Interviewer: Matthew Tabor

Interviewee: Dan Pinkston (dan.pinkston@bvsd.org)

Date: 3/4/22

What are your goals for the coming years? How do you hope to grow as a teacher?

● Each year he always wants to set a goal for himself professionally. This year his goal was

to change the repertoire that he programs. He realized that in the past his representation

when programming music has not been up to what he would like it to be. Currently he’s

working out of a book called The Horizon Leans Forward which highlights the stories of

under represented composers.

● He ensures that every concert he reserves space to play a song from one female

composer, and one composer of color. He’s hearing a lot of different styles because he’s

programming music he hasn’t heard much of in the past.

● The school he teaches at is the smallest in his district, so he’s not always sure year-to-year

if he will have full instrumentation, so it can be challenging to program some pieces and

do them proper justice.

I really love the fact that he was aware that his programming had not been very diverse in

the past. In a small school it can be easy to not think about exposing the kids to a wide array of

music because the school itself is unlikely to be diverse. However, that can be all the more

reason why you must attempt to expose kids to some other forms of music, to help them see

outside the small town in which they grew up.

In what ways has your teaching changed? How has teaching changed you?
 ● He said that early in his career he was with a speaker who said ‘If I could go back to all

my students in the first three years of my teaching I would apologize to them

immediately.’ and at the time he thought ‘No way! I’m doing amazing!’ but now

reflecting back he laughs at himself and would do the exact same thing and apologize to

his students.

● He feels that he has certainly gotten better at maintaining routines, and creating systems.

He feels that that’s a struggle for him as a person because of his ADD. He wants to jump

into things but holds himself to being more controlled in his approach and getting good

work done. Once the systems are in place it helps him keep things on track as well.

● Even so, the process isn’t perfect, because even just before my talk with him, he had to

have a talk with his class that they needed to be better about flipping the switch from fun

to work time.

I think often about how my first years as a teacher will go. I hear all these perspectives

from teachers who realize their first few years they realize now they were not amazing at

teaching. That would make one think that they should expect that their first few years will be

rough, or just simply bad teaching years, but in some ways I feel as though new teachers might

need to convince themselves that they are doing great, because if they don’t believe that the

self-doubt and criticism may get to them and may negatively impact their teaching even more

because they don’t believe they are teaching well.

Short of funding and the COVID-19 pandemic, what do you believe are the biggest

challenges facing the music education profession today?

● Mr. Pinkston thinks the biggest challenge is just relevance.

 ● He thinks that the way that so many teachers are teaching band is outdated. He thinks

orchestra may be a little more guilty of this, but band teachers are quite a bit as well.

Band teachers think ‘this is how I learned it, so this is how I will teach it.’ despite the fact

we have GarageBand, SoundTrap, and many other DAWs and music making tools at our

disposal to make a uniquely 21st century approach to music making.

● If we aren’t giving students methods to accessibly create things similar to what they see

on YouTube, TikTok and more, then he believes it’s not impossible that our current

system of teaching music may just simply become irrelevant and may die of irrelevance.

I think at this point, our current system of music education does have its place in the

school system. In addition to teaching music, we are teaching history by virtue of the repertoire

we select and how we teach that repertoire. However, as younger generations grow disinterested

and possibly even frustrated with our ‘obsession’ with ‘old’ music, we should expect to see them

divert their attention and music-making energy not in our programs but in hardware and software

that they can use and work with outside of school and outside of our system.

What is your philosophy around scaffolding sight-reading? How do you build this

component into your program?

● Mr. Pinkston does a lot of sight-reading with a method book specifically.

● He believes this is a great age to be working with sight-reading.

● He recommended a website, “https://www.osfabb.com“ (One Size Fits All Band Books)

for working with beginning bands. On the website there is video game music, classical

pieces, and many more for the kids to work through. Each week he chooses a sheet and

sight reads one with the class.

