The Goods and Bads (So Far)

I figured it was about time that I have a post about what's gone well and what hasn't so far, teaching-wise. I'm at the end of my second week pretty much, and I've gotten all of the lesson groups so that they are more or less in the same place. Most of the groups have learned how to properly hold their instruments, proper embouchure, and how to play three notes. Flutes and saxophones have learned B, A, and G, clarinets and most trumpets have learned C, D, and E (one or two trumpets have learned G, F, and E), french horn is working on G and F, and trombones are working on F and Eb (though one of them is working on on Bb and C). We haven't gotten to the book yet (we use Standard of Excellence), but I'm hoping in a week or two we'll be ready to jump in. I've assigned most groups "Hot Cross Buns" and/or "Mary Had A Little Lamb" (by ear, no music). Some groups haven't gotten a handle on the notes strongly enough, but most have so we'll see how the tunes go next week.

So here's a general list of the good and the bad so far:

Struggles

• I've found that starting my clarinets on C has been somewhat problematic as it has been difficult for many of them to make sure they've covering all three of the front keys on their left hand for this, so they're not quite as successful with their first notes. However, starting some of them on E has been much more successful, and it is easier from there to add a finger for D and then another for C.
• Similar situation for flutes, I started some on G but they're not all as successful as some that I've had start on B. The advantage to my position is that if I find something is not working in the first day or two of lessons during the week, I can adjust as the week goes on and the later lessons are more successful, and then I can help the early lessons fix things the following week. 
• Teaching tonguing has been hit or miss with many of the groups. I've demonstrated and am really stressing no space between the notes so that the air is continuous. I have them start by saying "ta ta ta", and noticing how their tongues feel against the roof of their mouth and how quickly it just flicks against the roof (particularly for brass, though a similar concept obviously applies for the woodwinds, just against the reed for the saxes and clarinets instead of their teeth/gum line). I then have them take a deep breath and blow it out with the "too" articulation so that they see what it sounds and feels like with no space in between. I then have them apply it to their mouthpieces. I'd say about half of them get it no problem, while the other half I have to work with a bit (which I expect; I would be amazed if more of them got it immediately with no problem). It's mostly trying to make sure they keep the air going and are not letting their tongues suction to the roof of their mouths when they tongue. I've been using the whole "your air is like a stream of water" analogy, and luckily every room I've taught in so far has had a sink so I've been able to literally show them. That seems to help some students. 
• Four of my flute players are just having the hardest time getting a sound out. I've done the watermelon seed spitting analogy, blowing over a bottle top, asked them to practice in the mirror, telling and showing them how much air they need to make a sound, adjust the flute on their mouth for them and help them experiment with rolling them in and out, etc... No matter what I do these students simply will not change what they're doing and I don't know what to do from here. One of them absolutely cannot get her flute in the middle of her mouth when she plays, another blows way to hard and can't make a small enough hole with her aperture, and the others don't use enough air. I'm hoping with the more specific information we went over in our lessons this week and another week of practice that they'll be more successful next week. 

Successes

•  To the contrary of my last bullet in the struggles category, the majority of my flutes are getting excellent sounds in their first lessons, and some can even play two octaves of the three notes we've learned! Yay! The analogies listed above have worked really well for these girls. 
• Most of my trumpet players are getting C out as their first note but I do have a couple getting G out first. Although I know this is normal and perfectly fine to start, I was hoping since it's only two or three that are getting G I could possibly get them to play C to start instead so that everyone's learning the same notes together. One of them simply has not been able to play the C yet, but I've gotten the rest to play G with little struggle simply by demonstrating what happens to my chin when I buzz from a high note to a low note on the mouthpiece. It seems to be more effective than saying "you need to make the whole in your mouth bigger for low notes and think "ah" and warmer air, etc...". 
• Being a little goofy/dramatic with some concepts. For example, for the trumpets I have them make a "claw" with their right hand to really exaggerate how curved their fingers should be when they play. Whenever I see them starting towards flat fingers I have them all give me a claw high in the air and then drop it onto their valves. I tell them right out that some of the things I teach I will purposely make goofy because things like that tend to stick better. I must admit, a high percentage of my trumpet players have come back with excellent hand position this week.
• Teaching trombones proper hand position by saying their left hand is like a squirt gun and their right hand is like a "spock" hand. Granted for the students who don't know the reference it's ok because most of them recognize the hand when I demonstrate it, and it's a great way to teach proper slide hand. Yay for a generation of trombone players who hold their slide correctly :)
• Percussion! After my college experience (or lack thereof) with percussion I thought for sure I'd be in major trouble for teaching percussion, but my senior student teaching set me up so well for this. Our percussionists here learn bells and snare, and I have some solid concepts that set them up well (or at least I think they will) to be successful, well-rounded percussionists. I'm trying to start them off with good habits and so far they've all caught on quite well (such as making sure their rebounds are small, posture is good, etc...). I just need to make sure I stay consistent with them.

