I read this article and all I thought about was the Elementary school that I currently intern at. It just so happens to be the district that Brandt talks about in his article. He mentions in his article that he started with the 6th grade band because they were the youngest band members (now the band starts in 4th grade, chorus starts in 3rd). I see the progress the district has made since Brandt's impact on them. The last 2 years the music teacher in the Elementary schools (there are 2 in this district), started the 3rd grade on recorders, which is wonderful. They even have a thing called "Recorder Belts" in which students test for different color belts (which are pieces of string, that hang off the bottom of the recorder). So cute! One of my students asked why my recorder and their teacher's recorder are black (the students are off-white), I said because we reached our black belts in recorder. The kids love it, and the learn a lot. More so then that, it helps to recruit band members since they're a year away from being able to join the school band.
Some teachers in this district have been there for years and they do like to talk about other teachers (whether it's positive or negative feedback). In particular they have spoken to me about their views on Brandt's predecessor. Who was a 'very nice older man', 'worked there for many years', 'was boring', and 'the kids never did anything except read books and listen to old tapes'. Teachers have said that the teachers who came since the man who was there before Brandt, got the kids to sing, to dance, to improvise, compose and have since learned skill sets to help build a proper foundation for future musicians (if they so choose). It's nice to hear how much the program has changed and grown for the better.
Brandt touches upon four essential things he focused on to build this music program: musical discipline, technique, theory and composition. I personally am a music theory junkie, I truly am quite a dork when it comes to theory. I understand that this is not the norm for most musicians. A lot of teachers I've come across do not look forward to teaching music theory, because they (and the students) find it boring. I'm an exception, but it's also how you 'sell it' to your students. Brandt uses these four things (musical discipline, technique, theory and composition) repetitively in his band rehearsals, making it fun for his students. I did roman numeral analysis almost daily in my high school music theory classes, and I loved it because I'm a dork. Did it help me musically though? Yes and no. If I wasn't a music dork though I probably would've dropped the class or failed, maybe squinted my eyes while looking at my teacher, pretending to smush his head in between my index finger and thumb. Brandt has his students play in through different keys, develop their own melody lines, switch off parts, and things are constantly changing. It's not the same ol'drone key scales and fingerings, he shows his students that they can play musically, switch genres and styles, and develop their skill sets. Students may grope about it in the beginning, if it's something new. It's a lot easier to say "put your fingers on these keys, press here, blow the reed softer, etc. etc. Anyone can memorize how to play a song on any instrument, that's not hard. It is semi-mindless though and does not truly teach in a way that is most effective and productive.
This article helps to open the educators keys, to help get them to think of different ways to educate. We're all so accustomed to how we learned to be in a band or a chorus. I refuse to put my students through hours of mundane roman numeral analysis, playing the same scales just because the book we're playing out of only uses those scales. It won't do my students justice, and they deserve more than that.
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