Embracing the Struggle

I tend to move at a breakneck pace with my auditioned choir and push them as hard as I can. For several years now I have wanted to push the limits of what middle school singers can accomplish, and as a result I feel constant pressure, most of it coming from myself, to keep my Prairie Voices working every minute of every rehearsal. We only get 45 minutes a day, and it's gotten worse this year because we have lost 20% of our rehearsal time this year due to this homeroom/character education class that meets every Monday. This school year I have felt like I am constantly under the gun, and that I cannot waste a single second of rehearsal. Yesterday though, I made a conscious effort to slow down. I didn't start warming them up immediately at the bell (though most of them were standing in their spots on the risers at the last bell... finally ...after weeks of me trying to train them to do that), but instead I moved at a more leisurely pace. I talked to a some individual students, t...

That quotation, "no plan survives contact with the enemy" is a paraphrased version of this quote by Field Marshall Helmuth Karl Bernhard Graf von Moltke, a Prussian general who was the architect of the German Wars of Unification in the 19th Century: "The tactical result of an engagement forms the base for new strategic decisions because victory or defeat in a battle changes the situation to such a degree that no human acumen is able to see beyond the first battle. In this sense one should understand Napoleon's saying: 'I have never had a plan of operations.' Therefore no plan of operations extends with any certainty beyond the first contact with the main hostile force." Field Marshall Helmuth von Moltke never had to teach middle school children or work in a public school in the early 21st Century, but if he had I am sure the experience would only reinforce his belief that you can have all the plans you want, but once you encounter your first ho...