, because you’re an idiot. They gave you a microphone so we can hear you better. Please use it. And if it’s a lavalier (the little clip-on with a transmitter box), please clip it to your shirt and belt like it’s designed. Holding a tiny lavalier microphone at your chin is NOT how it was designed, and you’re causing distortion. We cannot understand you. Ask for help before the presentation, lest you look like an amateur or worse. Figure it out.

When it’s all said and done, your presentation comes down to credibility. You as a presenter at least need to look like you know what you’re doing. Even if you enter the room as an expert in your field, if the audience cannot hear or understand you, if you talk too fast, if you’re just reading the slides, if you have too many slides, or if there seems to be no point to what you’re showing and/or saying, it all falls flat. The ability to maintain coherence and competence with the presentation itself builds credibility for you and ultimately strengthens your message so that people remember the information and are perhaps inspired to use it for their own benefit. And that’s the whole purpose of taking the time to make, and attend, a presentation.

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No Loyalty, No Problem

Let me begin this post with what might sound like a controversial opinion: K-12 public education is just a job. Yes, it can be a deeply fulfilling one because of the lives an educator can impact. But it is not a vocation. It is not a calling. It is not, as a speaker at a conference I attended several years ago said, “driven by a sense of service and altruism.” At least, it shouldn’t be. You may feel called to teach, as a general principle, or to work with a specific age group or type of student, but you were not called specifically to K-12 public education. One of the best pieces of professional advice I ever received: “Just remember, there’s no loyalty in this business.” One of my friends, a teacher and tennis coach, imparted this wisdom when we were colleagues during my first high school gig many years ago.

I don’t remember his exact words, but the general theme of that conversation: “You are replaceable. They may praise you and call you valuable, but things can turn immediately. They decide they want you out for some reason, or they want someone else in your position, and you’ll find yourself moving on, like it or not.” Years later, this person found himself honored by the district in its athletic hall of honor for his work as a coach. He graciously accepted the gesture, but I imagine he still remembered occasions when he may have felt unappreciated. Perhaps time has softened those memories; I don’t know. What I do know is 1) he was absolutely right, and 2) there’s really nothing wrong with that lack of loyalty.

Why do we value professional loyalty in the first place? My theory is that society was conditioned for this during the 20th century: Study hard, sign on with an employer, work hard, and you may well be with that same employer for your entire career. You’ll receive promotions and move up in the company until you reach whatever plateau is your professional destiny. Maybe they’ll relocate you at times, but you’ll be a “company man” (or woman) because you’ve worked so hard and given so much for them, and they reciprocate.

Historically, we view public schools in the same way. Look around at the local elementary schools around you. It’s likely that many of them are named for pillars of the district – people who served the local community in different roles, but in the same place, over decades, and the district named a campus after this person. We reward long-time educators who are our best. We also make it difficult to remove any educator who is mediocre or even bad. Once a given teacher has 3 years of experience, it’s nearly impossible to fire them – districts have to document problems clearly, set up growth plans, and create a path for dismissal over time to remove a teacher. For administrators, there’s more performance incentive and less protection; they work on a year-by-year basis, so the path to removal is much easier for principals and other admin if they underperform. 

But it’s not the 20th century anymore. Whichever path an educator chooses, there’s always an exit ramp, and in the 21st century, that ramp is used more frequently. My surprising take (perhaps not-so-surprising for those who know me well) is that there is nothing wrong with this lack of loyalty. Are there situations where a teacher may be “unfairly targeted” by a principal who documents every little thing and makes his/her life miserable for a few years in an effort toward removal? Absolutely. Are these situations rampant? Absolutely not. In my experience, administrators don’t have the time to target anyone. If you’re a teacher on a growth plan, you’re somewhere between mediocre and a full-on problem, and they’re ready, even desperate, to move on from you.

At the administrative level, things honestly get even crazier. Fact: Anyone with “Superintendent” in his/her title, whether as an Assistant, Associate, Deputy, or the head honcho, is as much a politician as an educator. Lots of other central administrators also have political realities embedded in the job. Politics are fickle; the politics of K-12 public education, even more so. Even the most committed, well-meaning educator moving to upper administration could find political shifts in a district affecting them. It is cruel, but it is reality. And the best administrators I’ve ever known were all deftly able to navigate the political waters while still maintaining a focus on making educationally sound decisions in their work.

Fact #2: This proverbial street (Loyalty Lane is a terrible pun, but it works) goes both ways. If you’re a teacher, of course you should care about your students and do your best to serve them. That’s the job. But at the end of the day, week, month, six weeks, semester, or year, you owe them nothing. Your loyalty is to the important people in your life – spouse, family, friends, etc. That’s it. If your campus or district is moving in a direction you cannot abide, make no apologies for seeking opportunity elsewhere. If another opportunity arises unexpectedly, do what is best for you and your family. Even if it’s best to leave the profession and you have that chance, take it. No apologies.

What if you’re an administrator? In the “era of accountability,” where your job performance may be dictated and judged by a (stupid) A-F letter grade in a politicized, oversimplified system that is changed every 5 years by law, you have minimal incentive to stay where you are and “fight the good fight” for a campus, district, or community. The politics of educational administration basically require you to preach about being a “servant leader” and about climate and culture, academic rigor, parent and community engagement, school improvement…all the latest buzzwords. Preach them. Heck, believe them, and do your best to fulfill those lofty concepts. But make no apologies for also leveraging those terms to your next promotion. Your loyalty is to the most important people in your life, not to a campus or district. Beyond doing your best in the here-and-now of your job, you owe them nothing. Maybe you’re content with where you are, and they’re happy with you, but things can turn in what feels like an instant. You could be blindsided and suddenly feel like you’re being forced out.

