The big question on music teacher’s minds is when and how will we recover from the pandemic. In fact, some are even asking, can we recover? The answer is a resounding YES! If they are intentional about it music programs will bounce back and be better than ever. It may take a year or two but it can be done. The first step is for teachers to admit that what they and their students have been through has been very traumatic. Covid has affected everyone. Like any recovery from trauma, it takes time.  Everyone is very tired and we desperately need to get to summer vacation and recharge our batteries. If there was ever a time to schedule some down time and do what energizes your soul this is it. Our teaching situations next year are still being determined but there are things we can and should be doing right now. I will share some ideas with you that were developed while part of several panels on recovery for national ASTA and the Ohio State Workshop. As someone engaged in a long-term substitute position in middle school orchestras this year, I have been experiencing all of this first hand. 

Program Loss

Document your program loss and prioritize things you want to bring back. Write down what the kids did not get to do this year. Examples might be concerts, festivals, conferences, solo and ensemble, clinics, trips, specific techniques or musical experiences. Write down losses that affect you and the program such as budget, staffing, contact time, abnormal attrition, morale, community support, and musical development. You can use this kind of documentation when meeting with your administration to advocate for support in whatever form that takes.

Things We Learned During Covid

March 16, 2020 marked the greatest infusion ever of technology in the classroom. We literally re-imagined how we deliver education over a week-end. As we get back in person, we don’t want to lose the advantages we gained from technology. In particular, I think of things like SmartMusic, video conferencing, and Digital Audio Workstations. Teachers also learned to clarify why, and for whom our programs exist. It became clear to us that music needs to be performed with a purpose and music making should be meaningful. Most importantly we learned to adjust our curriculum and how to address social-emotional learning in a more impactful way. It was also made clear to us that our existing structures don’t have to stay the same and this is a good time to make changes.

Principles of a Successful Rebuilding Plan

Adjust your perspective on what you can do, not what you can’t.  Continue to dream and look forward. It is not about what you are capable of doing it is what you are willing to do.

Prioritize your efforts for next year. Focus on things that have the biggest program impact such as recruiting and retention. Be prepared to let go of some things in the interest of time and your energy. Plan, plan, plan. Create an action plan that is student-centered. Make sure your vision is clear and your mission precise, then be prepared to monitor and adjust.

Creating the Plan

The first step is to assess where the program is in terms of numbers, staffing, budget, contact time, morale, and community support. Scott Lang has some great assessment tools at Be Part of the Music.com. In particular check out www.BPOTM.org/ESSER to find more resources.

Learn more about the Elementary and Secondary Emergency Relief Fund (ESSER)

Assemble your data and prioritize the most important issues. Now create a step-by-step action plan for recovery. If your beginning numbers were down, you can you go back and recruit more students and start two new classes at the same time next year. You may have to look at creative staffing and scheduling to accomplish this. One way is to see if a staff member at an upper grade level be made available to work with last year’s beginners for a semester while you start new ones. If the additional beginners have to be mixed with students that started last year you can choose a different method book so the experienced students can review and help new students but also have new material to master. Many beginning classes this year met in less than ideal circumstances so a slower paced review might really help.

Create a document for tracking retention if you don’t already have one. Use that data to follow up with students and to invite back to music. You could even create a student recruitment team from your ensembles. Form a team of existing music students to identify key things you could do to encourage students that dropped out to return. It is especially important to contact students that are still virtual or in a separate cyber-school. Convince the administration to let you start a beginner group at older grade levels. This is a great time to re-imagine how your schedule and offerings could work.

Talk to Your Administration

Once you have put together a prioritized recovery plan with clear data and metrics meet with your administrator to discuss it. Make it clear that you need a little time to move the program forward. Let them know that music programs across the country have experienced loss of students and now is the time to rebuild. In order to rebuild you may need a little grace on class sizes. There will be a temptation on their part to start combining grade levels or just reduce the number of music offerings in general. That would be a short-sighted decision. One of the things that makes music programs cost effective is our class sizes are usually bigger. If you are unclear about that idea read John Benham’s book Music Advocacy: Moving from Survival to Vision. Remember to be positive and make it clear you are going to make the program even better than before the pandemic. There are many resources on music social media sites and websites to help you. Reach out to other music teachers to share your successes and hear about theirs. Don’t be afraid to ask for help. The bottom-line is don’t let the fear of trying to do everything prevent you from doing what you can.

