The Lead Sheet

One of my biggest frustrations is students skipping band performances or practices because they “need to work.” In their first jobs they ever hold, students regularly struggle to reconcile their demanding personal work schedules with an equally demanding marching band schedule. Oftentimes, the issue is not as much demanding bosses as much as it is a lack of student training on how to recognize their own control they have over the situation. Many times parents, teachers, and employers assume that student workers magically have the skill and courage to request off work without the proper training and guidance when this is clearly not the case. In this entry, I would like to offer a printable guide you can use to help students recognize their own agency to request time off from work in a way that 1) doesn’t compromise hours and 2) will keep the student in good standing with their employer. Before I begin, let me make this one very important point: some students actually do need to work

Band directors wear many hats. Teacher, facilities manager, repairman, web developer, graphic designer, accountant, historian, carpenter, and public relations officer just to name a few. After “teacher,” the hat I think I wear second most is “therapist.” I teach 5th grade through seniors, but it seems to consistently be middle school students who are the ones reaching for the security blanket I keep in my office specifically for crying children. (It's a soft blue wolf blanket I got from Walmart.) Over the years, I found myself having the same conversation over and over again with different students. From all of these conversations, I have found that students commonly benefit from one of three revelations: 1) the Golden Rule is wrong, 2) story, not action, fuels emotion, and 3) The Relationship Cup analogy. My hope is that the way I have worded these three revelations may aid you when you talk with your own students, or when training your own student leaders on how to recognize and