“Gosh, what a sad perspective on the system.” I am keenly aware of this, but it is a perspective on the system, not the profession. As a naive college student who wanted to teach because he was interested in the learning process itself and in helping students grasp abstract themes and concepts in social studies, I had an idealized view because I viewed teaching as my calling. (I still do.) I saw myself in the classroom for 30+ years, possibly in the same campus. Then I met with reality, and it was…nuanced. I was moved around against my preferences. I received promises that were ultimately not kept. I learned that I was a proverbial cog in the system, serving the needs of the campus or district when it suited them. But I also learned that my calling to teach was simply something that overlapped with the K-12 public education system, though not always 100%. And I learned to take control of my own destiny within that system – switching campuses, going after a promotion, eventually switching districts (twice), and finally, retiring on my own terms. My loyalty remained to myself and my family, and I did what was best for us. At my core, I remain a teacher, but where and how I teach is my choice now. And the 21st century affords me opportunities that are not confined to a bureaucratic system. K-12 public education was my career for 31 years. But in the end, it was just a job.

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Some Funny Things Happened on the Road to Retirement

It truly is about time I retired from public education. I’ve actually been planning this for several years now. I came across an old unpublished blog post from January 2021 in which I triumphantly stated that 2021 was “what I intend to be my last year as an educator.” 2021.

2020-2021 was my 27th year in education, when I hit the “magic number” for retirement in Texas: Age + Years of Service = 80. On August 7, 2021, I turned 53 years old, so from that day onward, I was officially eligible to exit my career. But 20-21 was also only Year 1 in my final district, and by August 7, I don’t think I was actually ready and was headed into Year 2 there. I enjoyed the campus where I worked immensely, had made many new friends, and was able to find fulfillment in my work as the Campus Testing Coordinator. So I pressed on…2021-2022, 2022-2023, then 2023-2024.

Each of those next 3 school years grew progressively more difficult. The district kept adding testing responsibilities while simultaneously gaslighting everyone with a message of “we’re actually doing less than years past.” I suppose, as George Costanza said, “it’s not a lie if you believe it.” The State of Texas was also adding new things at least every odd-numbered year. And I was burning out while yearning for more time for VO work, worrying that I might miss a critical chance, if only from the opportunity cost of time spent with education and not VO.

So in June 2024, I actually filed the paperwork. Sent a paper copy off via USPS Certified Mail – I still have the receipt. I informed my principal, who was moving onto a revised life and career in New Mexico. Also informed the staff. The timing actually seemed perfect – 30 years, weary, new principal, new superintendent – let’s make a break for it.

Into my office walks a former principal of mine from a previous campus, now a district administrator. “I want you to reconsider,” she says. We talk about the bureaucratic issues within the district, as well as my salary, and she pledges to work on a pay raise for me. I figure if she can make something happen with my pay that is worthwhile, I might dig deep and muster up another 3-4 years of effort. So I cancel my retirement in anticipation of her delivering. She didn’t. Or really, she couldn’t. With a new superintendent, she found herself professionally pidgeon-holed (districts called it “reassigned”) and therefore had very little leverage to influence my pay, at least to the level I hoped. “But you’ll like working with [new principal].”

And I did. Great guy, hard worker, dedicated. Trouble is, he found himself just trying to stay afloat amidst even more district bureaucratic nonsense. Everyone at our campus did. It became comical, and we joked about it openly. I joked about these things in e-mails to campus staff. And of course, that got me in a little hot water. “You sound like you’re pitting the campus against the district.” No, the district is destroying our morale, and I’m trying to show empathy with our teachers through humor. (But that’s another story for a later post…or maybe a podcast episode once I get that going.)

So after year 31, I filed the paperwork again (this time electronically). Then a central admin position comes open in another nearby district – “Director of Assessment & Accountability.” Way back in 2018, this was where I was headed in my first district before the rug was yanked out from under me (Another story for still another post.) I apply. I contact this district’s superintendent, also a former principal of mine. (No, I am NOT above leveraging old professional relationships, and neither should you be.) I get an interview. Probably the best I ever did in an interview. The committee lead calls and tells me it was a great interview, the committee was very impressed, and he needs to contact my references next.

Now you might be thinking, “What about voiceover? What about THE DREAM?!? Weren’t you ready to commit full-time?” Yes, but this central office job would’ve been a substantial pay increase and set me up for an even more lucrative retirement situation in just a few years. I owe it to myself to try, at least. And if this job is meant to be, I can cancel my retirement again and stick it out a little longer. And a week after the interview, it’s looking like that shall be the plan. They want to hire me. Then another week goes by. And another. And finally, I get the e-mail saying “we have decided to move forward with another candidate for this role.” Probably the guy with an Ed.D.; districts love doctorates among central administrators. (Yet another post or episode.)

“Oh, no! I’m so sorry.” Please don’t feel sorry for me – no condolences, no regrets. I applied, I put in appropriate effort and performed well, but that other district went a different direction. I like to think they’ll regret not hiring me, but it doesn’t matter. In the end, I know from experience that central office work is just a little soul-crushing (wow, FOUR future posts), so that potential additional pay would’ve likely come with…suffering. And now, I simply have to hustle as a freelance VO talent, keep building my skills, market and find clients, and do the work. If I do it right, I may be able to cover the potential difference in salary from that job, and then some. And because I enjoy VO, there won’t be any soul-crushing or suffering. It truly is about time I retired from public education.