Introduction

Here is Episode 95. In this episode of the Crescendo Music Education Podcast I talk again to Mark O’Leary. We’re going to look a little bit closer at his Young Voices of Melbourne published music, and about how singing in a choir can make such positive changes in our lives and the lives of the children or the choristers that are under our care. He gives us some advice as choral conductors, some nuggets of fabulous, and we talk about advocacy.

We go slightly off the track, and they’re wonderful ambles off the track. I think you’re gonna love this second episode with Mark O’Leary. And if you missed the last one, go back, because that gives you that background. So go back to Episode 94 and it will give you his bio and a bit of background about who Mark O’Leary is. Welcome to Episode 95, my second chat with Mark O’Leary.

This podcast is being recorded on the lands of the Turrbal people. I acknowledge them as the traditional owners of the land and pay my respects to elder’s past, present and emerging. They were the first music makers on this land.

About ‘Read the Episode’: Sometimes, we would rather skim visually than listen to a podcast! That’s a great way to learn too!
The transcript of episode 095 of The Crescendo Music Education Podcast is below.

Young Voices Melbourne

Debbie
Welcome to the Crescendo Music Education Podcast and I have Mark O’Leary with me again for this episode. Welcome back, Mark.

Mark O’Leary
Thanks, Deb. Great to be here.

Debbie
I want to start off talking about your music because last episode, towards the end, I just mentioned the music that Young Voices of Melbourne published and I recall finding them early in my teaching career and I recall using some of them that became, just thought I’d just share a little personal story, that became like some staples for me.

So I would like go to a new school and have a new group of kids to form into a choir and what will I do? And you don’t always want to reinvent the wheel and go okay, “I have a new choir, a new situation, I’m going to just go and find myself a whole bank of new works to do.” You want to have a couple up your sleeve, that you know well that you know work while you’re building the relationships and the two that come to mind is The Little Fish, I could sing it to you now and The Lachlan Tigers.

Mark O’Leary
We could have a duet.

Debbie
We could a duet except it never works well in the recording. So The Lachlan Tigers and The Little Fish, just were my staples. I mean I’m sure you could probably tell by sales, wouldn’t they have to be two of your most popular? And then moving on Shackleton I think I got from you?. Would that be right?

Mark O’Leary
Yep.

Debbie
So like gold. I don’t care what else Young Voices of Melbourne published, your existence is worthy just for those pieces?

Arranging Music for Children’s Choirs

Mark O’Leary
Yeah, well, thank you for that. Look, to be honest, I’m not a fabulous arranger, and many people do it way better than I do. But I’ve also found a few arrangements that like you, I think “Yep I know that this is always going to work” and I keep coming back to them. I think one of the reasons I first started doing it once I started looking at stuff is, there’s not that much repertoire available for the really young choirs. You know, there’s bucket loads of SSA and more difficult SA music but very little really simple SA music for choirs who are just starting starting to learn to part sing, singing parts, and simple unison things where you can focus on making good sound and just learning what it is to sing together.

So that’s always for me a pretty key part of that series, just finding things that I find work for me that I can share them with other people. And then like you, become pieces that get repeated over and over and in what we’ve done as favourites and comfortable things, but also things that are there for a purpose, so they’re teaching the things that you might want to learn and kids need to learn.

Debbie
Yes. And certainly, I mean, I would say you’re a really fabulous arranger, but I think what makes the arrangements of yours that I’ve sung wonderful is that you obviously work with children. It makes a difference when you, I mean it’s the same as my little compositions that are quite humble and not fabulous, but they work because I work with children and I know children’s voices and I know what will work with them. I think that you working with children all the time must enhance your arranging.

The Importance of Simplicity When Learning Choir Music

Mark O’Leary
Yeah, I guess I also have a philosophy with my choirs that I would much rather them within a timeframe learn ten easy pieces than two difficult ones. Because I think it’s partially by learning new music, you learn how to learn music, it’s a little bit like the old AMEB trap, where if you learn your four pieces for your list, A, B, C, and D and nothing else, you’re never going to learn how to sight read, and you’re never going to be that much of a musician, because you’re never really learning how to learn music, but nothing against the AMEB, it was a wonderful organisation and fulfilled a very valuable role, but you need to be doing learning a lot more music than just what you’re examined on.