First Month

So it's been a bit of a crazy month, hence the lack of posts. Since the band program isn't part of the school curriculum here, at least for the elementary schools, I have been in charge of getting everything organized and worked out, so it's been a lot of adminstrative/logistical stuff so far.

The first thing I took on doing that has been an ongoing process even through today is working out the registrations and instrument numbers. The students get a packet in the summer that has information about the instrumental programs in the district (strings and band for the elementary schools, 3-5 grade for strings and 5th grade for band), which includes information about rental night as well as a registration form and paperwork for applying for financial aid (there is a fee for taking part in the instrumental programs). If students and families decide to take part, then they are supposed to send the information to the Business Office at our main building, where it is processed and then I receive photocopies of the registration forms and information about who has paid or not (this is important for later in this post).

Then next thing I decided to do was to re-inventory my instruments. I work at five schools, but I have an "office" at my home base school which has all of the instruments, music, etc... I'm glad I decided to redo the inventory, because although the previous director gave me all of his paperwork and information, I couldn't open the file for his most recent inventory, so it gave me a better idea of what was in the office. I also needed to do this because students who apply and qualify for financial aid are eligible for a loaner instrument from the school on a first come first serve basis. I ended up having a ton of saxophone player register, five or so of which requested loaners, but I only have two functional loaners to give out so I either had to give them their second choice or they had to find a way to obtain one some other way. Some of the instruments in general are in quite good shape, but others (like most of my trombones), are loanable but not in very promising condition, unfortunately. Others are so badly off that they're on the "Bad Instrument, Need Repair" shelf (but fortunately that's not many of them). For example,  I don't have a saxophone to model on right now, so I took one off of the repair shelf to at least bring in and be able to put together for the students and show them how to hold it, etc... I got a mouthpiece too so I could make a note with them on that alone before sticking it on the instrument. For ****s and giggles I decided to try to play it anyway (it's missing a key entirely near the bottom of the instrument), and I got some, well, interesting sounds out of it...

Rental night was another undertaking, but luckily it didn't involve to much logistical organization. We do this night through a fairly local music company, who our district has had close relations to for several years (from my understanding). What happens is I call them and give them my rough numbers (this was back in the first week of September), and they come down (on a prearranged night) and bring a certain number of each instrument, the method books, music stands, and accessories (reeds, etc...), and parents and students come, sign a rental form, and pick up the instrument they want. This company has been fantastic, they've been so welcoming, supportive, and friendly so far, and they made everything go very smoothly. All I really did was give a short three minute spiel at the beginning about the program, turned it over to the head of the company to talk a bit about the rentals, and then I hung around and answered any questions the parents had (quite a few of which I directed to the previous director, who was there helping me out, since I had no idea what to tell them). 

Anyway, another task I needed to take care of (and perhaps the biggest one) was scheduling. Again, because the program is not part of the curriculum, and therefore not a part of the master schedule for the school day, I have to work out the schedule myself (which is fine, but quite a large undertaking). I waited until early this week to really work on this because I wanted to make sure I had most of the registrations in. I then divided them up by school, then by instrument, and then assigned no more than five students from each instrument group to a lesson group. I have each school on a rotating schedule, so for example flutes at one school may be group A and go at 8:15 on their assigned day, and then the next week they would drop to the bottom and be at 1:00. I was lucky and have it worked out that I go to one school per day for lessons and have no overflow (so I don't need to go back to any schools as of yet on a different day to teach extra lessons). Four of the five schools here have a day where there are no specials (so art, PE, music, etc...), so my goal was to go to those schools on the day they don't have specials so that 1) I don't conflict with them and 2) I can use either the music or art room for lessons. Fortunately, this worked out, and each school  has no specials on a different day so it works nicely. The last school, the one that has specials everyday, I was thankfully able to go to on the leftover day.

