Spring Recruiting: enrollment, instrumentation and retention
by: William W. Gourley
Over the past five years we have experienced an increase in spring recruiting for beginning band/string. Traditional fall recruiting has been replaced with winter and spring to the point the majority of the 800+ schools we work with sign-up for band and strings in the spring. The need to generate fall class lists as early as March has instrumental music educators scrambling to complete their recruiting in the midst of festival season when they are occupied with sectionals, basketball pep bands, solo & ensemble festivals and spring trips.
This has prompted more of the schools we service to utilize our recruiting services than ever before. Music educators find it difficult to adequately recruit students while in the midst of the busy festival and trip season. As we all know, music programs success rely on getting enough students in the beginning program. We have been able to help educators to continue to build programs with the many resources Marshall Music offers.
A further consequence of spring recruiting is signing students up in the spring for a band or string class that does not start until the fall. This presents two major challenges.
We have found that these issues can be dealt with and spring recruiting can be an advantage for your program without a great deal of effort on the teacher’s part by implementing a four to five week after school program or beginning ‘camp”. This may seem like a tremendous undertaking at the end of the year with so many activities going on but it can be less intrusive than you imagine.
There are several advantages to a beginning “camp” experience such as this.
First of all, it creates a greater urgency for the students to get an instrument and does not allow months for them to change their minds which often results in fluctuations in instrumentation and drop-outs over the summer. Effective recruiting is a marketing campaign that builds to the rental period. It is important to close the sale, as it were, when the interest is highest. Having students sign-up for band/strings and then waiting for the first class until fall offers a lot of time to rethink the commitment as the excitement wears off. Even if they have the instrument over the summer there is an opportunity to lose interest.
Secondly, the beginning camp experience often offers a better environment for the students. Retention is greatly enhanced if students succeed in the first few weeks and smaller like instrument classes can foster a more satisfying start. Few beginning band/strings classes have the luxury of meeting in homogeneous classes and in smaller schools few have the opportunity to meet in like instrument settings. The beginning camp experience can offer this opportunity. Where there are two band instructors the brasses can be divided into low brass and high brass twice a week and woodwinds and bells can be divided into groups. Where there is one instructor strings can be divided into two groups meeting on opposite days and a band can meet in like instrument classes.
More specialized instruction can be achieved by using band/string students from the eighth through twelfth grade to assist you. Your assistants do not have to be the top performers in your group. They should be personable and excited about this opportunity.
The instructor starts the class reinforcing embouchure, hand position and posture. Then send the beginning students off with the student assistants to teach the four or fiv, three note melodies for the demo concert. You should meet with the assistants the week before for 40 minutes and teach them how to rote teach the songs in little sections and put them together. The assistants should also reinforce the proper embouchure, posture, hand position and bow hold. Ideally, try to use a ratio of one assistant for every three to four beginners. You can drop in on the individual classes to monitor the progress.
There are a few added benefits to using student assistants. First of all you learn more as you teach. Your assistants will have a greater understanding of their instrument as they teach it. Second, being an assistant allows students to be a greater part of the program and encourages retention. Finally, beginning students are passively taught the lesson that playing an instrument involves students of all grades, not just beginners, and gets them thinking long term about the program.
The beginning camp experience allows students to begin band/strings outside of the structure of the regular school day. There is a more casual atmosphere and the student assistants offer a welcome change from the teachers they have had all day. Even without student assistants, you have the opportunity to face beginners in smaller classes than your regular schedule in the fall and create a more relaxed environment.
The benefits derived from a short beginning band or strings camp will offer great rewards in maintaining enrollment and instrumentation while offering a better quality environment for beginners which will enhance retention in the program.
Advocacy, one piece at a time by William W. Gourley
The nagging issue, “Does music making create smarter students or do smarter students take music?” continues to keep music educators sitting on the fence when it comes to promoting the benefits of music making to parents, communities and school boards.
Fortunately, the skepticism has prompted more research into music’s influences on the brain and benefits to man’s wellbeing and raised the bar for the criteria used to implement and evaluate it. Each year there is mounting evidence that music, whether one is a performer or just passively listening to it, has beneficial properties from physical brain development, to healing properties, to making a better human being.
Advocacy, one piece at a time by William W. Gourley
“Do you want your child to make more friends, get better grades, stay off drugs, and score better on their SAT?”
You might expect these are the claims of a private school or magnet school trying to convince parents to enroll their children in the school. In fact, it is from an October, 2001 article in Musicinc entitled, A High-Yield Investment, about the benefits of participation in music making.
Music educators from general music teachers in the public schools to the leading researchers at the universities find it difficult to fully accept and promote these claims. It is understandable since the body of research regarding the impact and importance of music to mankind is in its relative infancy. Early findings of such topics as the Mozart Effect were regarded with skepticism even by Gordon Shaw, the researcher who first proclaimed it.
