Recruiting Students Into Your Band and Orchestra

Recruiting students into your band or orchestra is essential to growing and maintaining a substantial size ensemble. Having a successful program that plays good music with good intonation and precision will keep students in the program and encourage others to join the band. However, when you first arrive at a program, you need to appeal to the students' desire to have fun.

There are three preparations that must be done. Arrange the demonstration date and parent meeting as far in advance as possible. Plan, practice, and rehearse the demonstration. Follow up the parent meeting with phone calls to the parents of the students. It is essential to do all three of these things.

At the demonstration, your desire to have a great ensemble must be visible. The joy music has been given to you must be evident in your presentation. Your life has been made better because of music and the students must see this without even thinking about it. Let them see your excitement, and how you want to share this special kind of fun with them.

Demonstrations can be an assembly for the entire school or may be done one grade or classroom at the time. The later is always the most effective. With small groups, more students see, touch, and play the instruments. More students will join the band with the procedure.

When entering the room, or if the students are entering your room, play songs on your instrument or an instrument you play very well. NEVER play an instrument on which you do not play well or have a good sound. Play songs that the students will recognize. Disney movie themes are great. They do not sound difficult and they are fun to hear. Memorize the songs you will play. While you play these songs, walk around the class. Look the students I the eye. Play with expression and make it musical and fun. DO NOT play songs that sound difficult. If you do, the students will think it is too difficult to play an instrument.

The actual demonstration of instruments is where your skills as a teacher will come into play. When a student attempts to play an instrument, you MUST be able to get them to make sound immediately. You will have students come up and play the instruments one at a time. When the class hears that a student can make a sound, this will encourage more to join the band or orchestra. Conclude the demonstration with a song in which all the students may play. The Mexican Hat Dance is perfect for this purpose. You play the melody. At the place where there are two quarter notes, the students play at that moment. They are not playing the correct notes, but just make sounds. It is funny, fun, and a very effective and a fast way to show students that they can make a sound on an instrument.

After the demonstration, hand out letters telling the parents of the day and time of the meeting. Make sure the parent meeting is no more than 3 days after the demonstration. If you wait too long, parents will talk their children out of playing an instrument. After the parent meeting, start calling parents who did not attend the meeting as a courtesy so they know how the program works and that you are enthusiastic about start a band or orchestra and their child make a wonderful sound and should be n the band.

Complete details with photographs may be found in, The Instrumental Music Teacher's Survival Kit, by Randy Navarre. Visit http://www.TheMusicMentor.com