Not a String Player? Student Teaching in the Orchestra Classroom: A Guide for Cooperating Teachers
Many of us will have the opportunity to work with college students preparing to enter the classroom. I’ve found working with student teachers to be an incredibly enjoyable, fulfilling, and challenging experience. Our newest teach- ers are no longer being prepped for work in a singular musical setting (only general musical, band or choir or strings) but for a crossover of environments. Te jobs in our schools are increasingly varied, and having multiple skill sets is a necessity.
Susan Gould
Tere are many things we need to work on with our student teachers, but for this article, let’s focus on just one specific aspect of teacher preparation: Placing a musician who is not a native string player in the orchestra classroom. In my experience, all of the 12 student teachers I’ve coached have been wind, percussion or pia- no majors. Tey are curious about the world of string education, but are not confident. I oſten remind them that many of our world’s best or- chestra conductors are not native players either. Te instrument they embraced in their youth is just a starting place for their musical devel- opment. Learning to teach strings is simply the next part of their education.
To an experienced string teacher and player, there are basic skills and understandings that can be taken for granted. Student teachers come to us filled with questions they didn’t know they had. I assure you, that percussion/piano/ wind players do not know or understand string specific concepts any more than a string player understands how to change a drum head, prop- erly sand or clip a reed, or use the mouthpiece puller to extract a stuck mouthpiece from the lead-pipe on a brass instrument. Teir univer- sity instrumental method classes planted the seeds for learning, but until they put these skills into practice, real depth or meaning will not take hold. Below is my top ten list of things they should do with you before their time is up.
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#1: Instead of just letting your student teach- ers sit and observe when they are not on the podium, give them a school instrument to hold, tune, and experience during the rehearsal. It’s the best way to teach them what their students will experience.
#2: Aſter the first week or so, have the students give the student teacher a lesson. Te kids can ask them all kinds of basic questions like iden- tifying parts of the instruments by name, to, questions about instrument care and mainte- nance, to offering their advice on favorite string types, rosin, websites, and online shopping outlets. Our string students are excited to show off what they know!
#3: Do a little basic string maintenance with them. Make them change a string on every instrument if possible. Talk about how tem- perature and humidity affect stringed instru- ments. Make them tighten a chin rest, unstick an end-pin, check the humidistat in a student’s case, identify types of mutes and place a mute on an instrument, talk about the benefits and risks of peg compounds, show them a bridge that is bowing, and perhaps have them re-set a bridge.
#4: Get them on the podium and conducting right away. Te sooner they feel that all musi- cians are just that: musicians, the more com- fortable they’ll be. Te need to be familiar with ways to handle day to day tuning that is de- velopmentally appropriate, and have them use an established routine to accomplish this daily task. To drive the point home, I have all of my student teachers conduct at least one song on a concert with one of my orchestras.
#5: Have them keep a binder of all of your let- ters home, handouts, lists of favorite products, favorite websites, favorite string supply stores, etc. Also, have them keep a list of the scores you’re teaching (or the actual score if it’s avail-
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