I think it’s same in choirs, I see sometimes at eisteddfods people have spent a long time working on a difficult two part arrangement for a primary choir that actually doesn’t sound that good in the end anyway, because it’s just a bit too hard. Actually I would rather hear you learn something simple, and something else simple and something else simple. So you’ve got a few more things under your belt, but it also sounds nicer.

I’ve never done a concert where someone has come up and said, “Oh, that music was beautiful but it was way too easy. Why did you do that?” I think actually, I learned that too, from the Tapiola Choir. I don’t know if you remember the wonderful Tapiola Choir from Finland, they had a CD called Songs, well actually it was an LP when I bought it, Songs Building Bridges.

This is a very virtuosic choir, which would commission very, very difficult music from Finnish composers, really hard avant garde stuff. But on the CD there would always be two or three people which were just simple, beautiful things, either composed or folk song arrangements and you would hear in amazing sound, impeccable intonation, and just a really beautiful performance. But that was I think really important for them in establishing how to sing beautifully all the time, because you can’t really do that if you’re doing really, really challenging stuff all the time.

Debbie
Amen. I 100% understand and agree with that one, wow.

Mark O’Leary
Actually adult choirs can be some of the worst offenders too, I’ve been to performances of choirs, which I will not name, doing work that was too difficult. And everyone that’s up there having a lovely time massacring Faure Requiem or the Handel’s Messiah or something. I think I’m glad you’re having fun, but it’s too hard. For me, it’s not music that should be shared in that way. And it’s tricky. People like singing it. But that can be hard.

Debbie
Yeah, okay. Again, I agree. That’s wonderful. So we’ll make sure in the show notes for this episode, as well, that I’ll put in a link to your music and people can get in and have a look at what you’ve got in there. Some good Australian folk stuff, which is good and if there’s some international listeners, they might go, oh, let’s add some Australian flavour. Because we’ve got good flavours down here.

Mark O’Leary
Yeah, we do.

Debbie
We do. We’ve got some great composers, haven’t we?

Mark O’Leary
We really do. I was actually thinking about that while we were talking that when I started off doing the choral series in 1991, things were quite different in the publishing world. And it was relatively unusual to self publish, which is what I did, but now it’s much more common. And many composers have websites and are writing good stuff for young choirs.

So there’s a lot more music out there now. And it’s a lot easier to find. I guess it’s things can get very lost online as well. But I think it is easier to get music now than than what it used to be, which is great for those of us who are always looking for new music and wanting to find stuff, having digital copies can be really helpful. So you don’t have to pay a lot of postage to have paper sent around the world.

Debbie
I agree, yes. But when it was that much harder, we appreciated YVM even more, so thank you for doing that Mark.

Mark O’Leary
Oh, pleasure.

The Positive Impacts of Choir on the Lives of Children

Debbie
All right. I’d like to talk about singing in a choir making positive changes in the lives of children. My listeners are anybody who sings with their children in class or in a choir. They’ve seen the faces light up, the forget the fight they had on the way into the music room. There is magic in that. I think we all know that. But what sort of things can you tell us about that sort of feeling? That’s given to your choristers, and maybe some stories from your experience about the positive changes.

Mark O’Leary
Yeah look it’s a really interesting question. And it can be a little hard to pin down. I mean I can give you very specific examples of for example, choirs can have some pretty quirky kids in it. You know, neurodiversity is our speciality in the choir world in many ways. I remember, we took away one of our singers, who was a boy was probably about 14, 13 or 14. And this was quite a long tour to the United States we did, I think it was maybe three weeks. His Mum said, when we got back, she said, “Thanks for bringing him home and I have to say he’s a changed person and a much nicer person than he was when he left”. And I thought that was interesting. But I can see why.

