The Benefits of “Stealing”

Mrs. Howard dressed well. She drove a nice car. Being a mid-1990s public school teacher seemed to take care of what she needed — three pairs of flats and a Toyota Camry. Then she said this: “The best teachers steal everything they can.”

Whoa, my 11-year-old brain thought. Things must be rough for Mrs. Howard to resort to a life of crime. Sure, you gotta keep up with the middle-class Joneses, but to stand in front of a bunch of 5th graders and blatantly admit that you just steal everything? What kind of example was she showing here?!

I stopped daydreaming and started listening again. What Mrs. Howard meant was much simpler: Mrs. Johnson down the hall did a warm-up drill that worked. So, Mrs. Howard is going to use that for our class, too.

Not nearly as interesting, but a helpful time-saving lesson that sunk in once I started teaching.

What She Actually Meant

Somewhere along the way, teachers believed that all their teaching material must come from within. An internal voice would whisper, “If it’s not an original lesson, rubric or method of instruction, you aren’t really teaching.”

Some teachers feel like they will be judged or fret that someone will notice that this particular worksheet came from an educator newsletter. In reality, nobody thinks this. In fact, almost all teachers have as little time as you do to worry about what’s going on in your class.

If a colleague’s seating chart system works, use it. If another director’s warm-up sequence gets better and faster intonation results, run it. No, you didn’t invent these activities — but you can still implement them for results.

The Math on Original

During my first year teaching, I thought everything had to be polished and original. I spent two hours wrestling with Microsoft Word to format permission slips. Every time I’d move one text box, four others would jump off the page, and fonts seemed to magically change to Comic Sans and Wingdings. I completed the permission slip — eventually. The next year, when I had to change a date, same maddening issues.

On the flip side, my colleague, a master educator with 30 years in the field, had a different approach. I watched in shock — awe, really — when he printed out last year’s permission slip, whited out the date, handwrote in this year’s date, did a once-over, and then copied and handed it out. In total, it took maybe 10 minutes.

AI has helped cut down on some of these mundane tasks. You could get to a happy medium between a custom permission slip and a handwritten Sharpie version. But it’s also easy to get stuck in feedback loops with AI, or, even worse, spend even more time fixing things AI got wrong. If you still spend 90 minutes “making it your own” — tweaking fonts, rewording sentences that were already fine — that’s not thoroughness.

Teaching and planning are your areas of expertise and where you need to be on task. The other stuff just needs to get done — and not by anyone in particular. You’re a specialist, so direct your time accordingly.

A 24-Hour, 365 Buffet of Options

The Midwest Clinic posts its handouts online. So do most state conferences. Full sessions on nearly anything you’re stuck on — written by people who’ve spent decades solving the exact problem that is sitting in front of you.

Low brass flat all November? Check out Nicholas Santoro’s session called “Just Say ‘Oh’: Improving the Sound, Intonation and Response of Your Brass Section.” Somebody already diagnosed this. You don’t have to.

Most directors know the archive exists. In December, at Midwest, they’re all over it. By March, however, when that same section is still dragging down every chorale, it’s easy to forget the fix might already be sitting in a PDF from three months ago or even three years ago.

Before you build your own approach to a rehearsal problem from scratch, check if someone already wrote it and handed it out for free. I keep a Post-It on my desk that says, “Midwest Clinic Archives.” It’s there to remind me that this option exists before I start reinventing something at 9 p.m.

Where the Stolen Time Goes

Reclaiming time is one thing. But that reclaimed time has to go somewhere.

Time: The sectional you didn’t prep because you spent Sunday reformatting a flyer that a band parent volunteer or section leader could have completed.

Relationships: The five minutes after class a kid needed, that you didn’t have because you were still “polishing” a document nobody but you will ever notice.

Health: The lunch break you skip every day. The dinner you ate standing at the copier because being original until 9 p.m. felt like the responsible choice. Most importantly, the health cost of burning out early, of quitting a job that you were good at because you spent your reserves on things that never required your specific talent in the first place.

Give Credit Where Credit Is Due

Your word and your reputation matter. “Stealing” means adapting structures — trying out systems, warm-up sequences, grading scales or a different rehearsal format.

It doesn’t mean taking a colleague’s original worksheet and passing it off without asking. If it’s copyrighted material — printed or digital teaching materials — always maintain legal compliance. But for ideas or teaching techniques, a quick “Do you mind if I try this with my group?” goes a long way toward showing professionalism and respect. When you do borrow something, say where it came from. Tell your kids. Tell the colleague.

It costs nothing, and it’s the reason people keep handing you things worth “stealing” next time.

It’s Cliché for a Reason

“Long tones and lip slurs help your players build tone, endurance and improve intonation.”

“Play more chromatics with your woodwinds to help with their finger dexterity.”

“Have your percussionists warm up on eights, and make sure both hands sound the same.”

Every director has heard these things about a thousand times. Because they’re true. Directors have been saying these clichés for years because these techniques keep working — not because nobody’s thought of anything else.

Cliché doesn’t mean wrong. Some things are simply correct and repeated so often it stopped sounding impressive.

Next time you’re building something from nothing — a lesson, a form, a fix for a section that won’t tune — first ask if it already exists. It usually does.

You don’t earn your job back by reinventing another permission slip or rebuilding a fix for a low brass section that someone already handed out for free. You earn it in the room, with your kids, doing the thing only you can do that day.

So, steal the rest. See what you can do with the time you get back.