Has anyone hosted a parent night where parents join their students at marching rehearsal and learn part of the show? I’ve been interested in trying this for a while, but I’d love some guidance on how to organize it.
How do you structure the evening, and how much of the show do you teach? Do you have a schedule or activities that have worked well? I’d also appreciate any tips on preparation, getting families involved, and keeping it fun for both students and parents. If you have a sample schedule, I’d love to see it!
We do this every year, but we do it at the end of summer band. Schedule is something like:
8:00 students report to the field. Parents to the band hall for the beginning of season parent meeting. My staff are outside with the kids warming them up, I'm inside with the parents.
8:30 parents go outside. The kids are in their warmup block. Parents stand next to their kids and we go through some marching basics. Standby/set position, instrument carriage. Every step of the way I have the kids demonstrate, then parents try, and then kids get to correct their parents. We do 1 step forward, 4 steps forward, maybe we get to backward. Kids demonstrate backward march, slides, box drill. I jokingly tell the parents now it's their turn for box drill, but I don't really expect them to.
9:00 parents move to the bleachers. Kids move to a standstill formation, we play the fight song and a couple of stand tunes, then we play however much of the show we know (maybe the opener if we're lucky).
9:15 done - boosters have a table set up, parents can find me and ask questions, but that's really it.
I've never tried it at the end of the season, but I can see how that would be fun. I've never seen the parents actually try to march anything more than basic fundamentals.
I did this for several years, and this itinerary is very similar to what we used to do. We partnered with the booster club to get more parents involved, which was a great way to show them what we did, how we did it, and the effort it took.
I like to do box drills with the parents. I mainly just like getting parents to do what their kids are doing so they can actually see everything that goes into it. I've seen it really change their perspective-- and for some parents it's a nice way of them getting to show off old marching skills!