You’re really learning to deal with community, you’re working on a common task with other people, you’re living with them, traveling with them, having the excitement of seeing great things with them. So I just think it makes you more aware of the importance of being part of a community and willingly being an active member of a community, and being connected to the people around you. So we see that a lot. I mean part of that’s normal teenage stuff, you learn independence, and you bond with your friends and you share experiences, which can end up creating lifelong friendships, which is, I guess one of the reasons you can see the strength of that.

I’ve noticed too lately that I’ve had a few children post pandemic who’ve been badly affected psychologically and are having trouble reconnecting at school and with their peers. But through being part of the choir community have done a lot of healing, as far as that goes, and sort of found their place in the world and in the community, which then helps them find their place back in their school communities as well. And that’s very touching, when you see that sort of scenario.

Debbie
That’s special, you’re offering something unique?

The Impact of Choir Communities on Personal Growth and Healing

Mark O’Leary
Well, I think, with Young Voices of Melbourne we’ve done a lot of touring over the years, it’s been a stalwart of our program really. We’ve toured every year since 1992, I think, the first one, except for the 2020, where we were disrupted by the pandemic in 2021. But every other year, we tour somewhere, either within Australia or overseas. But we have found that for our singers to be a very, very important part of the program. I mean, they’re learning, they have to learn a lot of music.

So there’s a significant musical challenge in there, which once they’ve achieved that they get kudos from standing on stage and people clapping them, which they obviously like. But they also then get the fun of traveling with their friends and seeing new places and doing new things. And I think that all creates a strength in your community, which gets you then through the rest of the year and perhaps doing some of the more mundane things that you might need to do and that are not so exciting, but gives you that strength in your community.

Debbie
Yes, the strength of community and the success like you said. Like we all need to feel we succeed at something don’t we?

Choir Dynamics and Skills

Mark O’Leary
Exactly and choirs as you know, choirs are not always what people necessarily think, you don’t have to have the most fabulous voice to be the most fabulous choir member, we need a range of skills in choir, we need those who, yes we need some fabulous voices for our soloists and we need good voices and competent voices. But not everyone’s going to be a soloist and you need those who can concentrate really, really well in rehearsals, you need those who can memorise things really accurately, those who can read really well, those who are the people who keep the community together, the social leaders, everyone’s just as important and it’s good for people to find a place even if they’re not going to be your soloists.

Debbie
I love that. I love that. And as someone who could never be a soloist, I love singing in a choir. And I think I’m a good chorister, and I think I contribute but I could just just don’t have what it takes to be the big star. But I’m still important when I’m in a choir.

Mark O’Leary
Which can also lead to challenges to for those of us who like literacy based programs because some kids find that stuff very hard. Just the way that some people find reading words difficult. So even though we put a high value on those who succeed well in sight reading and all of that, and we monitor their progress and all that sort of stuff, if someone’s not so good at that, it’s really important for them to understand they’re valued for other reasons, because they learn their music really well, or they’ve got a beautiful voice or they can always hold their part while at the same time encouraging them to improve their reading skills if they can. So yeah choirs have a lot of opportunity, I guess, for different types of people.

Debbie
Good point. I love that. What advice would you give to choral conductors, and people wanting to work with choirs? Maybe a good way to start or some thoughts on mindset that might be handy for you to succeed as a choral director?

Taking Inspiration From Other Choirs

Mark O’Leary
Well, I think the first thing is to find out what choirs actually are. I think from when we start, and I know certainly when I started, I had a particular idea about what choirs do and how they work and all of that, but you can be wrong, if you can find opportunities to watch other people work with their choirs and go to other people’s rehearsals and other people’s concerts. I mean, I was lucky to do that in an international forum when I went on a Churchill fellowship. But it doesn’t have to be at that level. If you go along to the local eisteddfod and just hear what people are sharing as their best songs. That’s a real learning experience.