The nagging issue, “Does music making create smarter students or do smarter students take music?” continues to keep music educators sitting on the fence when it comes to promoting the benefits of music making to parents, communities and school boards.
Fortunately, the skepticism has prompted more research into music’s influences on the brain and benefits to man’s wellbeing and raised the bar for the criteria used to implement and evaluate it. Each year there is mounting evidence that music, whether one is a performer or just passively listening to it, has beneficial properties from physical brain development, to healing properties, to making a better human being.
This may be anecdotal evidence of music’s ability to enhance one’s social skills but sticking a CD of Puccini in the CD player during traffic slow downs on the expressway makes me more accommodating to my fellow commuters, even those that wait until the last minute before they get into the one lane.
Still, with the expanding research out there, music educators continue to act like a middle school wallflower at the spring dance staring down at his or her two left feet, afraid to make eye contact for fear of rejection or making a fool of himself/herself. Considering the ever increasing pressure being placed on academic performance in schools and expanding opportunities for children outside the classroom; music educators should at least endeavor to make their communities aware of the research and allow parents, and decision makers to make their own judgments regarding the information.
Make More Friends
“Kids who create tend not to destroy” pronounced New York Congresswoman, Louis Slaughter at the Democratic National Convention. In 2001 House Concurrent Resolution 266 noted, “Music education enhances intellectual development and enriches the academic environment for children of all ages. Music educators play a key role in helping children succeed in school.”
Music keeps students busy and fosters a community where everyone is a contributor. No one is a bench rider in music which builds an enhanced social awareness of the value of every individual. When someone first joins a group they soon realize everyone matters and they have an investment in making the band or orchestra succeed.
The feeling of accomplishment from learning an instrument and being a contributing factor to the success of an ensemble enhances a child’s self esteem which helps to create a more confident and socially accomplished individual.
Get Better Grades
A July 24, 2000 Newsweek article states, “Several lines of evidence suggest that the human brain is wired for music and that some forms of intelligence are enhanced by music.” Music learning creates paths or patterns in the brain similar to -what University of Washington researcher, Patricia Kuehl has labeled a “perceptual map”- patterns created in language development. These paths enhance learning in other disciplines.
Questioning his own findings after proclaiming a Mozart Effect, Gordon Shaw PhD in physics, studied 136 second grade students in California to assess the effect on learning when students incorporated piano keyboard instruction into learning. One group trained with a computer game designed to teach reasoning skills and the other used the same program supplemented with keyboard instruction. The group that used keyboard instruction along with the computer program scored 27% higher than the group that used just the computer assisted learning.
Music involves more of the brain than other activities, activating the cerebellum not just the right side of the cerebral cortex. According to researcher Josef Rauschecker of Georgetown University, “Music is processed in more regions of the brain than we ever imagined.”
Even more dramatic, studies by Gottfried Schlag at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston, indicate music may affect brain size. When the brains of 30 musicians were compared to 30 non-musicians he found the thick cable of neurons connecting the brain’s right and left hemispheres was larger among the musicians.
Stay Off Drugs
The 1998 Texas Commission on Drug and Alcohol Abuse found students involved in extracurricular activities were far less likely to be involved with drugs. Secondary students in band or orchestra had the lowest current and lifetime use of all substances-alcohol, tobacco and illegal drugs.
The web site www.whatsyourantidrug.com asks students nationwide the leading reason they do not do drugs. The top five were: guys 44,008, music 40490, basketball 21641, dancing 19595, tomorrow16,400. Reasons six through ten were: computers, family, friendship, life and singing.
Score Better on the SAT
A 1997 UCLA study of 25,000 students over a ten year period found students enrolled in music programs-regardless of socio-economic background- generally performed better on standardized tests than those students who did not participate in these programs.
In 1998 the College Board that administers the SAT found students with music education on average performed 5% better on the verbal and math portions of the SAT than their non-music peers.
With all the responsibilities of teaching and administering an instrumental music program trying to maintain an ongoing advocacy awareness campaign does not have to be difficult. It can be as simple as linking websites to your band or orchestra web site or including a couple sentences on the concert program along with the web site from which they were taken. Two information packed sites are www.amc-music.com and www.themusicedge.com. These small doses are, if I can paraphrase, advocacy by 10,000 cuts. As a sculptor chips at a block of marble to produce a masterpiece, by chipping away a piece at a time with advocacy, eventually you can create a lasting impression on the community.
In the competitive class-scheduling and budget challenged environment music programs face it is vital to do everything we can do to enhance awareness of the benefits of music participation.