All the best,

Bob Phillips

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Warm-Up Music

In order to alleviate student nervousness about playing, start with a tune or piece from the previous year that they know very well. If students are coming from different schools and do not have common repertoire, choose something that will be very easy for everyone. 

I encourage all groups to have a rote warm-up tune as part of the curriculum. If you have done this, it can be played in unison from memory. Elementary students will always have a list of these; think book 1 or 2. Upper-level students will have tunes they remember from their earlier days. 

SmartMusic includes great warm-up music and so much more. Try it for free.

The Reboot

Use these tunes to review and reboot their ears and technique. Because the music is not challenging, students have the brain space to focus on the review issues. What’s more, as students play the familiar tunes/pieces, you have time to do evaluation and remediation. 

It is critical for you to assess where the students are so you know how to move forward. 

Ten Review Priorities

You may wish to add additional priorities but this list is a good start:

1. Make sure all instruments are well set-up and in working order. This will include bridge placements, string height, bow hair, strings, pegs, and end pin function.
2. Be sure sitting/standing position and overall posture are correct. Remember that the body should be lengthened and balanced. It is easier to start correctly than to remediate a bad habit. Since students grow over the summer, double-check instrument sizes, end pin lengths, and chair or stool heights.
3. Be sure right-hand positions include proper finger placement, bent thumbs, and flexible fingers, wrists, and elbows. Review in all parts of the bow.
4. Be sure left-hand positions include well-formatted fingers, thumb placement, and correct wrist angle. Check the positions on all strings to make sure students are adjusting to lower or higher strings appropriately.
5. Play the rote tune in different bowing lanes, with differing weights (dynamics), and bow speeds to review all the elements of tone. Play the tune at different tempos and dynamics.
6. Play the tune in different parts of the bow including the lower third, middle third, upper third, lower half, upper half, and whole bows where appropriate. Playing the tune at different tempos is an easy way to use more or less bow.
7. Play the tune with a variety of articulations to review bow strokes appropriate for the level.
8. Play the rote tune starting on different notes to engage the ears and change finger patterns. Change the tempo to increase left-hand finger speed. Review upper positions with older students by playing the tune up a string or in a higher position.
9. Review music reading by using a tune or series of tunes students know well from the year before. Add in easy flashcards or sight-reading material to re-engage their eyes.
10. Make sure students look and sound good and play with confidence before proceeding with the new curriculum. 

This time of rebooting will save countless remediation hours later in the year. Remember to have fun and have a great time with your students.

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Individual Warm Ups

Students should have personal warm-up goals for the time immediately preceding each rehearsal. The moment they enter the music room they can be focusing their mind and getting ready to rehearse. They also need to get blood flowing to all muscle groups to avoid injury and better prepare them for complex, rigorous, and rapid muscle movements, both large and small. For string players and percussionists this may include slow large muscle movements in both sitting and standing positions, followed by some stretching. Wind players may do some breathing and embouchure warm-ups including lip slurs for brass.

You may want to have daily or weekly pre-rehearsal goals written out for students in their folders, on the SMART Board, or on your projection device. These might consist of notated exercises that focus on different pedagogical issues unique to each instrument. String players might have bowing patterns to work on while brass might work on long tones. Woodwinds might work on fingering issues, while percussionists practice rudiments or mallet related exercises.

Ensemble Warm Ups

The design of your large ensemble warm ups should be based on your curriculum. Most often these warm ups are skill-based. To start, look at your year-long curricular goals. What are the skills students need to learn? How can you teach them in a five- to fifteen-minute activity each day?

Once the technical and musical skills have been identified, they should be sequenced in a way that they can be taught over the course of an entire year. Most skills are developmental and require repetition and time. A skill such as vibrato may take a whole year to teach, develop, and refine. A little bit of work in regular warm-up intervals enhances the acquisition of each skill.

Once all the long-term skills have been given their allotted time throughout the year, teachers can also focus on short-term goals such as repertoire-driven issues. Each piece you select to perform should reinforce your curricular goals for the year. The short-term goal may be to learn these three pieces, but the long-term goal is for students to gain the skills as stated in your curriculum and district standards.

Warm-Up Specifics

A typical warm-up period may focus on issues like tone, rhythm, intonation, range, phrasing, blend and balance, and bowing fluency. Specific techniques like spiccato, double-tonguing, going across the break, and rudiments may also be addressed. Using method and technique books at all levels can be a real help in structuring your warm-up curriculum.