If you ask people if you can come and sit in on their rehearsals and see what they do, I would do that. I think we learn from each other a great deal. Particularly if you’re a young conductor, find some people that you admire, whose work you look up to. Don’t be shy about saying, “Can I come and work with you or just watch a rehearsal or two?” And I think the more of that you see, then the better equipped you are when you come to run your rehearsals to see okay, well I’ve seen what happens and what might go well here and what might not go well here and I guess you know what you want to emulate.

And of course, performance wise now with YouTube, you can do a lot of that without leaving your seat. There’s so many great performances on YouTube of all sorts of different choirs. There’s no excuse really, for not knowing what choirs can do. I think it’s easy for us to under estimate, particularly what children’s choirs can do when you think you know if you ask someone what choir, a non choir person say What choirs have you heard of? What do you know about choirs? They might say oh the Vienna Boys Choir. There you go, it’s a primary school choir, isn’t it? You know not to be underestimated. They might know King’s College Cambridge, full of primary school boys and semi professional singers as well. But you know, primary kids can do amazing things. And I think that’s good to remember as well.

Debbie
Yes, great advice. Watch others, watch others work, learn from each other. That’s wonderful advice. And something that we can all use all the time to keep growing. Now. We’re going to get to my nuggets of fabulous. Now if you are waiting for the nuggets, well I’m sorry, you had to wait till this episode. So my listeners love hearing nuggets. Of course you’ve dripped nuggets already, tips and ideas and stuff, but fabulous repertoire, favourite songs, ideas, anything at all. What sort of nuggets of fabulous, would you like to drop on us, Mark?

Nuggets of Fabulous

The Importance of Warmups

Mark O’Leary
Well, I would say there’s a few things perhaps. One is don’t skimp on your warmups in your rehearsals. And I know a lot of people can get guilty you’ve got half an hour week, you’ve got a concert in three weeks time. Got a lot of songs you haven’t finished learning. Think oh no, quickly skip over the warm ups. I always think that that is going to catch up with you. Because after all warmups are that time when you teach your choir to sound good. And if you’re not doing that it doesn’t matter how much time you spend on your repertoire, it’s not going to sound that good.

I would say you know, take that warming up thing seriously. And for me warming up is not so much about warming up voices. After all little kids voices are often very well warmed up by the time they get to you. They have been using them very actively all day, they need to learn how to listen to each other and sing in tune with each other and how to make the nicest possible sounds that they can with their voices.

That does require focus and I like to find that time at the start of the rehearsal. I find even now with my choirs that they get there and they’re thinking about a million other things yeah they sing something fairly simple a warm up and go Yeah, that’s fine. Can I please now have the in tune version? And can we really listen to each other to focus that sound? So I would say don’t skimp on the warmups is the first thing I would say.

Debbie
I love it and I think that’s such, that even the heavens are agreeing with that nugget of fabulous because the sun has moved in your window and it’s now across the screen. So if you’re watching this on YouTube, that’s such a nugget of fabulous. We now have a beautifully sunlit Mark. So the heavens agree. No, it’s true. And look, I’m the first one to say, I’ve certainly done that in my time. Or I go yeah we haven’t quite got the Alto part down the concerts into two weeks, let’s go, go. You’re right. Don’t skimp on the warmup, it will come back to bite you on the bum.

Planning Every Rehearsal

Mark O’Leary
It will. Well I mean, I guess the other little nugget is that if you plan really well, then you’ll be able to fit it all in. But you know I still plan every rehearsal I do in writing and keep them all in a file. Because I know that I can run a rehearsal without planning it, no problem. But it’s not what I do today that counts. It’s how it fits in with what has to happen next week and the week after, and when’s the concert? And how much time have I got to allocate to this and that, and still do the things that are important the sight reading and the vocal work and all that sort of stuff. And you just won’t be able to do it without that planning.

So planning, not to mention the fact it gives you all these resources to draw on, because you’ve got last years rehearsal plans there and the years before as well and you can see “Yeah, what did I do there that worked really well? What did I do there that I should avoid because it didn’t go so well.” Or something?

Debbie
Yes. Yes. Again, another nugget of fabulous. That’s wonderful. All right. Did you want any other nuggets before we go on to advocacy? Or no more nuggets?

