Here Comes the Judge
By Dinah Menger, TMAA President-Elect | Friday, May 25, 2012 12:04 PM
Does anyone else remember that wonderful comedy show featuring comedian Flip Wilson? Does anyone remember his hysterical portrayal of the insanely one-minded court judge? I loved that show! What kind of judge were you this contest season?
Did you contact your site host and take care of all of the details of your travel and hotel in a timely manner?
Did you get to your contest site on time, dressed professionally and rested so that you could be the best judge possible?
Did you conduct yourself in a professional manner at all times while at the contest site and did you treat all those helping to run the contest with grace and consideration?
Did you do your part to keep the contest running on schedule as much as possible?
Did you review all rules in the C & CR and did you use your Rubric for both Concert and Sight-reading?
Did you “try” to use the Form 4 and 5 as suggested, using the back of the form for detailed comments and the front of the form for more general, all-inclusive comments and suggestions
Could your comments be published in a professional document? Were they well-written, informative, positive,
educationally sound and did they justify the score you gave?
Did you contact the Executive Secretary of the contest’s region to say thank you and to comment on the Site Host after you were finished with that specific contest?
Would the Region that invited you ask you back?
As the contest season closes, take this time to evaluate your own performance as a contest judge by asking all of these questions. If you cannot truthfully answer yes to all of them, take some time to reflect on how to be an even better judge. Your reputation, character and musicianship were the qualities that got your invitation. Your presence and expertise at each contest hopefully helped those musicians and directors in furthering their own musical pursuits in performance, sight-reading, repertoire choices, conducting and pedagogy. Never doubt that your job as a judge is one of the biggest responsibilities you will ever have. The contests in which you judge represent hundreds of people hours from hundreds of students and their directors. Judge as you want to be judged…with fairness and with high standards!
By judging with these qualities, you will not be a “feared judge” but a respected one. “Here come ‘da judge” will be spoken with excitement and expectation, not with trepidation and resentment.
As the summer approaches and you are hopefully looking forward to some much needed R & R, take some time before you get too rested to reflect on your year as a friend, teacher, director and judge. What can you improve? What can you “get rid of” in your school schedule? What worked? What didn’t work? What aspect of your teaching could have gone better? What music did your students love? What events did your students love?
What do you want to learn to do better? What are your goals for the next year? How is recruiting for your program and for your feeder programs? Who can you ask to mentor you…even if you have been teaching forever? If you have been teaching forever…how will you “refresh” your methods and “shake it up a bit” with some new ideas from young directors? How do you get along with your colleagues…or do you even take time to fraternize with them?
Are you buried in your rehearsal hall all the time? Do you take time for you…just to have some fun…without feeling guilty about it? Do you suffer from the director’s “curse” of doing more and more to keep you with YOU? As Che says in the musical Evita, “Momentum is hard to keep when it’s YOU that you are following!”
Never doubt that on your longest day when you get to school in the dark and you leave school in the dark that you are making a difference. You are a teacher of our purest and most organic language-music. “May the force be with you!”