Good Drumming vs Bad Drumming

First, watch this video, because it's the whole point of the post and if you don't watch it nothing that follows will track as well. It's four minutes long.




Brandon Khoo just answered the question of how you can tell a good teacher from a bad teacher.

I am in love with this video and Brandon Khoo's patience and clarity when answering what was probably meant as a jokey question. Because this is an important question: How can you tell something good from something bad? This seems like a subjective question. I think it's good because x, and you think it's bad because y. That's ok, we're allowed to think those things, because that's what opinions are for. But he spun it into a deeper question about the meaning of good and bad, and made what seems unquantifiable understandable.

There's an old story about the Beatles, possibly apocryphal, where an interviewer asked John Lennon if Ringo was the best drummer in the world. John responded, "Ringo isn't even the best drummer in The Beatles." John was a jerk.* This narrative of Ringo being good enough but not great, the lesser of the Fab Four, is always going to surround Ringo. Unfairly, as Brandon explains in the video. Ringo's job was to serve the song. That's what he did, every time. The Beatles weren't great because of John Lennon and Paul McCartney. The Beatles were great because they were John Lennon, Paul McCartney, George Harrison, and Ringo Starr coming together, creating something as a whole. Look at any of their solo projects. Still great, but not the same. You couldn't put just anyone behind the drum kit and create The Beatles. It had to be Ringo.

Brandon does two types of drumming in the video. He Drums, with flash and fills. And he drums to serve the song. One is incredible to watch. The other makes the whole incredible. So which is better?

What makes a teacher Good is a  question that's tossed around all the time. Test scores? How the students feel in class? Quality of projects? Whether or not they talk to the whole group? Lesson creativity?

A good teacher is the one that best serves the learning. It's easy to become a Teacher with a capital T. A Good teacher best serves the song of each student, and our classrooms are the most eclectic mixtape ever assembled. Ringo didn't just keep the beat, he created the backbone of some of the greatest songs ever written. Sometimes he just needed to tap gently on the side of the snare. Sometimes he needed blisters on his fingers!

Some lessons, some students, need the apps sometimes. Sometimes we need the tech. Sometimes we don't. There's an urge to chase the flashy teaching. All The Apps, All The Tech, All The Time. What hashtag needs to be in my classroom this week? We lose the song in the technique. We, and I include myself in this, should try to teach more like Ringo. Strip it down, streamline it, and find the groove that each lesson needs, the beat for each student.

It wasn't a flash drum solo or a million fills that propelled The Beatles into the atmosphere. It was this.




*I think I'm going to make the above video part of any professional development I run and see what conversations come out of it.

**Full disclosure- my favorite drummer of all time is Neil Peart. Which, if the metaphor I'm working with in this blog post carries any weight at all, says something about my teaching. In my defense, Peart is never more indulgent than the songs he's writing need him to be. He manages to be incredibly complex without derailing the music. Peart serves the music first too.

If you like this post and the other posts on this blog you should know I’ve written two books about teaching- He’s the Weird Teacher and THE Teaching Text (You’re Welcome). I’ve also written one novel- The Unforgiving Road. You should check them out, I’m even better in long form. I’m also on the tweets @TheWeirdTeacher.