So, You Had a Bad Year. Now What?

A bad year is usually more than one rough concert, one missed deadline or one bad week. Sometimes you can point to the cause immediately: a medical issue, family situation, divorce, marriage, new baby, construction at school, staff turnover, boundary changes or a feeder school closing. We can simply call these things “life.” Other times, nothing dramatic happened. You just look around in May and realize that the program doesn’t sound like it used to.

I had a year when stuff happened. My personal life required more of my time and attention, and I gave it that time. I still taught, and dealt with the required tasks, but the band suffered in quality.

That was difficult for me to admit because experienced teachers know what a healthy program looks like — and mine wasn’t there.

Once I recognized that and was in a better place to deal with it, I worked on the program. Here’s what helped.

Identify What Changed

One poor contest performance is simply that — a poor contest performance. Three rough performances, declining attendance, inconsistent communication and rehearsals that regularly start 10 minutes late may be a pattern.

Look at the program without trying to defend it. What changed?

Maybe classroom management isn’t as consistent. Students take longer to settle. Rehearsal routines have disappeared. You used to have music ready two weeks early; now you’re passing it out while students are sitting in front of you.

Maybe parent communication became sporadic. Invoices are sitting on your desk. Instrument repairs are backed up. The music library went from perfectly filed to roughly piled. Mine can look like that even during a good year.

Some changes become obvious only when you compare them to how they used to be. I know what time rehearsal is supposed to start. I know whether students normally walk in and get ready without being reminded four times. I know whether I usually answer an important email within a day or discover it three days later while looking for something else.

Specific details give you something to work with. “The program feels off” is tough to fix. “Rehearsal started late 12 times this month” identifies a problem. Write that down.

Look at rehearsal procedures, attendance, communication, finances, uniforms, equipment, recruiting, feeder relationships, calendars, lesson planning, inventory and music selection.

Don’t try to fix everything while you’re making the list. First, you have to figure out where things are.

Take Care of the Important Things First

It’s all important, but some things are more important.

When things get difficult, sometimes all you can manage are the tasks that keep the program running and keep you employed, which include:

• Submitting attendance.
• Completing required reports.
• Handling IEP and 504 responsibilities.
• Supervising student.
• Covering performances.
• Providing administrators with what they needed.

For me, survival mode wasn’t obvious at first. The concert still happened. Students still walked onstage in the right clothes. No one in the audience knew I had handled three things that afternoon that I normally would have completed several days earlier.

Continuing to produce the visible parts of my job made it difficult to recognize that the systems underneath them had become less reliable. When people started to say, “The band doesn’t quite sound like they used to” or “He used to be really good at getting back to me right away,” you can be sure that others will notice.

If a personal situation is affecting your work, address it. Get medical care. Talk to a counselor. Take care of your family. Make the appropriate administrator aware. You don’t have to divulge every detail of your personal life, but you do need to give people who need to know enough information to help when help is necessary.

Then, divide your list of problems into three categories:

1. Must be fixed now.
2. Needs attention soon.
3. Can wait.

Overdue bills and required paperwork belong in the first group. Reestablishing rehearsal procedures may belong there, too.

Reorganizing 20 percussion instruments probably does not. The triangle can stay in the wrong door years of for another semester.

You Don’t Have to Fix Everything at Once

Even though you’ll identify all the problems, you may only have the time and energy to address two. Knowing what a good program looks like — especially if you compare your current group to what you had before — can be frustrating.

You know rehearsal pacing needs work. Communication is behind. Recruiting needs attention. So does inventory. The instrument room is a mess. Recognizing all this does not create more hours in the day.

There’s also a temptation to come back in August with a 14-point recovery plan:

• New rehearsal procedures.
• New attendance system.
• New parent newsletter.
• Full inventory.
• Updated handbook.
• Recruiting visits.
• Reorganized library.
• Better lesson plans.
• New filing system.

By the third week of school, running the recovery plan takes more time than the tasks that are on the list.

Instead, fix two things well enough that they become normal again. Once those systems stop requiring so much attention, move to the next two.

I’d start with classroom and rehearsal routines. Choose specific actions that you can see and measure:

• “Students are seated with instruments ready three minutes after the bell”
• “Post the rehearsal order before class and begin the first exercise at the same time every day”
• “Send one parent update every Friday by 4 p.m.”

Rebuild the Routines That Make the Program Work

Start with the daily systems that make rehearsal, communication and basic operations predictable. Then pick a few routines and run them consistently for several weeks. Here are some to consider:

1. Students enter, get equipment and begin a posted warmup.
2. Attendance is taken the same way every day.
3. The first five minutes of rehearsal follow the same structure.
4. Announcements happen at one designated point instead of interrupting rehearsal six times.
5. Broken instruments go to one location with a repair tag.
6. Purchase requests and invoices go into one folder.
7. Parent communication goes out on one scheduled day.

This is all boring stuff — but a healthy program depends on a lot of boring things happening consistently.

I’ve had stretches where I thought I needed a major reset, but I really just needed to start rehearsal on time for 10 straight days. As a veteran teacher, that sounds almost embarrassingly simple — but it works.

Measure What Is Getting Better

A long list of unfinished work can hide improvement. Instead of reviewing your list daily (or worse, multiple times a day), check it once a week and ask yourself specific questions:

• Did rehearsals start on time more often?
• Did I communicate when I said I would?
• Did I process the bills sitting on my desk?
• Did I contact one feeder director?
• Did I fix one system instead of worrying about six?

If rehearsal started on time twice during the first week and four times the next week, that’s improvement. If I sent the Friday update three Fridays in a row after going a month without one, communication is becoming dependable again.

At this point, you’re looking for evidence that the program is becoming stable again.

Give the Program Time to Become Healthy Again

Rebuilding takes more energy than maintaining something that was already working. You can’t walk back into the band room in August and immediately operate the program the way you did three years ago. Trying to do that may create the same problems again.

Instead, you may need to consider fewer events, more approachable music or even saying no to something you’d normally do.

You don’t have to lower the quality you expect from students. You can still expect good tone, preparation, appropriate behavior and musical growth while performing one fewer concert or choosing literature that can be taught well in the available rehearsal time.

As for the administrative workload, maybe inventory waits until winter break or one recruiting idea gets postponed or the handbook gets updated next summer instead of during the first week of school.

Once the basic routines become automatic again, they take less energy. Then you can deal with the next problem.

A Bad Year Doesn’t Have to Become the New Normal

You may not get back to where you were right away, but you can steady the ship and stop the program from continuing to hit rough waters.

Your program didn’t get here overnight, and you won’t clean it up overnight either. You’ll still have some difficult rehearsals, and things may slip through the cracks. You’ll even have uncover an invoice that was due a year ago — groan!

Keep working on your list. Fix what needs attention first, make the next routine dependable and finish the next necessary task.