Jazz Band Teaching

I began the lesson with having the students run the section I’d be working on, which I
believe was helpful for the students; however, they were not all ready to begin and I did not
restart for the couple of students who were unprepared. In watching back, I should have noticed
this more quickly and reset the students accordingly so that all students would gain practice
from my lesson. After this, I did well at conveying where the students should be starting and
there was a noticeable difference in their sound to convey that everyone was in fact ready to
begin these sections. When the lesson first began, students continued to be a little chatty, which
may have been a result of the awkward start to the piece. As the lesson went on students
became more focused and were able to start and stop when instructed to with minimal chatting.
During this lesson, I looked down at the score quite a bit rather than making appropriate eye
contact with the students as they played through the piece. Throughout the entire lesson, I
over-explained each start and section of music, which should be added to my to-do list of things
to minimalize. In over explaining, I am taking valuable playing time away from the students. In
combating this, I do notice that I tend to tell the students what is coming up in a part as well as
what I’m looking for before they play, and, to me, it is currently unclear how to maintain this
while eliminating over-explaining a portion. I do a good job at reassuring students of things they
do well, but should expand my vocabulary to include more specific feedback; such as, “that
rhythm was more clear” or “the articulation was the correct length”. In teaching, I tend to have
the students run through each part of a section that I planned for and end up moving onto the
next without explaining to the students what they did that was right and why I felt it was a good
idea to move onto the next section. I modified the piece by choosing to make certain measures
have short notes, as this is how the students create clearer articulation and have higher note
accuracy. In doing this, I told the students to write “short” above those measures, but did not
check that the students actually completed this task before starting the section again.
Throughout the piece, I also ignored a student playing a woodblock part on the snare rim rather
than a woodblock, which should have been addressed within the first measures of him playing. I
struggle in bringing focus to percussion parts, as I myself am a wind player and tend to move
quickly over the bottom of the score, which is something I need to put focus into so that all
students have an equal lesson plan experience during my class instruction time. A final fault of
mine was that I told the students what section they should focus on to prepare for the next
class, but then began rehearsing that same section with the students rather than running an
initial sight read. This could add some confusion for the students, but I am happy to see
rehearsal time used wisely. Overall, I believe that I maintained a steady pace of lesson as well
as felt I held classroom respect without having to be overly baring or intense for the students.