What Put a Fire Under My Buttocks A look at what motivated me as a kid

by Mark Ellis

No matter what we do as adult teachers, motivating students is a difficult task, especially when it comes to Generation X. Kids today are involved in so many things that it is very hard to get them to focus on anything.

When I was in Jr. High and High School (back in the ‘70’s) we had only 3 channels of TV that came in by antenna and sometimes that was not too clear. The most advanced video game was Pong (a very early version video Ping-Pong that required a whole game console for itself) and that easily gave way to playing the real Ping-Pong in the garage.

The most advanced music item that I had in my room was a standard record player and a cassette player. In school, activity diversification was not encouraged a heck of a lot like it is today.

It is not uncommon to have a student involved in Band, Sports, Drama, Art, Line Dancing, Llama Raising and a plethora of other time consuming events. (Talk about being a Jack of all trades and a master of none!!!)

Hey, when I took Band in school it was either take Band or take something else but not both and all of my band directors made very sure that they pointed that out to us.

When I looked back on all of the time that I spent practicing and trying to master the trombone, there was one thing that mattered the most to me and that was recognition.

You see, I wasn't very good at athletics, I didn't get a lot of dates with the girls and I was not into academics but I was really into music.