Below is a short video from the NAfME.  Hope everyone has a wonderful holiday season and enjoys the Christmas vacation!

How many of you know this old Sunday School song?

The composer, Ina Duley Ogden, wrote this well-known song after a particularly disappointing development in her life.  She had been asked to participate in an evangelistic service in what is now recognized as one of the most important cultural phenomenons of the last century.  Most of us know that the New York Chautauqua was what spawned a national movement to provide cultural – mostly music – experiences for people in small towns across the country.  What many of us don’t realize is that the whole Chautauqua program came about as a result of a series of evangelistic “camp meetings.”

Anyway, Miss Duley (later, Mrs. Ogden) was invited to participate in one of Billy Sunday’s (if you don’t recognize the name, “Google it”….it’s worth the effort) tent meetings at Chautauqua.  However, just before she was to leave, her father was involved in a horseless carriage accident and she was forced to stay home to help him.  Her dream of having a huge impact on hundreds – maybe thousands – of people at the Tent Meeting were dashed.

In her disappointment she came to realize that she could also serve and affect the lives of those who were close to her …even if it wasn’t in the way she had imagined.

I’m not suggesting that we should become complacent in our current circumstances – or that we shouldn’t work toward our dreams.  We can, however, help those closest to us and work to provide them the best programs we can.  We often never know who our work is affecting the most …nor do we even know how our teaching is being perceived by our students.  Seldom do we know at the moment it is happening the long-range effects we have on students.  If we’re lucky, we may see (or hear about) the results of our teaching efforts many years after it happens.

Brightening the corner where we are seems to be a pretty solid teaching goal, doesn’t it?

Copyright – JB Gilliland 2012

As the keeper of family history, one of the few really “priceless” artifacts in my possession is a book that my great-aunt Jean kept during the First World War.

My great-aunt was an eccentric and somewhat of a maverick.  As a young girl of about 14 from a large (and poor) Scottish family, she got a job working in a textile mill near Newton Stewart, Scotland – because she knew the owners of this mill had another in Canada.  In due course, she volunteered to go to Canada to work in the mill near Toronto and was transported – at company expense – to Toronto, where, after a very short time, she quit the mill to attend nurse’s training …which was her long-term goal, all along.  In a clever (and typically Scottish) move, she got the money to pay for nursing school, by joining the Canadian Army.  The only flaw in her otherwise brilliant financial and educational plan, was that she did not foresee the breakout of the Great War.  As a Canadian army nurse, Aunt Jean was shipped back to Europe to join the British Expeditionary Force’s effort to defeat Germany.

For the duration of the war Aunt Jean was one of hundreds of nurses and doctors assigned to “the barges” – the boats that transported wounded Allied soldiers from the continent to stationary hospitals along the Scottish and English coasts.  This was incredibly horrible duty – but nothing in comparison to her assignment in the last 14 months of the war, when she served on board a hospital train traveling immediately behind the British front lines – very close to the trenches.

ANYWAY, Aunt Jean kept an autograph book in which are inscribed the signatures of doctors and nurses with whom she served and many of the wounded for whom she cared.  Most soldiers signed their name and then identified the unit with which they served.  Some composed poems, made funny comments, or included little drawings – and some wrote quite moving things about their experiences.  All of them, however, left their mark – via their autograph – in the book and on Aunt Jean’s life.

When I thumb through Aunt Jean’s almost 100-year-old autograph book, I often wonder what happened to the people to whom those signatures belonged.  Some of them died a long way from home  – others, like Aunt Jean went on to live long, productive lives and had a huge impact on those they touched many years after the war ended.

Our teaching is a lot like Aunt Jean’s autograph book.  We make our marks on the lives of students without knowing how anything is going to turn out.  Our influence may be fleeting or lasting …but it’s there for all time, none-the-less.  More importantly, because we can’t know the effects we are having on students, we must leave them with “autographs” that are positive and uplifting.

Copyright – JB Gilliland 2012

“If I have seen further, it is by standing on the shoulders of giants.”

– John of Salisbury, 1159 in Metalogicon; later paraphrased by Sir Isaac Newton

Another of my favorite college professors and mentors passed away recently.  That death is a natural part of life should not come as a shock to someone of my age.  The fact that my instructors are now in advanced years is also no surprise – especially when I am reminded (thanks to aching muscles, gray hair, and ill-mannered family members) that I completed undergrad school almost 40 years ago.  Life events such as this, however, often trigger thoughts and speculation regarding the direction of our careers had it not been for the instruction, encouragement, and support of these former teachers.  Self-absorbed and conceitedly, we want to believe that our professional success is the result of our own initiative, ability, and persistence.  While these personal traits are admirable and certainly contributed to whatever success we may have achieved, if we’re honest we must admit that we owe more to our teachers than we possibly could have imagined when we sat in their classrooms.

Who we are and what we do is the result of an amalgamation of educational experiences – most of them extraordinarily positive.  The influence of those experiences affects and informs our own pedagogical techniques and instructional programs.  Educational research suggests that we teach in the way we were taught.  I like to think, however, that the classroom success occurs when we “reflect upon and revisit” the more positive instructional influences in our past.  Further, the professional development opportunities through which we seek to expand our instructional methods and skills help us re-examine and re-order our “bag of tricks” to remain current, to meet the changing demands of today’s students, and to improve our teaching.

Teaching – and specifically teaching music – affords some unique opportunities to “affect the future” and to stand on the shoulders of giants in the process.  Each of us can name at least one other music teacher who has had an indelible influence on our life and our practice.  Perhaps you have taken a few minutes to send a note, card, or even an e-mail to that person, thanking her/him for providing – often unknowingly – something of lasting value to you.  In my own case, a few years ago I sent letters to several teachers who had significant and lasting effects on my teaching – and my life.  I’m grateful that the list included the professor-friend who recently passed away.

As professional music educators, we recognize the importance of providing musical experiences through effective instructional strategies to enrich students’ lives.  At the time, few of us will know the long-term effects of our work; we understand, however, that our efforts can – and will – pay dividends to someone off into the future.

The current state of music education in Wisconsin – and certainly the rest of the nation, as well – is the result of the life’s work of many, many teachers, college professors, and administrators who have set extremely high standards for those who have followed them.  We all have an obligation to continue and expand upon this legacy of excellence in music education….no matter at what point we find ourselves in our career.  By remaining current in the profession or and continuing to provide quality music education for our students we will join that long line of earlier “giants” and will also exert positive and long-lasting influences on our students . . . and – somewhere in the future – their students, as well.

Copyright 2012 – J.B. Gilliland