Carter King

Dabback
11/29/22
Public School Observation - Oak Knoll Middle School

On November 22nd, I observed three classes at Oak Knoll Middle school in Hanover

County. The director, Richard Huggins, had two sixth grade beginning band classes and one

eighth grade band class on that day. I made observations and worked with the trumpet players for

a few of the classes, observing the brass players’ responses to Mr. Huggins’ teachings throughout

the class. Mr. Huggins does a fantastic job at drilling the fundamental facets of brass playing into

the students through repeated sayings and reminders towards the students that emphasizes

specifically their posture and their embouchure. Posture and a good body alignment is paramount

in Mr. Huggins’ pedagogical plan, emphasizing these ideas with almost catchphrase-like sayings

that are imbued into the students’ minds. In addition to a constant posture check, the warmup Mr.

Huggins employs utilizes and strengthens the embouchure of brass players, an important aspect

of playing that is necessary for the fundamental development. Starting on mouthpieces, the brass

players in the sixth grade classes were instructed to buzz sirens and high and low pitches,

beginning the ear training and facial movement needed to move around the instrument. The

students in this class have only had their instruments for a few weeks at this point, so elementary

technique is still being taught. After this buzzing warmup and a few exercises in a method book,

the students were taught two new notes: concert Eb and F. Mr. Huggins taught these notes in a

manner that allowed the students to work on their range when practicing these notes by having

the students play the first three notes of the concert Bb scale and then adding Eb and F. Mr.

Huggins emphasized how the playing of these five notes in succession will help train the

students to reach Eb and F with ease as their ear will lead them to these notes. I was able to work

with the trumpets on Eb and F in this class and the method of building up notes diatonically with

the Bb scale is simple enough where students’ ears will help them with the range. In general, the
students responded very well to Mr. Huggins’ teachings throughout the three class periods I

observed as his command to stay on-task and create a culture of achieving goals in a professional

manner worked well with these young musicians.