The sheer volume of things I accomplish in a week as a turnaround teacher simply because I have to is amazing. I have never been so efficient or productive in my life. But that leaves little time for sanity and humanness.
My Wind Ensemble director in college, Steven J. Moore, was a University of Kentucky graduate, so he loved college basketball, and basketball strategy became musical strategy.
He would often tell us this. When playing a challenging opponent, a team who has the lead may stop playing to win. They start running the clock - just playing not to lose. Precisely here, they play worse, and they begin to lose. In Wind Ensemble, we were up against a worthy opponent in the challenge of the musical piece that was before us, and he charged us with playing not to lose. We were losing. He challenged us to the offense: get on top of it. Be on the offense, not the defense. Play to win.