Mark O’Leary
It’s so hard? No, I don’t think that there any other nuggets?

Debbie
I mean, shouldn’t say that you got lots any that that you’d like to share right now I guess I should say?

The Beauty of Simplicity

Mark O’Leary
I guess what I said before though about doing lots of easy music, rather than focusing on just a few more difficult pieces, I think is always good advice. I think for a choir of any level, I have a fairly short attention span. So I always assume everyone else does too so I like to get through a lot of music in the rehearsals that I do. That also means that get to the end and people go wow, where did that time go? Seems like we just started, rather than have time to get bogged down in things.

Debbie
And from another point of view, if you think of it from the audience point of view, who would not want to hear something simple or simpler sung beautifully, then sit through some complex thing not done really well, which you also talked about before? So from an audience point of view, you want to do something well. Even if it’s that little step below what they could do, I’d rather do something simple beautifully. And like you said, you get more done, greater variety, more learning, and better for the audience.

Mark O’Leary
You’re right. And I think being respectful of your audience is so important, you know, like I hate going to concerts where choirs to stand in a row, or two rows, or three rows for the whole performance. I think c’mon, I want to see something different and I get so annoyed at that. My choirs do complain at times that they’re standing in a different position for every song. But you know, the sound changes if you’re standing in different positions, choir members have a little bit of energy as they move from new position to new position.

You can use the acoustic space that your in more effectively if you’re thinking about that as well. So I think being respectful for your audience, particularly in schools actually, you’ve got a captive audience, your parents will come anyway. But you shouldn’t take advantage of that and sort of torture them with it. If you can make it I guess without compromising, I don’t mean just sing pop songs and things that everyone knows, represent what you want to do in a way that makes it accessible and interesting for an audience.

Debbie
I couldn’t agree more because I can’t stand going to a concert where I have no connection to any of the music. I like to have some connection. It doesn’t have to be all songs from my era. But, you know, a beautiful rendition of Danny Boy, that was my father’s favourite song in there somewhere because you want to connect emotionally with your audience. And if all you do is brand new, very clever music that is over the heads of a lot of our audience, you know what I mean by over our heads. That’s not gonna bring joy to the audience.

Mark O’Leary
Having said that you can actually do what’s very challenging music for an audience. If you give them a handle on to it, This music might sound weird to you and this is why, and this is what the composer is trying to do. And actually there’s a really interesting story that goes into this. And I think if you share that with people go, Ah, yeah, I hear this is weird, but I understand it and I get it, and I appreciate it. You might be stretching, if that piece then goes on for 45 minutes but that’s another story.

Debbie
But you’ve got a good point and in fact, you know, that could be a whole podcast, blog post, book, that conductor as educator not with your choir, with the audience, because you’re also educating your audience aren’t you?

Mark O’Leary
Absolutely. All the time? Yeah. And it’s not an easy thing to do always. You can get a bit of blowback sometimes from audiences, parents or whatever. If they don’t get what you’re doing, you haven’t communicated it well enough or they’ve got some very strong ideas about what they think they should be hearing. But yeah it’s definitely a massive role. You’re educating your singers all the time, if you work with young singers particularly. And when I say young, I mean everyone under 30.

Debbie
For us everyone under 60.

Mark O’Leary
Yes, well that too. Yeah, that’s an important part of it.

Music Education Advocacy in Australia

Debbie
It is absolutely, which actually leads nicely into advocacy. You probably know, I’ve been fairly involved in some music advocacy type work in Queensland, specifically and a bit in Australia. Music educators are seeming to have to fight even harder for our profession. Do you have any advice around advocacy? And I think we have alluded to some of this too anyway, in our talk about what we say to audiences, as choral conductors. But any additional advice around advocacy, telling people how important music is. Like you don’t have to convince me, right? I’m in your audience and you don’t have to convince me how important that is. But how do you convince people?

