We Can Be the Bands We Want to Hear

“How will you make the world a better place?”

As I was thinking about my response to this weeks #EduStory prompt I realized that the answer lies in an album I listened to a lot during my first year in the classroom. If you haven’t heard New Wave by Against Me! I suggest listening to it ASAP. Below is the opening track.

New Wave was a controversial album for Against Me!. It was their first album on a major label. It was their first album that featured catchy choruses and a poppier style of song writing. Many people, myself included, were initially disappointed with it. How could this happen? How could one of my favorite bands do this to me? The answer to these questions was in the lyrics. Below is a verse from the song New Wave.

We can be the bands we want to hear.
We can define our own generation.
Is there anybody on the receiving end?
Are you ready to brave new directions.

Last June I said goodbye to the classroom and hello to the world of administration. A controversial move for many of my fellow teachers. At first I thought it was just the next logical step. I had been teaching for a few years and it was time to move up. Again that’s what I thought at first. The more I started thinking about it the more I realized that I was making the leap to the dark side because I wanted to be the admin I wanted to have. I wanted to help define an era in my school. I was ready to brave new directions. I wanted to make the world a better place by first helping my school become a better place.

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