Third-Stream Music Education

Kids. Oi, kids. Can you believe that you used to be one? Just as smelly, immature, hasty, disorganized, smelly and immature as the kids you teach? It boggles my mind to think what I would say to myself if I had me in my 7th grade band. I would probably beat me with a stick and lose my teaching license.

My inspiration today comes from Doug Butchy. Check out his recent theme of recruiting and retention in his bands for a little backstory. I think most of us have felt his sting and asked his questions at some point in our careers.

Why do upper elementary/ middle school kids join Band? Lots of folks have had pretty good answers, none of which include “love Classical music” or “want to practice scales” or “want to practice every night for seven years so that the Band can win State contest when I’m seventeen years old”. I have an answer, and it may be a little different. I say that kids in the Twenty-First Century join band because…

they want to feel like rock stars.

Most adolescents haven’t heard enough Classical music to connect with it. Few adolescents have heard music performed live more than once or twice. It is a rare child who comes from a home where family and friends gather around a piano or whip out the guitars and sing together on a Saturday night. For the vast majority of our students, their connection with music in real life (kudos and apologies to the elementary general music teachers) is MTV. Real life, that is, in a way that is cultural and personal. Many general and vocal music teachers have discovered that their students sing without inhibition if they can hold a “mic” prop, a la American Idol; even a whiteboard marker will do. This is because students have never witnessed singing without seeing bright lights and big amplifiers.

We also know from brain research that during adolescence the brain develops in leaps and bounds in the regions that control emotions, such as the medulla oblongata (have you ever seen Adam Sandler’s Waterboy?) Brain scans show that barely any blood circulates in the logic center–the neocortex–during the Beginning Band years. You already know from personal experience that middle school students operate seemingly without logic, and value only their budding social lives…so apply that to your Band classes!

Ergo, if students are to take an interest in Band, put forth the effort to work through the squeaks and squawks of the first two months of Band, sustain daily practice through middle school, and sweat through their first year of marching, then it is because we take their modern cultural background into account and because we go straight to the emotional connection. If the quickest way to a man’s heart is through his stomach, then the quickest way to a beginning clarinetist’s heart is through MTV-type associations. Rock star, here we come.

I don’t have all the answers in this vein, but I can make a few concrete suggestions.
1. Don’t shy away from the rock/hip hop tunes, even as you sneak in the art music.
2. Consider colored stage lights and amplified guitar, bass and piano in the middle school concert band. Don’t be afraid of the occasional gimmick at the middle school concerts.
3. Have the Beginning Band play a performance for their parents and invited friends within the first ten weeks, no matter how informal.
4. Find and exploit every possible performance opportunity for your students, no matter how small. Make a simple arrangement of Happy Birthday, obtain a list of teacher birthdays on your campus, and send the kids on hit-and-run guerilla birthday commando missions to hunt down and serenade teachers on their birthdays. If you are lucky enough to have a shared campus, invite elementary classes for a five- or ten-minute concert any time you have anything ready to play. Elementary students clap and cheer and ooh and ahh over anything, and your middle schoolers will feel like a million bucks.
5. Any time you have a performance of any sort, whether formal or informal, announce all pieces or introduce all students as if your students were the (insert sports team here) running down the tunnel and onto the court/field of (insert sports facility here). Better yet, get the announcer for the high school football team to do it just like a pep rally.
6. In class, make time for music of “no artistic value” that the kids enjoy. Write the riffs out yourself if you have to. They will love you for it, and you might be surprised how many musical concepts you can cover if you can just keep your ears open for what they are listening to this week. Even Britney Spears’ “Oops I Did it Again” is a great song for showing off triads/arpeggios.

Many of these suggestions involve shallow changes. That’s the beauty of it! Adolescents typically only see the surface of things, allowing you to engage them on a basic, emotional level without changing your philosophy regarding counting systems or use of the tuner. Make kids feel like rock stars, and they’ll do your recruiting for you.

Be a rock star!

Filed under: Recruiting & Retention