To be Proud or Happy?

There is a saying that band directors in Texas often tell themselves (and their assistants):

"If a band gets a I, the credit goes to the kids. If a band gets anything less, the blame goes to their director."

There are several flaws with this statement (which is not the point of this post, therefore I won't elaborate on them), but ultimately the idea has merit. If my band gets anything less than a I, then I didn't do my job to the best of my ability.

My post on which march to play at contest spurred a couple comments as well as a couple emails. Every person that responded said that I should go with the hard one and hope for the best.

That's what I'm gonna do, and let me tell you why.

I'm in the business of helping kids learn how to challenge themselves. In this current age of "anything I can't get right now probably isn't worth getting," kids are crippling themselves in thousands of ways every day. The easy way is the way that gets the job done. BUT, the easy way misses the beautiful sunset, or the goosebump moments in a concert, or the once in a lifetime moment that you tell your kids about later.

Here's what I said to my 8th graders on Friday (almost word for word):

"On a scale of 1 to 10 (10 being the hardest piece you could play and get a I, and 1 being the easiest piece you could play and get a I), March of the Belgian Paratroopers is probably about a 10.2. Probably. In other words, it might be TOO hard for us. So the question is, do we work our rearends off for a piece that we love but could get a II, or do we play something easy so we can tell our friends that we're good. Seriously, how cool would it be if we played something easy and got a I on it? Not very, right? However, how cool would it be...if...we played something that was honestly too hard for us...and STILL made a I? How cool would THAT be?"

Twenty-five 8th graders will build a memory at 1:45pm on Wednesday. We'll find out then what lesson they will learn.