Posted by COVID-ly Challenged on 1/27/2021, 8:43 pm
So, we have decided that there will be no beginner band instrument instrument testing this year. For those that are in the same situation, what are you going to do for beginner band placements? We are considering the Selmer Survey, a survey for them to indicate their instrument preference, and a physical attributes questionnaire. Does this sound like enough or am I missing something? In 23 years, I've never had to place kids on instruments without them actually having to try the instruments. This is uncharted territory for us. Any advice from those that either won't able to do instrument testing last year or this year or ideas from those that are not doing instrument testing this year.
Hi COVID-ly Challenged - We piloted a completely online instrument selection process this last year where we produced a series of videos and a google form where parents uploaded a series of photos of their child and we made the final placements based on their physical attributes. I am hosting a Zoom clinic on Saturday, February 6 from 1-3PM to explain how it works and share the documents and resources we created last year. Feel free to sign-up if you'd like to learn more -
We had the parents and incoming beginners complete a google survey which was relatively in depth (physical characteristics, interests, favorite subjects and a lot of other stuff to get a sense of the kid) along with uploaded pictures of the kids' teeth, mouth smiling and not smiling, hands, feet, full body shot. They rank their top 4 instruments they are interested in learning.
We go through the surveys and place each kid on what we feel would fit them based on the pics and the survey results--also we control instrumentation along the way
I had them come into the office one at a time. I demonstrated a buzzing sound with my lips to see if they could do it. had them frown so I could see their bottom lip. had them smile to see if there were any over/underbite issues. Then told them what I thought would be best for them. Asked them about other family members and what they have played. Of course asked about piano experience.
We also strongly believe in the selmer music survey which is available on the atssb website for free. That helps us determine our french horn players a lot plus the rhythmic section really does give us incite into percussionists.
This is what we did and I think it worked out ok. We've only changed a couple of kid's instruments along the way this year. Our beginners are basically where you would expect them to be most years by this point in heterogenous classes.
I'm assuming they mean you can't test kids *now* .. but those restrictions may be lifted by the time you get kids into the classes in the fall.
I've done plenty of years where we couldn't test for beginners. You've got two options - three if you're lucky.
1. Make the kids in the classes fit what you want for the classes, or
2. Have across-the-board heterogeneous classes.
The third "lucky" option is to do your testing at the start of the year and hope your counselors will make dozens of schedule changes for you.
If you're in a traditional "small groups" setup for beginners, I'd just do Option 1. Have two woodwind classes, two brass classes, and one Percussion class. Have the kids sign up for one or the other, and then test them at the start of the year with proper sanitization protocols. Yes, this means you'll burn through about sixty clarinet reeds, but just buy the cheap ones instead of wasting your V12s.
You may have eight clarinets, two saxes, and fourteen flutes in one woodwind class, and six saxes, three clarinets and one flute in the other class (I wouldn't start double reeds unless you are 100% sure the kid will be successful - switch to them at semester) but that's much easier to make work than having a bit of everything in the same class.
Not 100% related to your post:
The fact of the matter is, if you're willing to work at it, *any kid should be allowed to play any instrument* if you're being equitable. They signed up for band. Teach them to play. That's our job.
Yes, it's more difficult to teach a flute player with janky teeth and a teardrop embouchorue. Yes, it's more difficult to teach a trumpet player with an underbite. But TEACH. Find ways to help them be successful. If they ABSOLUTELY CAN NOT make a sound, work with them to shift to an instrument on which they CAN. Are you seriously going to turn away a kid who wants to be in your program because they don't "get it" right away?
You'll only have a few hardcase students (and usually parents) who demand that their darling baby play the drums/saxophone/trumpet. Most will be willing to let you be the expert in the room and steer the kid in the right direction.
We had to do all our instrument screenings virtually this past summer Via Zoom. We conducted around 150 individual Zoom appointments. We did 20ish minute appointments with the 2 directors plus 1 percussion director. We also used breakout rooms in Zoom to handle 2-3 students per time slot. This still took us a couple of weeks dedicating 2-3 hours per day to do this and longer chunks of time on the weekends.
During the Zoom screenings, we had the students show us their teeth and lips. They did some basic dexterity finger exercises. We had them pitch match singing things back to us. Prior to their screenings, us directors looked at their grades and classes. We also got input from their general music teachers. We did a google form students/families had to fill out before signing up for a screening time on sign-up genius that provided us a bunch of personal info that included questions like are you in piano lessons, do you play any other instruments, are you in sports, do you have any siblings or parents who play(ed) instruments. During the screenings we asked them personality questions like are they an introvert or extrovert, what are their friends like, etc. We also had parents tell us the height of their student and measure their hands. Students who didn't have a ruler or fabric measuring tape used a Coke can in their hands for us to judge hand size.
We prioritized students with piano experience for percussion and G/T kids for Double Reeds and Horn (though we still distributed these groups of kids onto other instruments as well). Before screenings, students also had to watch a video of the US Army Field Band before they were allowed to indicate their top 3 choices of instrument on the google form. (We embedded this all on the google form). For the top 3 instruments they had interest in, we then demonstrated those instruments via the Zoom screening as well and occasionally suggested another instrument that we thought would be a good fit or we needed instrumentation wise.
After interviewing each student we told them our next steps which were to screen everyone and look at everyone's top 3 choices as well as our notes we made during the screening about the students before deciding what everyone would play so that we could achieve a balanced instrumentation. As mentioned above, we did this over 2-3 weeks, but at the end of every few days of screening we'd select what instruments the students we had recently screened would play so that we could start to build a balanced 6th grade band. We did this every few days of screenings until the end - this allowed us to see what instruments we may want to push more, etc. We would slowly announce to students who had already screened with us what instrument they had been selected for and we emailed them a customized certificate celebrating this event and also sent them a pre-made blurb they could post on their social medias. Doing it this way made others excited about making sure they were signed-up to screen.
While we 100% would rather screen our kids in person, this worked out incredibly well and believe it or not, I feel that our placements ended were just as good as in-person screenings. I think we ended up with 2-3 students who moved to a different instrument due to it not working out - and that is about the same amount we'd have even if we screen the students in-person.
