The Journey (the process)

The Journey... The older I get the more I understand and appreciate the fact that life is about the journey. The process.  The everyday doing of the things that we all need to do. The good decisions, the hard decisions and the mistakes.  It's what life is all about. It is my life's journey and mission to help adolescents learn to make good decisions in their daily lives and I am so incredibly blessed to be able to use the beautiful medium of music to help them learn these things in my classroom. Please continue to dialogue with your son or daughter about life in the Creekside Choir room. We are a microcosm of real life.  Choir class is the class that comes closest to what a real life job/career will look and feel like in adulthood (a bold statement, I know). We have groups/teams (sections within each choir) that need to coordinate with each other.  We have departments (different choirs throughout the day) who all need to be on the same page to create our finished product that has a very specific deadline. We cannot postpone or delay this deadline.  In Math class, if one member of the team fails to live up to expectations, it only affects that team member's grade (pay/promotion/demotion, ect). In a music class, if a team member makes a bad decision, the entire product is potentially reduced in overall quality. WE ARE A TEAM! While making this point in class the other day, I referenced a friend of mine who is an engineer at a plant that manufactures transmissions for vehicles. A little while later I noticed a couple students goofing around while we were running one of the songs. I quietly mentioned to them, "you have caused our transmission to have a defect and it now needs to return to the factory for warranty work which will cost our company more money." I love making real world analogies like these for the kids. I'm a big picture guy.