Kris Johnson – trumpet player, educator, composer, and arranger – joins me to reimagine the education system for the modern age. All music educators should tune in for this one! We talk about the calling of mentorship, bringing lions into the classroom, and we pay our respects to the recently departed Courtney Isaiah Smith.
I encourage students to go to college, but don’t expect one place to give you everything you need. It’s totally okay to go to Trader Joe’s and Kroger in the same day to get the groceries that you need.
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Actionable Advice
- As a mentor I want to be able to convey some of the messaging I received, but also be able to improve upon it. To be able to talk about mental health and give students that safe space.
- There are incredible educators who are not great music practitioners. There are some musicians who are just straight up musicians who I learned so much from just by going to see them live. I think when we get into the realm of treating the leadership as this one size fits all – everyone has to be a mentor, everyone has to be an educator – it’s the same box we don’t want to put our students into.
- If a student comes to me and is like “I just didn’t have time to practice this week” Instead of immediately going into lecture mode, I might talk to them and say, “hey, talk to me about what’s going on.” It’s not my job to play therapist, but it is my job to identify why they aren’t practicing.