Authenticity

Students need to be trusted, but the same goes for the teacher. Without trust, there is no cooperation between the teacher and the students. Last year, I walked into band rehearsal to observe at my old high school. The teacher was new and I had never worked with him during my high school years. As I observed the class for three days, I was a little worried. Not only were the kids getting no respect, but the director was hard to read. He said one thing and then did another. He was little unpredictable. It was hard for the students and for myself (even though I wasn't actually involved in the class), to actually understand what he wanted. He would say that he trusted his students do practice or play something like a scale with ease, but he treated the first twenty minutes of each class as if they weren't high schoolers, but elementary kids.