 I started seriously doing music in high school, and it took me quite awhile before I got a

strong handle on pitch and reading sheet music effectively. I have no idea what goes into middle

schoolers to sight sing and even less for band students to sight read. The website he sent looks

outdated but has very strong pieces on it.

What are some of your recruiting strategies? In particular, how do you encourage a diverse

population of students interested in your program?

● He feels that if your band does not reflect the basic makeup of your school, then there is

something wrong.

● He said that years and years ago there was a band teacher visited by someone who asked

why their band was all white in a school that was 50% hispanic, and it turned out that

earlier in their schooling, in the 5th grade, the English language help was offered the

exact same time as instrumental ensembles. For that reason, almost all opportunity for a

large chunk of that hispanic population to join band was gone.

● His first step is awareness. His second step is visibility. Too many middle and high school

teachers will expect the school before to just talk up continuing in music, and that is all

too rarely the case. He believes that recruiting must be a top-down approach in order to

effectively continue to have a music program. Seven times is the number of positive

interactions that a student needs to consider what you are saying.

There has to be some sort of positive experience for students in elementary and middle

school with a teacher in the middle or high school that they will be moving into if that kid is to

continue doing music. If a high school teacher is dedicated, he will make an effort to visit even

elementary schools to really continue to build that reinforcement and rapport with those students
that makes them anticipate getting to high school so they can go to this school so they can learn

under this teacher. Having that relationship built will create a program that is so much less

stressed in recruiting current high schoolers because you will have students coming into the

school who know that the very first thing they want to do is sign up for their music ensemble.

What goes into planning trips (visits to another school, festivals, competitions, tours, etc.)?

● A lot goes into them. He’s done trips in state and out of state. They take a field trip to

Elitches once every May and planning around funding, chaperones, etc. is a massive

undertaking.

● You need to be as transparent with parents as possible, and in a very hectic year like this

year, getting the go ahead to do a trip may come very late because of protocols.

● No matter how long you give them, parents will pay for the field trip the day before it’s

due. All the things that seem like common sense have been and will be messed up many

times. He gave one example of an adult chaperone who just got left behind and then over

a half hour into the trip back home they had to turn around and pick him up.

● On an out of state though, stressors can be tenfold because then you have to worry about

an overnight and all the logistics and problems that go along with that.

I know that as a student, overnights were my absolute favorite thing because of the

opportunity to hang out with all of my classmates and friends. As a teacher, though, it definitely

sounds like something that I would want to avoid if not for the amazing experiences and growth

that I know will happen for students on these trips.

How do you feel your teaching, classroom environment, and subject you teach meet the

social emotional needs of your students?

 ● That’s been a big focus for his school this semester in general. They have had a home

room this semester, and in this homeroom there are specific social emotional lessons that

are taught. A lot of it is ensuring that students are able to talk about things and process

events and things that happen. That time is built into the schedule and set aside each

week.

● In individual classes, the school has a strong PBIS (Positive Behavior Intervention and

Support) system that essentially rewards the good things, and in the event of continually

poor behavior it leads into MTSS (Multi-tiered Systems of Support) and the PBIS is a

part of the MTSS. He says that if your school has a strong PBIS system that is very good.

● At the school the mascot is the Mustang, so students are known as ‘the HERD’ (Honesty

Excellence Respect and Determination). When students show those positive values then

they receive a horseshoe which enters them into a weekly drawing for rewards. It’s a

good system because instead of punishing the bad deeds they are rewarding the good

deeds.

I have mixed feelings about a system like this because although it does not punish bad

behavior, as far as I know, it feels a little shallow. That said, I don’t know a lot about the

psychological behavior of middle schoolers, but I feel like a system like this feeds into the

extrinsic feelings of greed and could make students feel that by doing good deeds they are

entitled to a reward instead of truly appealing to an intrinsic sense of altruism. Despite these

criticisms, I am not knowledgeable enough about a system that could achieve the same results

effectively, it just feels unfortunate that behavior needs to have rewards like these.

What are your strategies for handling a student who is 'struggling' in your class (apathetic,

poor attendance, rarely participates, etc)?

