think or be vigilant.”13


Tey suggested that if the director/


teacher is making all the musical decisions and students are simply waiting for the next command for ultimate ensemble efficiency, then we may be using an early twentieth-century factory model for the educational space rather than foster- ing a motivating, creative-collaborative-decision-making space for student-centered educational experiences.


At one point, Allsup and Benedict go as far to suggest that band directors in teacher-centered classrooms are propa- gating oppressed-and-oppressor relationships through the use of fear tactics and tight control.14


Who has the control


and power? How does that feel and look in your classroom? Are students even allowed to speak in “your” rehearsals, let alone think for themselves in “their” rehearsals? When are they being asked to be “mindful and critical” in the band classroom? Is your band classroom really an educational, safe, creative space? Shouldn’t it be, since we’re teaching in schools? Are we curricular- or extra-curricular minded?


David Williams reminded us in his 2011 article “Te Elephant in the Room” that large-ensemble participation in schools continues to be on the decline. He provides an example with data from Florida’s Department of Education: “16.45 percent of high school students were enrolled in mu- sic classes in 1985. Te number dropped to 14.9 percent by 1995 and 11.67 percent by 2005. If we were to project a 2015 figured based on these data, enrollment would fall to under 7 percent.”15


He suggests that we are continuing to use an


outdated instructional model and that this old model may be why so few students are enrolling. What is happening in your state? Is band participation shrinking? Do we need to all be rethinking our programs to be more inviting to and inclusive of the entire school population?


Although I had “success” receiving superior ratings at festival each year I taught middle school band in Broken Arrow, Oklahoma, I began doubting my teaching ability when I heard one of my top students proclaim in “my” class, “I love coming to band class because I don’t have to think.”16


Ensemble teachers were asked to expand their teaching to include more than learning the performance skills to execute literature; they were called upon to expand their teaching to be “interdisciplinary” and “intradisciplinary”–– to make connections to language arts, history, social studies, science, math, music theory, composition, history, theoreti- cal frameworks, and social justice issues. I remember loving hearing the stories from my director about the composer’s intent of a piece or the composer’s life history. I still remem- ber them today. However, I was never asked to research and discover any of the informational depth of the music, create my own interpretation of the music, or collaborate with my peers to make our decisions about a section feature or soli.


In 1976, Robert Garofalo published his landmark book Blueprint for Band, which offered a play-by-play prescrip- tion for deeply analyzing compositions aimed at guiding band teachers in their in-depth work prior to rehearsing.18 As a high school student, I could have shared in that re- sponsibility and would have enjoyed digging deeper into the piece with my peers. In 1992, Garofalo and Battisti pub- lished Guide to Band Masterworks. In 1994, MENC (now the National Association for Music Education) published nine national music standards that were to be adopted for all music classrooms. Many ensemble directors began reimagining how to include singing, composition, and improvisation in their ensemble rehearsals, and perhaps even today many of us are still striving for these outcomes.19 In 1997, the first book of the series Teaching Music through Performance in Band was created to facilitate ensemble teachers more comprehensive musical instruction. Tese books encouraged a plethora of new musical outcomes for students and directors, and those in ensemble education are grateful for these books.20


Fast-forward to 2016, where we have new Core Arts Music Standards and Model Cornerstone Assessments for most music classrooms.21


I immediately realized that I was simply training


the best musical robots to follow my creative decision-mak- ing, and they dutifully responded. I had squelched all of their decision-making and realized they were receiving a marginalized music education. Tey certainly weren’t asked to be creative, only responsive to my baton and direction, and I was doing most of the connecting to other subjects for them. I needed a new version of band teaching, but where would I start?


Band education does have a history of trying to foster edu- cational change, but the field is slow to respond due to the embodied nature of our traditions. In 1965, the Compre- hensive Musicianship movement emerged aſter a sympo- sium at Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois.17


29 Ensemble teachers are en-


couraged to include and assess four artistic processes in their classrooms: Creating, Performing, Responding, and Connecting. Students and band teachers are given space to imagine how these music processes could unfold with their students. Additionally, in a recent issue of Music Educators Journal, Tobias, Campbell and Greco suggest that ensemble classrooms include and encourage project-based learning to “transform a music program by offering genu- ine student-centered learning.”22


Tey explain that this idea


of project learning comes from a “cognitive revolution . . . and the revitalized thinking about skills for the twenty-first century, standards that emphasize critical thinking, and inquiry-based learning.”23


One such project many band teachers already use is solo and small-ensemble activities. Teachers could augment this experience with student solo and small-ensemble classroom


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