EE Band Talk Episode 1: The Maiden Voyage with Terry Little

Welcome to the maiden voyage

[00:00:00] Welcome to Essential Elements Band Talk with Essential Elements authors Dr. Tim Lautzenheiser, Paul Lavender, and your host Charlie Menghini. We’re dedicated to bringing you the finest method for band, Essential Elements, and now we’re providing you with the affirmation, inspiration, and information you need to navigate, succeed, and know that you are appreciated for the great work that you’re doing in your music classrooms through this weekly program.

[00:00:25] Again, my name is Charlie Menghini. I’m a co-author of the Essential Elements Band Method and joining me in this podcast are Dr. Tim Lautzenheiser, also a co-author of EE — internationally known in the music education world as a teacher, clinician, author, composer, consultant, adjudicator, and above all our trusted friend — and Dr. Paul Lavender, vice president of instrumental publications at Hal Leonard, who headed up the writing team for the Essential Elements method project and is an internationally known composer and arranger.

[00:01:16] Later in today’s podcast, we’re going to be joined in conversation with Terry Little, an incredible fourth and fifth grade band teacher from the Elmbrook, Wisconsin school district, and then check in with Steve Smith, who’s heading up the Essential Elements Interactive website. This is our maiden voyage. Let’s get the party started.

[00:01:43] Tim: Charlie, welcome. First of all, just thanks for doing this. When I look through the list of guests you have, I got my pencil and paper — I’m going to take a bunch of notes and learn a lot. Paul: Same thing. Thank you, Charlie and Tim, for helping us launch this. In the coming weeks, this is going to be really fun and interesting to do.

The why hasn’t changed

[00:02:44] Tim: This is the time for all of us to really lock arms together, because the most important thing are the students. Though we’re weaving ourselves through some pretty unusual challenges, I think the benefits will be the solidarity of our entire profession.

[00:03:15] Paul: We are in unprecedented times. Teachers are in the toughest time of their careers. We have great methods and other things, but we might just do a little more sharing about things we see from other teachers — realizing that everybody’s situation is different. Every single person we talk to, their situation is slightly different. So we don’t have the magic bullet on any of this.

[00:04:42] Tim: While the global climate certainly has shifted — and in doing so caused all of us to recalibrate not only how we do it, but also the what if we do — the one thing that remains constant is the why. Music learning and music making is critical to the positive growth and development of every child. We’re going to find some new pathways to communicate with our students and our administrators. The magic potion is going to be a goodly amount of communication driven by persistence. So we all have to give up giving up.

Communicating with administrators and parents

[00:05:54] Tim: The first question I would ask administrators is, how can we help you? We’re at the front edge of all of education right now with social-emotional learning — teaching students how to interact with each other and prepare them to live in society successfully. What does it better than band? If this is on the agenda of administrators and curricular people, we’re at home plate already.

[00:07:11] Tim: You don’t have to dip very deep into the music advocacy research to show a parent that everything music brings to the child will pretty much define the success of the child in the future. We need to make sure parents understand what learning and making music does for the entire child over their entire learning pathway.

[00:08:00] Paul: First, safety. If kids are in a safe environment, they’ll be great learners. We have to be concerned for our teachers’ safety too. You can’t run a good school without good teachers. And then social-emotional learning, which is fairly built into band — as Tim pointed out, it’s kind of there. Parents and good administrators of fine arts programs know that. We just have to do whatever we can to remind them.

[00:10:31] Charlie: When I put on my teacher hat and get beyond the safety thing, I want to make sure the students who were in band are still in band — and I’ve got to figure out how to recruit students next year and convince parents that playing an instrument is not only safe but, as Tim said, an important part of their child’s overall education. Tim: Recruitment and retention are the keystones. And it’s the culture. Band has room for everybody.

Terry Little on learner-centered band

[00:13:02] Paul: Terry’s been a long-time veteran successful band director, primarily a beginning band specialist. She teaches in the district where I live and where my wife, Cheryl, taught. They taught side by side for many years with great success. Terry, are we allowed to say how many years you’ve taught? Terry: 35.

[00:18:03] Terry: This all started back in about 2011. Our district formed an “uncommittee” that gathered teachers already implementing technology and encouraged us to be innovative. I attended workshops, did professional reading around what we then called personalized learning — now we more frequently refer to it as learner-centered instruction. At about the same time, Hal Leonard released their first version of Essential Elements Interactive. So it just kind of collided at the right time.

[00:19:23] Terry: I’ll touch on three elements. First, customized learning paths. Instead of giving an assignment and a due date, we co-design the learning with the student. I shine a light on what I want my student to know, and they have choice about how they show what they know. I create a choice chart that names an observable learning target — like, “I can perform music with eighth notes” — and list three songs they could pick from, or they could find their own.