Mark O’Leary
I think it’s easy to be a bit depressed about all of that actually. So positive thing first, I would say that the best advocacy any of us can do is by doing the best work we can in our community, because then that will be one community that understands and values music education, so they will tell their friends, and they will tell their families and their cousins and their siblings that music education has done a wonderful thing for my child, at this school this is what they do. I mean I think that’s something that all of us can do, just do our best work and share it in our community best we can. And that is a very, very powerful advocacy that we can all be involved in.

Lack of Agreement in Music Education

Mark O’Leary
I think it’s a little bit hard in music education because in a way we’re our worst enemies. In that we have a lot of difficulty agreeing with what we should teach in music. We all have our our clans, our Orff clan and our Kodály clan and our Dalcroze clan and our not having any of that clan. I was talking to one of my choir Mums the other day, and she worked as a education bureaucrat in Victoria and she worked as a music education bureaucrat, and she said one of her jobs was to listen to the input from the sector. So she said, but there wasn’t any.

She said the maths person who sat opposite her having a meeting every week with someone from the Maths Teachers Federation, or this industry group or other about what they thought maths should be doing. The science people, they’ve had lots of meetings. In music there’s nothing because in music the way we structure ourselves is we’re all in little organisations run by volunteers, and no one’s out there with the time and the energy to be having those sort of meetings. So it’s not a big surprise when things perhaps say in schools anyway, don’t get the attention that they need. I don’t know how you fix that, except by all united under one banner. I don’t know that that’s going to happen any anytime soon.

Debbie
I know. I felt that and when I’ve done curriculum writing projects, and I’ve been involved in that. And that’s just people live in their little silos and are quite passionate about their particular philosophy. And like that’s great, but it’s also not great. So we were on a committee and there were other arts people. So like drama has Drama Queensland end of story.

We have the Queensland Orff Society we at that time, I think they’re not so visible now, but there was the Dalcroze people and there’s the Kodály people. And I do think, and I don’t know if I’m going to be saying, maybe I shouldn’t say this publicly, but I’m just going to say, I actually think that this is the role for ASME to do. That’s just my opinion, is that that’s the way ASME should move because they’re the Australian Society of Music Educators.

Mark O’Leary
I agree but that can only happen if we all join ASME and we give ASME the support that it needs so that ASME has the power.

The Importance of a Unified Voice

Debbie
Power and voice of all of us. So I think things have to morph a bit for that to happen. But to me that seems to be the logical way to go.

Mark O’Leary
Yeah, I remember when the Kodály Association was formed,actually, two of the founders had a bit of a disagreement. Now I won’t say who they were. One was arguing that we shouldn’t have Kodály Association and that all of us who are interested in music education should join ASME. And we should have a Kodály interest group within ASME, an Orff interest group within ASME, a Suzuki interest group within ASME, not have all these little organisations. But the founding fathers of Kodály I think said no we want to have our own organisation, which is what everyone else decided too. I often think what if it had gone the other way? Would it be different? Maybe it would be better if we had one unified voice? How many people do we have in Australia who work professionally as advocates for music education? I can’t think of anyone.

Debbie
I think perhaps some of the people in the Tony Foundation.

Mark O’Leary
Okay. Yep.

Debbie
I think that their work is music advocacy?

Mark O’Leary
Yeah and we need way more than that.

Debbie
We need way more and the rest are just people like me, working full time running a business, doing 1000 things and then on the side, I’m fighting for music.

Mark O’Leary
I’m still involved in the Kodály committee in Victoria, have been actually I can’t tell you how long but it’s probably 40 years or something I’ve been on that committee.

Debbie
Yeah join the club.

Mark O’Leary
Yeah, yeah. I don’t know how long. But the one thing that I am super keen on doing is like, we have now a paid Administrator, which is absolutely fabulous and has improved our efficiency and what we can do and all of that. I think we need also now to try and fund a paid Education Officer or someone who has time and is paid a proper wage to do some of the non administrative work, the advocacy work, the planning work that we really need. And I reckon we should be able to find a way to fund that at least to see if it works or not.

Debbie
That’s an interesting thought and in fact, could we go one further. Wouldn’t it be good if all the association’s put in to fund an Advocacy Education Officer?

