I recently retired from a long career as a public-school music teacher. Although I loved my job, there were times when I thought I’d collapse from exhaustion – and it was usually during May. No month is busier for a music teacher than May. December can be rough, and March can be madness if you’re involved with the musical, but May is sheer mayhem!
By May, seniors are done. They just want to graduate and get on with life. It’s an affliction we refer to as senioritis. Juniors, on the other hand, are excited. Soon they’ll be the seniors and will “rule the school.” Sophomores (the wise fools) are at a crossroads. They’re ready to leave foolishness behind and become respectable upper-class students. And those dear first-year students – they’re just thrilled that soon they’ll no longer BE those “dear first-year students.” Everyone is looking forward to something in the month of May.
As a music teacher, I was looking forward to...stress! My calendar was so full in May that there were days I would leave the house at 5:30 in the morning and not return until 11:00 at night. May included a junior high band concert, a senior high band concert, a jazz ensemble concert, an awards banquet night at which the jazz ensemble played, a jazz ensemble field trip to a nearby college, several in-school assemblies, a budget vote night performance, daily marching band rehearsals in the parking lot for the TWO Memorial Day Parades we had to march in neighboring towns, a NYSSMA Majors competition for my junior high band, and a Trills & Thrills Festival for my senior high band. Trills & Thrills included a two-hundred-mile road trip on school buses through the Adirondack Mountains. You don’t know what motion sickness feels like until you’ve ridden a school bus in your fifties for two hundred miles through the winding hills of the Adirondack Mountains.
How I miss those days! It was an honor to be part of a community. For me, music was my catalyst for helping kids have happier, better lives. Lots of music teachers feel the same way.
If you get the chance, I humbly ask you to thank your kids’ music teachers sometime this month. Although I’m now retired, I still remember every kind word a parent said to me – especially near the end of the school year. They sustained me through those May (hem) days when I thought I’d collapse. Here’s my all-time favorite thank you. It still makes me laugh today.
“Mr. Wimmer, you’re doing such a great job teaching Jordan how to play the trumpet. Our dog doesn’t howl anymore when he practices!”
