Yes, it is September 2007 and you are beginning a new year of music education as a band director. As a high school director you are spending a lot of time outside with the band. Don't forget the sunscreen and water. I feel sure that no matter how much you remind your students about their own sunscreen and water, you will need to have both on hand for the students who forget to bring theirs to rehearsal.

Those of you who are Junior High School or Middle School directors have the challenge of assisting your returning students as well as working with incoming beginners and their instrument selections. Preparing music folders and classroom instruction books with, of course, that old and continuing problem of keeping up with issued state textbooks.

A program I follow when I was teaching went something like this:

• Be sure I had my program well organized.
• Know the curriculum I was to follow and planned my daily schedule to meet those objectives.
• Yes, a daily lesson plan. If I had to be absent from class, a substitute teacher could go on with my daily teaching schedule.
• Maximize my class time without a lot of philosophizing and non-related chatter. Killing time murders opportunities.
• Give my students a written schedule of events for which they should plan.

I like this quote from General Colin Powell about being a success:

There are no secrets to success. Don't waste time looking for them. Success is the result of perfection, hard work, learning from failure and loyalty to those for whom you work.

Another thought I learned along the way is what I think band directors are all about:

One hundred years from now it will not matter what kind of car I drove, the kind of house I lived in, how much money I had in the bank or earned in my life, nor what my clothes looked like. But one hundred years from now, the world may be a little better because I was important in the life of a child.