Not only did I try to work around these, more specifically the lessons had to not conflict with other things like Literacy block, science specials (a new addition to the schools this year), lunch/recess, and other things like ELL. Some teachers/schools are more flexible about this, but some of them are adamant about not taking students out. For these, I had to do my best to just simply avoid the times (and somehow miraculously managed to do so. Thankfully, the teachers at all the schools have been extremely helpful and understand so they helped me find ways to make it work). Then, there are some individual students who can't miss certain things, so I keep their lesson time stationary week to week so that they don't rotate with the others and end up having to be taken out of certain subjects. I don't know how, but so far (knock on wood) the schedule is working out. I pushed it enough that I was able to start lessons this week.

As I mentioned earlier, parental/guardian correspondence has been a big part of this process. I've truly enjoyed getting to know some of the band parents through our email and phone conversations. The only confusing part has been with making sure students are officially registered. Earlier in the year, when I did my demos, I sent home a letter with students detailing some things about the program, rental night, and registering. I had mentioned in the letter that if they are interested, please shoot me an email with some information (name, school, instrument, etc...), and I put it all in a database. What I realize I need to do for next year is clarify that in the email they should tell me whether they're interested in the program, and whether or not they are planning on coming to the rental night. Now, I have people who told me they're interested but still no forms or payment, so I have been chasing them through email to see whether they're still interested, or whether they have simply not sent the form in (or in some cases, they've sent the information but it's gotten lost in the mail or they send it to the school when it's supposed to be sent to a different building). Since this week has been the week where I've gotten a chance to look at my more solid numbers, I had only realized about early/mid week that about 18 had only told me they're interested but I didn't have forms and/or payment for. This meant that I was sending emails/calling on Thursday informing them that their student couldn't participate in lessons until this was taken care of. Fortunately, many parents were very understanding and good about it and apologized and said they'd get it right in, and they did. Some were a little trickier to work out but so far it's going okay.

Finally, I got to start my lessons yesterday. I only had flute, clarinet, trumpet, saxophone, and trombone so far (full ensemble rehearsals will start in a few weeks; that's something I still have yet to set up). Students get half hour lessons, and they are in groups from 1-5 students each. My first saxophone lesson was a bit of a disaster, seeing as one of the students came in about 20 minutes late because he had to stop at the nurse's for something, and so by the time he came in I had just gotten through posture, breathing, and instrument set-up with the other two girls and then had to quickly run him through set-up to catch up. We ended on a fairly unsuccessful note where I was frantically trying to get them to make sounds on the mouthpiece then put it on the horn, so I will have to clean up my mess with that next week. The rest of the lessons have gone fairly smoothly though with nothing totally unexpected going wrong yet which is nice. I had a percussion lesson today as well, I've got a good feeling about this one, I think he'll be quite good (we have percussionists here get a "drum kit" so that they learn both mallets and snare). I'm lucky that I had such great percussion experience in my senior student teaching, too, otherwise I would have been at a loss for this. The whole experience is really neat so far, since this is my first time teaching group lessons, and in addition, it's the first time I've had an experience like this without another teacher in the room supervising me and to jump in if I start to mess up. Don't get me wrong, it's neat, it's just a little scary when it hits me in the middle of my lesson that I am truly on my own for this and need to be the best model possible so I can give the students the best lessons that I can.

Other than that it's been some little stuff to do, like working on the band website. The previous director established a 5th grade band website, and I've been editing it a bit and adding a bunch of my own stuff. I really hope that families will end up utilizing it as I'll be putting homework, schedules, concert information, and a lot more on it, so it will be much better than continuously sending paper notices home. We'll see how that goes. I am also trying to put instrument assembly/disassembly info on it, proper posture, how to hold the instrument, proper embouchure, etc... but I haven't quite made it through all of the topics yet.