[00:20:15] Terry: Second, proficiency-based progress. Students have to show proficiency of a learning target before they move on. They can redo it as many times as they want. Using EEi, students choose a piece, practice it, record it, listen, and self-assess with a rubric I customized. One of my favorite features is that students cannot submit a recording to me until they have self-assessed. When students can successfully self-assess, then they really own that learning.

[00:21:28] Terry: Finally, the resources tab — especially since we moved to distance learning. I don’t like to be on camera, so I do screen recordings of Essential Elements, voice over the concept, pick up an instrument and demonstrate, upload to Google Drive, and link it in the resources section of EEi so all of the kids’ resources are in one place.

A seamless transition to distance learning

[00:23:11] Terry: We found out on Thursday, March 12, that our district would close schools the next day. Luckily, Thursday was a day I met with both my bands. We had a discussion and did a little demonstrating about how we’d continue learning at home. The kids were pretty calm. When I talked to my band director friends, a lot of people panicked. But my students already had their learning targets. They already knew how to make recordings at home and submit them. They already knew how to get feedback from me virtually.

[00:25:18] Terry: When I went back and looked at my data, I was pretty surprised. About 60% of my students reached what we would have called proficient in a normal year. I had 30% of fourth graders and 26% of fifth graders go pretty well beyond — some finished all the fourth grade learning targets and got well into fifth grade. Five fifth graders auditioned for the Milwaukee Youth Symphony Orchestra.

[00:26:47] Tim: First of all, Terry, I want to be in your band. Paul and I were talking about, how do you take that culture offline? And you’ve done it magnificently. Terry: We want to engage kids by giving them as much choice and control as possible. Everybody can succeed.

[00:27:46] Terry: What my colleagues and I discovered is that students with special needs or learning differences were really thriving. When students are moving at their own pace, nobody feels behind. It’s very easy to make modifications. When we’re focused on growth, everybody can grow no matter where they are.

[00:29:19] Terry: I had a student named Mason on the autism spectrum, also diagnosed as oppositional defiant. His teacher came to me when Mason started fourth grade and said, maybe band is not going to be a good fit. But his mom was excited, so we gave it a try. Mason had perfect pitch. He began percussion, switched to trumpet in October, became one of my best trumpet players. The summer between fourth and fifth grade, he taught himself euphonium and how to read bass clef. We have a euphonium at school that plays really sharp, and Mason would alter fingerings a half step so the instrument played in tune. He went on to audition for the Milwaukee Youth Symphony Orchestra.

Steve Smith and EE Interactive

[00:40:43] Paul: Steve has been with Hal Leonard and Essential Elements for eight years. Before that, a very successful beginning and middle school teacher in Texas — 12 years total — whose middle school band was chosen and performed at Midwest. Tim and I got to watch Steve teach one day in his classroom, and it was an eye-opener to watch how our book was being used in ways we never thought.

[00:42:25] Paul: We are very likely going to release the digital version of all the Essential Elements books for the fall. Students can open the book itself on an iPad or any device, along with EEi. As many districts arm their kids with devices for distant learning, we want our teachers to know band and strings will be no different.

[00:44:42] Steve: The simplest, most straightforward way is the teacher buys the teacher manual and the students all have their student books. In those books are activation codes. The teacher creates an account, students create student accounts, and they connect. Then they’re off and running.

[00:48:25] Steve: We had a huge uptick during the lockdown — both the number of people using EEi and general site usage. The biggest comment we got was, “I wish I had used this before.” A lot of teachers are very much looking forward to starting a year with EEi. In the spring they were thrown into it. In the fall, it’s going to be expected a little more.

[00:53:02] Charlie: Is there a resource teachers could send to their administrator to say, hey, we’re using this in our band classes, it’s self-directed learning, we’re assessing kids, recording kids, listening to the kids? Steve: That’d be a great thing for us to put together — more towards the administrative side of things. We’re very focused on getting teachers involved and working, but we can help them out by providing that.

Signing off

[00:55:16] Charlie: Tim and Paul, I think we made it through our first podcast. Thanks so much for being a part of this, and we’ll look forward to chatting with you guys again next week. Tim: Charlie, thank you, buddy. Paul: This was fun. Thank you so much.

[00:55:31] Charlie: And I want to express our thanks to Terry Little, a master teacher, and to Steve Smith for being on the podcast. And most importantly, thank you, the listeners, for taking time to listen. I hope you found it entertaining and informative, and I hope you’ll help us spread the word.