If I were working on tuning G major intervals in a string orchestra I would use exercise number 9 in the Sound Innovations Creative Warm-ups book:

Wind players might use exercise 24 in Sound Innovations Ensemble Development for Intermediate Concert Band to work in the key of Bb:All the upper-level books in the Sound Innovations series are designed to be used as part of a warm-up curriculum. It is important that each exercise you use or develop be short enough that it can be accomplished quickly. Written out scales, arpeggios, and chorales can be a powerful ally in skill development.

What Drives What

An important question I asked myself as a young teacher was, “does the repertoire drive the curriculum or does the curriculum drive the repertoire”? I believe it is the latter. If that is the case, then it is easy to coordinate your warm-up books and exercises with the specific pieces you have chosen. It is important to use a skill-based rubric with each piece you select to determine which technical and musical skills are needed for the piece and how can you prepare students for success by incorporating those into the warm-up time. A great strategy is to start working on the most important skills the concert period before you begin the piece.

Other skills will require on-time delivery as you start the music. Some standard warm-up strategies include using the piece you are working on to determine the scale, rhythms, bowing, sticking, and tonguing patterns used in the warm-up period. Another might be to use chorales to establish key centers, chord tuning, balance, and listening skills. Students can be sensitized to conducting gestures by playing scales at differing tempos as indicated by their conductor.

This is also a great time to engage the ear by teaching aurally. You may teach an exercise, rhythm, mode, melody, harmony, or bass line by ear. The use of rote tunes allows you to visually focus on the students and, more importantly, they can focus visually and aurally on you. It also gives you a chance to model each technique, sound or rhythm for them.

Working warm ups into your lesson planning? Download our free template.

Preparing Students for Success

In many ways, the success of any rehearsal depends on the time and care that are devoted to the warm-up process. Preparing students for success in this way makes differentiation easy and helps the teacher stay focused on the skills and musical issues that need to be learned. It is all too easy to realize – at the end of the year – that you didn’t cover everything you hoped you would. It is like the American history teacher who hasn’t made it past the Civil War by the time school is out. The music we expose students to is very important, but we all teach in a vertical curriculum that demands we prepare students for the next level. Warm-up time is a critical moment in that process.

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The goal of every music teacher is (or should be) to involve the maximum number of students in the music program. This starts with a well-thought-out recruiting and retention strategy that involves all disciplines within the program; band, orchestra, and choir. Teachers must cooperate to create a highly effective and complete program. Ancillary programs such as jazz band, specialized choirs, musicals, fiddle ensemble, rock band, guitar class, piano class, mariachi band, drum lines, and marching band all add to the fabric of a rich musical environment. Building a great program rests on three pillars: an effective recruiting and retention plan, a high-quality musical environment with great instructional leadership, and clear communication of your values and student successes to the community, school board, parents, and administrators.

1. Recruitment and Retention

Recruiting the maximum number of students for each program, orchestra, choir, and band, can and should be done cooperatively. The most successful programs are always strong in all three areas. This starts with a clear recruiting strategy that entices students and parents to participate. Fortunately, a number of fine resources are available.

String Clinics to Go: The Art of Recruiting by myself and Bob Gillespie has helped teachers increase their starting numbers in significant ways over the last fifteen years. A new and incredibly exciting set of materials was unveiled last year by inspirational speaker Scott Lang. The series, Be Part of the Music, can be viewed at scottlang.net and bepartofthemusic.org. You can also visit bepartoftheorchestra.org  and bepartoftheband.com for discipline-specific information. Scott has created a complete set of recruiting materials that include videos, letters, and strategies. Be Part of the Choir will be released soon. Thousands of additional music students have been added nationally since the inception of this program two years ago.

Retaining students is an ongoing process that requires careful thought and planning. The first step is to know the exact dates students will be presented with registration materials for upcoming school years. In most high schools this occurs in January with middle school following in February and elementary students in March. It is critical that you present students with a comprehensive retention program in advance of the distribution of the general scheduling materials. This should include identifying possible student issues and offering pro-active solutions. These may include schedule problems, extra-curricular conflicts, and any others issues that prevent students from re-enrolling in music.

Once this has been done it is extremely important to survey the students and use that data to help students make informed choices. I always asked students to indicate: 1) yes, I am continuing, 2) I am not sure, or 3) no, I will not be continuing. The “undecided” responses offer a great opportunity for you to talk to them and find out what the issues are.

