Thomas J. West Music

When I began teaching at my current school. I had students keep a practice journal. They were expected to practice for at least a half hour three times a week on their own time. The original journal was described not as the typical practice chart, but as a narrative on exactly what they were practicing and how much time they spent doing each segment. This evolved the second year into a self-assessment rubric for the students to turn in (See this article for more details).

At the end of last school year, it became apparent that as the program continues to grow, I simply will not have enough time as a teacher to assess and give feedback for a weekly practice journal entry for every student. I began this school year without the practice journal requirement, and I definitely noticed a change in the amount of careful preparation the students exhibited for our winter concert. My more experienced students who have been with me for a year or more understand the value of practicing and do make an effort. My students this year obviously do not.

Creating A Rehearsal Map

I asked myself some important questions about students preparation for performances. Much of this thought process was the direct result of the results of our recent winter concert and watching the web cast of the Seika Girls High School Band from this year's Midwest Clinic. Two things were very apparent after pondering these two events:

1. My students are simply not getting enough successful repetitions to master the content of the music they are performing
2. The repertoire that my students were performing needs to be differentiated even more than it is already in order to facilitate growth for students in all stages of development.

To put it plainly, the majority of my students have average or slightly above average aptitude in musical intelligence and nearly all of them have never experienced the benefits of a prolonged work ethic. I do have a few students in particular who are exceptions to both of these points - a few exceptionally gifted musicians with high aptitude, and a few who are exceptionally self-disciplined when it comes to their own preparation. I really only have one student currently who possesses both of these traits.

So basically, my students, at whatever level of music aptitude they possess, need to learn the value of completing enough successful repetitions to actually master a piece of music.

I need to show them by how we operate in class how to generate multiple successful repetitions of a passage of music in as efficient a use of time as possible. They need to learn to focus their attention on problematic technical passages that are going to take 2 to 4 times the amount of repetition to get them to be proficient at the performance tempo. They need to be more organized about their approach to practicing the music. In other words, I as the teacher need to model how to practice in this manner.

In contemplating how to do this, I got out my school calendar and counted back from the Spring Concert to the beginning to January. This gives me 23 rehearsals plus the dress rehearsal to have the students master the content I am giving them to perform. I created a grid on Excel to map out these rehearsals, and I will be assigning sections of each of the pieces to them as we go.

Music Check-Offs And Accountability

As we rehearse the sections, students will have target dates to have certain parts of the performance repertoire mastered. easier passages will have earlier deadlines, more challenging ones will have later deadlines. For my string students, I intend to use the Suzuki method of having students memorize at least one song from book 1 or 2 as appropriate and check them off with me. They will be able to do so in person or make a recording using Smart Music or Audacity at home. If they memorize their piece early, the can learn a second, and for the spring concert they will be in each group that performs the pieces.

For my wind students, I am writing some duets and trios tailored to their experience levels.They will be held accountable through the same sort of check-off system.

I am scaling back the amount of large ensemble repertoire to a single piece, and there will be accounatbility check-off deadlines for each section of that piece as well. If they don't get a section checked off, they won't play those measures in the final performance.

Sound harsh to you? It's not really.

Students naturally cut themselves off of parts that they can't perform by concert time. If they can't play something, they "fake it" or play a simplified version of it. Anyone who has ever directed an American band, choir, or orchestra knows that you always have a few individuals who, because of low aptitude, lack of effort, or both, simply can not perform some passages of the music without having a stronger player in the vicinity.

These music check-offs will be systematic and specifically scheduled. Students will have an opportunity to atttempt to check off the excerpts once after the deadline (call it a grace period -they are still kids, after all).

All of this means more pre-organization and structure from the teacher. That's a good thing, and definitely what you could call my New Year's resolution.

It's time to raise the bar of acceptibility while at the same time making the targets the students are shooting for more attainable for every experience and aptitude level.

This article (c) 2010 Thomas J. West. All content on ThomasJWestMusic dot com is licensed under a Creative Contributions Attribution-No Derivative Works 3.0 License. Please contact the author before publishing on or off-line.