Motivate Students by Achieving Short Term & Daily Goals

Program preparation feels
a lot like this, but every day
counts. What do students feel
they've accomplished when
they leave each day?

Welcome back to my series about Student Motivation! My last gave some tips to Motivate Students by Creating Structure. This, I think, is a prerequisite. Without structure, nothing else you do will matter. But simply providing enough structure may not get you all the way there. I doesn't necessarily garuantee that students will start believing they can achieve, or care to achieve. In fact, putting all of that structure in place without enough results may make students feel bitter that they followed your rules, did what you asked, and didn't get much for their effort. I ran into this during marching season, which was riddled with rookie mistakes. I started working out a system to increase our daily achievement that showed some results by the Christmas concert, and was more refined and led to much greater success for UIL and other contests. With that in mind, here are some tips to setting and achieving short term and daily goals.

Motivate Students by Creating Structure

I'll be honest, motivation is something I'm still working on. I feel for the teachers who teach required classes because I myself teach elementary music, and 5th and 6th grade band is required (all of which I do on my own in addition to the HS band). Luckily I've done well with motivating all of the groups except for those required band classes. The Band is on a roll right now, having made incredible progress this year and having had some success at contests. The students are proud of themselves, and they're also getting great positive feedback from their fellow students, the faculty, and members of the community. It took a lot of hard work from everyone involved since August 1st, and often it felt like a struggle, both for me and them. Reflecting on these experiences, especially with the HS Band, I've thought of a few of the things that have led to successfully motivating the students throughout the year.

Inspiring Video About Classical Music in the Congo

CBS' 60 Minutes recently aired a segment about the only symphony orchestra in Sub-Sahara Africa, located in one of the poorest countries in the world, the Congo. In a city of 10 million people, there are currently 200 members whose lives now revolve around learning and performing classical music.

I won't go into the details, but instead just wanted to set up this video. It's really very inspiring, and reminds me of El Sistema, which has for a few years now both inspired me and influenced the curriculum and system I'm trying to build in the town where I teach. It is another reminder of how classical music is life changing, and how what we do as music teachers has the powerful potential to change lives for the better. 

Enjoy the video!

Here is the link to the internet article: Producer finds musical "sweet spot" in the Congo.

Musically yours,

Mr. Cooper

Six Tactics to Improve Intonation

Your ear is the final judge, but it
doesn't hurt to have one of these
on the stand.

Greetings!

One of the most illusive pursuits is that of ensemble intonation. There were at least a handful of things that helped us and continue to help us improve in that regard. When the year started, all my band knew about tuning your instrument was that the previous director marked all of the slides etc. where they were supposed to be set, and if you left it there it meant you were in tune. Can you believe that? So we practically started from scratch. I doubt I'll get through everything in one post (entire books are available on the subject), but here are a few key tactics that I think got us on the right track.

Four Fun Tricks to Align the Band's Pulse

Greetings!

One of the biggest things I've had to do with my band is work to align the ensemble's pulse. Even once the quarter notes lined up, often eighth notes across the band wouldn't line up properly. Sometimes it's just that players aren't agreeing on how to shape the ends of notes, but just as often is can be a lack of subdivision. You can explain subdivision and tell them to subdivide, which is better than nothing, but I've found that getting them to externalize it and then referencing that is more helpful, and more fun. So here are a few ways you can try this out with your group.