In my own career, I asked students about my teaching, the atmosphere of the class, what they were learning, and anything else that I thought would help me to be a more effective teacher. I would also put their responses into different categories to see if I could discover any patterns. An example would be athletes versus non-athletes, economic status, ethnicity, gender, or college prep versus non-college prep. What I wanted to know was, were there any certain populations that were dropping out disproportionately. If so then I knew I needed to look at the program and my teaching. It could also point out a schedule problem or other community factors. Armed with this information I could more intelligently guide students and help them continue in the program.

2. A High-Quality Music Environment

Building a comprehensive music program happens over time. The richer the musical offerings, the more students there are that will find a home somewhere. The most important factor, however, is high-quality teaching and musical leadership. Sometimes the fastest way to grow your program is improve your knowledge base. I have been a teacher, clinician, writer/composer for forty years and I am constantly trying to learn new things and improve my skills. Education is a non-stop process for both students and teachers. Great music programs always have great leaders. People who put students first and are constantly trying to improve the musical environment for the entire community increase the number of students involved.

3. Communication

The last pillar involves communicating the success and values of the program to the community, school board, parents, and administrators. Make sure you view every performance as an opportunity to do just that. Concerts can be informances as well as performances. Explain what you doing and why. Have students talk about and reflect upon their experience. Have students play at board meetings and throughout the community at large. Be an artistic presence in your school area.

It is important to communicate with administrators and school boards. One very powerful way to do this is to create an annual “State of the Music Department” report. This type of report will speak volumes to both these groups, and was pioneered by music advocacy expert John Benham.

Benham’s theory of reverse economics has saved hundreds of school music programs throughout the country. It suggests that music is often cheaper to teach than other disciples because of our larger class sizes. More importantly, it states that when you cut elementary programs it doesn’t save you money but cost more because of how it affects your middle school and high school numbers in subsequent years. For more information read his book Music Advocacy and visit supportmusic.com.

When communicating with administrators, the most important data point is the per-student cost of instruction versus other areas of the school. Below are some additional points to consider, based on Benham’s work.

List honors and awards of student and faculty:

• Solo and ensemble
• Professional awards
• Festivals
• Non-music awards of students and faculty

List of and number of performances of each music ensemble:

• Curricular performances (in school day)
• Co-curricular performances (outside school day)
• Extra-curricular performance/activities (primarily public service or public relations)
• List of offerings at each grade in curricular, co-curricular and extra-curricular areas

List by ensemble or grade level:

• Average G.P.A. of music students
• Average scores on SAT, ACT, and other relevant tests (District report card)
• Participation in other school activities (honor society, athletics, etc.) –survey students
• Number of students by grade, building, and area (band, choir, orchestra, general)
• Percent of student participation compared to number in overall class by grade and area (band, choir, orchestra, general)
• Total music numbers across disciplines
• Percentage of total music students compared to total enrollment
• Maximum number and percentage of students possible with current staff
• Percent of attrition by grade and area (band, choir, orchestra, general)
• Budget over time, music versus academic, where is the money going

Faculty – list data by ensemble, grade level, discipline:

• Student/Faculty Ratios (SFR), based on actual enrollments in music – teacher track
• Student/Faculty Ratios by curricular area and grade level in other subjects
• Average FTE value of music faculty, based on actual teaching loads and student enrollment, as compared with non-music instructors
• Cost per student for faculty
• Cost per student of total music budget
• Breakdown of Individual Faculty Loads (FTE) by area

Building a great music program happens by design. If the music staff works cooperatively with each other then everyone wins. It starts with recruiting and retention, is followed with great teaching and leadership, and finishes with clear communication to build a broader arts coalition.

Pedagogue, composer, and teacher trainer, Bob Phillips is an innovator in string education. During his 27 years of teaching strings in Saline, Michigan, Bob built a thriving string program of over 700 students and was honored as teacher of the year 9 times by regional, state and national organizations. A recognized expert in the use of large group pedagogy and alternative styles, he has presented clinics throughout North America, Europe, and Australia. Phillips has authored over 19 book series that include 130 books for use in the classroom including Alfred’s revolutionary new method, Sound Innovations for String Orchestra and Sound Innovations for Concert Band as well as the groundbreaking Philharmonic series. He has had over 140 works published for orchestras and bands and is an award-winning ASCAP composer. His conducting resume includes professional, all-state, and youth orchestras. Currently the director of string publications for Alfred Music and the past-president of ASTA, he was inducted into the University of Michigan School of Music Hall of Fame in 2013. Bob and his wife, Pam are also part of the creative team for Barrage 8.

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