Beginning Band Whoas

In my last post, I went into great detail about my attempts to come into my first year of teaching with my assessment and accountability guns a-blazing, and the lessons I learned from that. I left you with a cliffhanger of sorts, musing that as hard as things were with my 7th and 8th graders adjusting to my new system, at least I can rest easy and know that I have my 5th grade beginners. I can start them fresh and help them become super independent, internally motivated band geeks, right?

Well, as I'm discovering, that isn't exactly easy either.

The crux of any problem with a student learning something is largely motivation. I'm becoming convinced of that. Some of the problems my students are experiencing are inability to identify notes on a staff, inability to tell one pitch from another, and just no desire to prepare anything for lessons (as I edit this, I think the main issue is just that the students rarely practice to get familiar with the fingerings, and as a result, they aren't ready for lessons and are somewhat clueless when it comes to note reading). It's not that they can't read notes, work on their embouchure in order to get up to those Fs, or take 8 minutes to get familiar with the fingerings for #21, The Whole Thing in Essential Elements 2000. It's just that they don't care to.

So it's my job to inspire them to get them out of their musical doldrums and into the awesomely incredible world of music making. I think that my job as pedagogue is not as important as my job as motivator, and I am definitely still working on developing those skills.

I have tried several different approaches to light a fire underneath these students. Certainly, the most effective and longest-lasting motivation is intrinsic, and my main focus in all this is to give them an intrinsic love of music. Back in October, I burned a CD for everyone of my 5th grade students that had a lot of their instrument's "greatest hits." Trumpets got a trumpet CD, clarinets got a clarinet CD, etc. The purpose of this was mainly just to make them say "woah, that's awesome, I want to do that!" Unfortunately, I think few students actually listened to the CD, and when we discussed it during lessons, I didn't quite get that reaction I was hoping for.

So I have also tried a little bit of external motivation. Just yesterday was our 5/6 Christmas Concert, and many of our 5th graders performed #38, Jingle Bells. Now, we didn't start in the EE 2000 books until late October, and none of the groups were at that point in the book, so I presented our Jingle Bells performance as a sort of extra special challenge. I gave every student the opportunity to practice Jingle Bells on their own, come in during recess, and play it in a group to show that they had prepared it. This strategy did actually yield some results, as some students who had previously been dead-beats got really excited about playing a familiar tune and finally getting to perform. About 80% of the band class totally bought into it, prepared it to at least a decent degree, and had a blast with it.

I'm also going to start something called the 6 Second Audition with some of my groups that are floundering. The basic gist, as I read about in a recent issue of the Instrumentalist, is that you pick 4-8 measures of a song that the students were assigned, and just go down the line, allowing every student to play and compete for the "first chair" position. Hopefully a bit of competition will inspire them to get over the hump. (Don't worry, I will not over do it with this strategy - I'm not really big into competition, so I will be light and friendly with this).

So those are a few of the approaches I'm taking regarding motivation. I'm also super energetic and excited as a teacher, especially with 5th graders, so I'm also just trying to get that to rub off on them. As I analyze this struggle, I think that I am ultimately trying to balance FUN in band and EXCELLENCE in band. Maybe excellence isn't even the right word. Sure, I have high standards for all my students, and I will nudge them all toward the direction of excellence (some harder than others), but more than that I just want every student to at least be a positive contributor, someone who isn't clueless.

I'm ok with some kids not being superstar band geeks. I'm ok with them missing a note every once in a while, or note having a totally mature tone. I am not ok, however, with students being just totally clueless and dependent on me to show them how the song goes. I want for all my kids to at least be able to hash out a part to a decent level of proficiency and read rhythms independently. Band just isn't fun when you have no idea what's going on and you can't come close on any song you are working on. Nothing is fun when you are clueless.

So how do I motivate these students to get over the hump of helplessness and cluelessness without being so tough on them that they just want to quit?

As you chew on that, I should say that to be fair, many of my 5th graders are rocking. They are counting and clapping with confidence and accuracy, reading well, having a great attitude about preparation, and most importantly, loving music making. But I feel like these kids would be self-motivated no matter what I did or how I taught. And sometimes I feel like no matter what I do or how I teach, I just can't motivate the struggling kids.

But instead of despair and giving in, I'm rolling up my sleeves and working hard to get those lower-achieving kids participating at a high level, reading notes, and performing with confidence, all the while still having fun in band.

Gosh, and that's another thing. I was talking with my fellow blogger Sara, who reminded me that Chip Destefano at McCracken Middle School has said that his main job with 5th graders is to get them into 6th grade. The bridge between 5th and 6th grade can be the point where some kids just decide that it's not fun enough to stay in band, so I better darn well give make sure they are having fun in band.

So, pizza party. Balloons for breathing. General goofiness. Fist bumps. Letting students conduct and lead "My Turn/Your Turns." We Will Rock You. High fives. But even more than all that stuff, I try to show each of my kids that I care about them as people. I seek them out in the hallway, ask them about their favorite music, how class is going, who they hang out with on the weekends, and what kind of things they like to do. I'm working really hard to build a relationship with these 5th graders, hoping that they see that I genuinely care about them, resulting in staying in band and buying into what I'm selling.

Anyway, that's a lot of beginning band reflection. And there's a lot more to come, on specific pedagogy and teaching techniques, but that's for another time. Also, I hope to put up a post sometime that just catalogs a list of positive things that are going on, just so you know it's not all doom and gloom at Don't Smile to Christmas!