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best practice: a bad day at the office

Best practice? Bad day at the office I don’t actually have an office, and it was more like four months than a day, and it went something like this.

Best practice? Bad day at the office

I don’t actually have an office, and it was more like four months than a day, and it went something like this.

I am a music facilitator often specialising in pre school, but I do a lot of primary work too, mostly from year 2 downwards.

Last school year (2011/2012) I was hired by a primary school to deliver music sessions to their nursery, reception and year 1 classes. I was given a contract for the school year and with year two staff annoyed I wasn’t also allowed time to work with them.

Within three months they cancelled my contract and gave me four weeks notice.

I thought it would be fun to reflect upon my failings and see what I have learnt to apply in other situations, and so this is an autopsy of that event.

Control

The reason the music sessions were cancelled, I was told, was that there was not enough control on the classes. They would have rather all of the children sat in a circle and clapped and tapped in time and in vocal silence, not interrupting but listening intently to me ‘teach them’.

To give a bit of perspective, we did do some tapping, clapping and singing in circles, but we also did a lot of noisy stuff, ideas shouted out, jumping, moving, dancing to other children solo singing. There was a reason for this; I had recently created a new mantra for myself (being a pretentious musician I often create mantras for myself, then discard them without completion for a new one) and it was “art is created on the edge of chaos”. I know. Told you I’m pretentious. It’s right though, we spend too long mimicking and repeating patterns and shapes that become a cage instead of a framework, and we simply become imitators and we forget to create. Not that I think repetition is bad, or wrong, its integral to how we grow our art, how we rehearse and hone our skills, but its not the creation, the creation is the true art, the rest is lines and shades and boundaries. As necessary as a skeleton, but as pointless as lacking a heart.

So it was my plan all along you see, chaos, let the kids run wild and express themselves. Have deliberate loose boundaries and let them sing their hearts out. Make something beautiful.

But I hadn’t told anyone. Not a soul. I had this plan in my head, a shape to my sessions that I hoped would engage the children and show them they can make their own art instead of copying from boards and books and staring agog at the cardboard dullness of X factor and its ilk, and I hadn’t told anyone. The staff had no clue what I was doing, and so it just looked like mayhem, expensive mayhem when you take into account the harsh slashing of their budgets, a waste of their finite resources, and this, this takes me to my next heading….

Communication

Communication. The exchanging of information my dictionary tells me. It’s a golden rule of anything in life involving more than one person; team sports, marriage, dancing, rally driving, two man fishing (I may have made that one up) and I failed, I failed at it miserably. In not letting the staff know my logic behind my sessions, my hard thought out approach to creating an environment that would allow spontaneity, I simply allowed for no understanding for the staff who had a heap of pressure on them already, who, I imagine, just wanted the best for the children, and in not letting them see the root of my intent, I failed them in my communication. This, once again, leads on to my next point….

Building credit to get beyond “only as good as your last gig”

Often in music you are only as good as your last gig I think. Play a stinker and people who see it remember it. I refused to go and see the band Mansun again for ages on the mid 90s because I saw them play and they sucked. Eventually I did, and they played a blinder, but that terrible gig stuck. With one off workshops, or small runs of them, if you have a terrible one staff remember, you have to be on top of your game a lot. I have been fortunate to have been working at a few places regularly for a long time now, years on a weekly basis at a couple, and I’ve built up credit. They trust what I do because they have seen the impact of music on their children and so let it slide if I have an ‘off day’ and believe in me when they don’t ‘get what I’m doing’ at first. But this takes time.

In retrospect I think I went in to the school we are discussing with a rather cocky attitude, expecting them to give me credit I had not earned. I should have kept it simple and won them over, discussing theorise and attitudes, pointing out impact and behaviour change as the year progressed. I also, if I’m honest, took on a lot of work that year, and some of my practice suffered. I didn’t bring my best to some of the lessons at that time, and in my regular schools they let that pass, having and understanding of my situation (as well as taking a lot of work on, I had a new born baby into the mix) and the school that let me go, at times, deserved better from me.

I was naive, and, in the clear tradition of this article, I was also rather naive in my next point…

Politics

Schools have a lot of politics. Who talks to whom.  Dirty looks shot across rooms. Whispers behind backs. Manipulation and even bullying at the worst places. Any of us who have worked in schools have seen all of the above (not at all places of course, but there are, sadly, traces of it at even the best schools I have seen)

In a more concise sentence: staff are as bad as the kids when it comes it not getting on.

In this school I noticed there was a tension between departments and year group staff, and at times I felt I was in the middle of a little venom.

I know this happens. I know that as an ‘outsider’ I have to tread carefully in schools, acting gracefully within the tensions from over worked, stressed and pressured staff. But I simply didn’t apply any sense to this situation.  I was cocky and blaze. Not that I am sure that I could have made a difference, and not that I should have taken sides, but I do feel I ended up with a number of staff thinking I was on ‘the other side’ to them, the ‘property’ of another year group, building more tension into their daily interaction with each other.

Stand up or Lay down.

In talking with a number of my fellow music workshop practitioners about this situation, especially in regards to the school cancelling a year long contract very early with little warning, there was mixed feelings about what I should do about it. One very experienced colleague said I should write to the head and the board of governors outlining the poor approach to cancelling the contract and maybe speaking with the musicians union about breach of contract. Personally, after a lot of thought, I decided to do nothing, except move on to other work. The truth is we work on our reputation and a battle with a head teacher, in my eyes, would simply end up in a tit for tat slagging off match, possibly with a lot of mis-truths said on their behalf (I have sadly seen how leaders of such instates defend their territory on a number of occasions, and its not always honestly) achieving me little except a reputation as a trouble maker, and I would rather just look for more work off the back of the reputation I have already built from the schools that use me time and again.

And so, to conclude.

Talk about it. Let schools know what you are doing.

Look to build relationships with schools, ask what they want, what the didn’t like or didn’t understand and point out even the most obvious of impact the music brings to their children.

Pick your battles.

And, most importantly, art is made on the edge of chaos, so find ways to let the kids go crazy.

Oliver Armstrong.