 ● A big part of dealing with behavior is ABC (Antecedent Behavior Consequence). What

led to this behavior? There was a cause, so figuring out why a student was acting out is

crucial. Are they seeking attention, are they struggling, etc?

● Working with kids to figure out what their antecedent is is key to understanding how to

work with the student to deal with it properly. This can help influence their behavior

before making the behavior next time.

● For him, he uses his favorite classroom management tool, being Crowd Control by Susan

Hoffman. She is a retired choir director and her policy is that when a student has a

behavioral issue, they come down and write their initials next to the class rule that they

struggled with. It’s not confrontational, they just can visually see themselves struggling,

and parents can see it as well.

● He also doesn’t have the luxury of time after school to help students out because of his

extremely busy schedule, so he offers to help kids during their lunch recess. He helps

students as often as he can. Students work together to get through pieces in which one

may be struggling and another is succeeding.

These strategies seem like they are very strong and effectively convey class expectations

without humiliating the student. Walking to the front of the class to write down your initials

doesn’t feel good, but it may be acceptable in the idea that at some point there does need to be

consequences for the students actions. Students do need to learn that eventually they need to

behave, and this may be a good first step for them.

What role do parents/guardians play in your classroom/program?

 ● There was a study done in around 2014 by the Royal Conservatory that said kids will stay

involved in music as long as their parents think they are going to. He believes this is

absolutely true, because whenever a parent says that they are buying a trombone for their

child so they can experience it but they know they will quit eventually, the child always

does eventually quit.

● In terms of parents in the actual classroom helping, there has been none of that in the last

two years because of restrictions and protocols. Typically parents will help distribute

tickets, fundraise, and do other things.

● In the band’s swing dance event, parents are critical for making the whole thing tick

because of the amount of things that need to get done.

I think there is a point to be made that parents have spent a lot of time with their child,

and may know if they are likely to abandon something. Simultaneously, however, if parents have

always thought their child would not stick with anything, that would be a massive contributing

factor. Helping out in the classroom is a huge boon to any program, so it’s really encouraging to

see that students’ parents are there to help out. I think this is something that I personally look

forward to, helping out other music teachers with their fundraising.

What is one professional accomplishment you are proud of?

● He has two overarching answers, one being the accomplishments of his students and the

other being his own personal accomplishments.

● In 2018 he received the Impact on Education award from his school, which is essentially

a Teacher of the Year award at his school, which was very cool for him to get. It was the
 first year that he did it on a school level, and it was voted on by the students, staff, and

parents, and he was the very first recipient, and that felt amazing.

● On a student level, he’s very proud of what the students have achieved and how they have

gotten better year after year. Thinking about the festivals they have attended such as

Elitches and others, and watching them grow as young people and as young musicians.

Seeing the kids and how proud they are after the performance is what makes the job for

him.

I don’t know Mr. Dan Pinkston, but I can certainly see why he would have received an

honor such as the Impact on Education award. Everything he did during our conversation made

me feel as though he was so excited for me to continue my degree and work harder. We had a

chat about how amazing it feels to know that the students you taught were able to gain

recognition from judges and adjudicators, and to watch their faces beaming as they walk off a

stage knowing that they did something amazing, and that swelling sense of pride felt towards

them all. I am still a few years out from teaching my own programs, but I am excited to know

what the future holds.

I absolutely wholeheartedly enjoyed my conversation with Dan Pinkston. He has a very

joyous aura about him, and you can tell that everything he does he does with joy. This was my

first interview speaking with someone I did not know personally, and he made me feel very

supported while asking each question. I can learn a lot from his positive attitude, and taking

every question and every situation with a smile. I was recommended to interview Dan Pinkston

by one of his former students, and the student called him the greatest band teacher ever, and I can

absolutely understand why his students may feel this way towards him. My biggest takeaway

from this interview is to not give up the innocent part of teaching music. There is always time for
being stressed and being sure that everything must be done and prepared on time, but allowing

yourself to take a second and remember yourself is incredibly important.