I had the opportunity to observe one of our band classes last week and was blown away by what I saw. We all can close our eyes and see a band rehearsal. The director stands up front, directs students when to start and when to stop - giving feedback to each section as they practice different parts of the piece and then starting that process all over again.. The director directs and the students focus on their instrument and section. The student's responsibility is to make sure they take care of their part and the director makes sure everything fits. The director makes every decision in the class.
This class was different . . . very different from any band rehearsal I have ever seen. This class has been rehearsing this way since January. Ms. Holmes (the band teacher) led the class through their warm-ups and then she took a seat about 10 rows up in the recital hall. The rest of the class was directed by the students - not one or two appointed leaders - any student who had a thought, opinion, or wanted to give feedback spoke - over 20 of the 60 students in the band spoke during the period. Students had to decided how to get started, how to end, where to start, and where to stop. It was cool to listen to students talk to different instrument sections and give those sections positive feedback and areas to improve. Students spoke very specifically about the overall performance of the band using common language. Ms. Holmes did stop the rehearsal to remind students to speak to the entire group and make sure they spoke loud enough to hear. That was the extent of her influence during the rehearsal.
You may ask "what is the goal of this?" - just like I did in my pre-conference with Ms. Holmes. Her response was simple. She wanted students to open their ears up to what was going on with the entire piece of music and not just focus on their individual instrumental sections. Students read their music not from their instrument specific sheet, but from the musical score. Her goal was for students to get a greater understanding of how all the musical parts fit together. It was apparent from the comments of the students that they have embraced this opportunity and responsibility and the music sounded great!!
Ms. Holmes ended class by giving students an opportunity to reflect on the rehearsal - "what went well and what areas do we need to continue to work on?" She also recorded the entire rehearsal and posted it online for students to watch that night. Her thought was to give students another perspective to listen to and watch from. Students could use this information to help with the next day's rehearsal.
I talked to some of the students in lunch the next day to get their impression of this strategy and they loved it. The were excited to be able to help make decisions regarding the rehearsal. I was shocked to find out that not one of them had ever seen a musical score before. They had no idea of what the director was looking at during a concert and really hadn't cared what the other parts were doing.
Most people who visit our school want to see how we leverage technology to personalize and we keep telling them it is not about technology. Personalization is about allowing students to have control over their learning. The structure of this band rehearsal is a great example of a teacher turning over control to the students and the students thriving!!