Mark O’Leary
I think it would be great. And I think we have an issue. This is sort of getting a little bit off topic here, isn’t it?

Debbie
Just a bit.

Potential Improvements to Music Education Organisations

Mark O’Leary
Australia is not a very big place and yet we have state branches all over the place of all of our organisations as well as the national organisation, it’s not really clear that that structure is working that well anymore to me. One organization could easily run all the workshops and courses that we need for Kodály in Australia.

I think the challenges of distance are not what they used to be. I think there would be certain economies in that, in my sister was involved in Coeliac Association, she found the same thing. And she actually did the work to create one large national organisation rather than a whole lot of smaller branches to try and give them more professionalism and also more money, so they could do more stuff. And I hesitate to say it’s what we should do right now because there’s so many great people involved in the state branches and national level that would probably not agree with my plan.

Debbie
But they’re interesting thoughts because things have changed. And when we formed our association, like I live for our Kodály workshops and things and it wasn’t feasible. We did not have Zoom, you and I are chatting on Zoom. We’ve got a member on our Queensland Kodály committee, our Treasurer the lovely Susie. Hi Susie. She’s in Mackay. She’s like a day’s drive away and she’s on our committee. Now. We could never have done that when I was first on the committee. The fact to go to a workshop regularly Sydney I couldn’t have afforded to do.

Mark O’Leary
However, it wouldn’t have been that hard to have whoever was taking that fabulous workshop in Sydney, fly out to Brisbane and do it there. But that that would require in some sort of national coordination, and then fly them to Melbourne and fly them to Adelaide and to Perth. And I think there could be more of that, I think in the future of the way that we do things.

Debbie
I think that’s very good food for thought. Okay, no, I’m loving that.

Mark O’Leary
See what happens?

Debbie
Yeah, I’m loving that. You shouldn’t give me things to put on my back burner. It’s already full Mark. Okay. We’re gonna finish off. Thank you, this has been the most amazing chat. And I’ve loved talking to you again, but you get to get on your soapbox before we finish. I like to say get on your soapbox and tell the world anything that you’d really like to tell them. Off you go

Mark’s Soapbox

Mark O’Leary
All the music educators are wonderful. And I’d say be happy with what you do. Be proud of what you do. Don’t let the bastards get you down because it’s not an easy job. At times we often work in isolation. Some of us are lucky and have great teams, but many of us don’t we’re the only music educator within our school or organisation, whatever. I would say look after ourselves and be proud of what we do. And find the support that we need from each other. And I think if we do that, then there’ll be a longevity in the practice, which I think is really important.

I get bit worried when I see particularly young teachers working in schools who are getting burned out. And I’m not a big fan of that term. But I see the pressures that they’re under in schools. And it’s not good because we lose too many really good people because it is becoming a little bit hard for them. So let’s look after each other and ourselves. And I think that will help all of us.

Debbie
I love that. On that note, Mark, I would like to thank you very much for chatting with us.

Mark O’Leary
It’s been a pleasure Deb. It’s just great to see you again. I think the last time we did see each other was probably a Kodály national conference. And the next one coming up we’ll be able to have some more chats there.

Debbie
We might have just a little vino together or something.

Mark O’Leary
That’s our Victorian specialty.

Debbie
Oh okay. Excellent. I will see you then. Bye, Mark.

Mark O’Leary
Bye Deb.

Sign-Off

I appreciate you and all of my colleagues, and hope this episode has been enjoyable and useful. Don’t forget, you’ll find the show notes on crescendo.com.au. I’d love a share, rate or review to help other music educators find this podcast. All I can be as the best version of me. All you can do is be the best you. Until next time, bye.

Just for Laughs

As we know laughter relieves stress don’t lose sight of the funny side of life.

When you dream in colour,

is it a pigment of your imagination?

Links Mentioned in the Episode:

Gondwana

Young Voices of Melbourne (YVM)

Sight Singing School

🎙️ Episode 94: Children’s Choral Music

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