[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lAlc4T_vxkw&hl=en]

Music was my refuge.  I could crawl into the space between the notes and curl my back to loneliness.  ~Maya Angelou, Gather Together in My Name

In the interest of full disclosure, I should say that I am a former flute/piccolo player turned drum major.  In fact, I am a former drum major of this band.  Not this band exactly, but one like it, from this very high school, a long time ago. Before the invention of plastic, when instruments were made of wood, when they had to be hollowed out of felled trees.  In the days, as I like to tell my children, when dinosaurs roamed the earth.  And sometimes it seems like yesterday.

It doesn't take much.  A drum cadence.  The brassy blare of a trumpet.  Driving past a football field on a Friday night.  Not much at all and I am there.

When I think about high school, those challenging, fun, nerve wracking, angst filled years, band is right there, the anchor in my stormy adolescent sea.  It gave me definition.  It gave me purpose.  It gave me pride.  It gave me a sense of belonging. 

I think about Mr. Scanella, our wonderful Italian band teacher from Branchburg Central School.  If I close my eyes for a moment, there he is, dressed in his tuxedo and holding his baton on the night of the concert, smiling at us just moments before the first note is played.  I can still see the twinkle in his eye as he winks to us.  We are one.  We play as one.  He was a master gardener, planting the seeds of music in all who sat in his band room.  He was our Mr. Holland's Opus and we learned to love music and love performing because he did.

We sit in the gymnasium and listen to the local high school band play.  We watch the smiles on the faces of the members of the drum line as they pound out a cadence.  In the bleachers a group of young girls bop back and forth to an arrangement of the 80's hit "Funkytown" performed to perfection by teenagers who weren't even alive when it topped the charts.  Music makes you happy.

It isn't for everyone.  Some find their way through those years on a football field or baseball diamond, with a golf club or in a pool.  Or maybe it's on stage or behind the screen of a computer, typing out the stories for the school newspaper.  If they're lucky they find something.  Or someone.  Someone who inspires them and shows them what can be.  What they can be.

A week ago a friend of mine came in to speak to one of my psychology classes.  He's a sports psychologist who works with athletes to help them improve their performance.  We got to talking about the impact a coach can have on someone's enjoyment of the game.  "How many of you played sports as a youth?" I asked them.  About half the class raised their hands.  "How many of you no longer play?"  Another quick show of hands.  Almost all of them again.  "How many of you no longer play because of an experience you had with a coach?"  Yep.  You guessed it. Almost all of them again.

We go into teaching for the right reasons.  We teach (and coach) because we love what we do, because we want to share what we have discovered, because we want to help kids become what they can be.  But sometimes we get lost along the way.  Sometimes we get focused on the end result and miss the point of the process.  Sometimes we get too focused on the candle and we blow out the flame.

There are always missteps along the way.  A missed beat, a strikeout with runners in scoring position, a botched line in a play.  And the truth is, it doesn't really matter.  Not really.  It's the smile on the drummers face or the teammate's pat on the back in the dugout that really matters.  It is, after all, about coming together and witnessing what can happen when we play as one, to see what can be when the I becomes we.