Celebrating and Fostering Orchestra Leadership Skills
As music educators we are all striving to help our students grow into confident learners. We are trying to sow into them a spirit of discipline, motivation, and build them up to be leaders in our ensembles and in their everyday lives.
If you've been reading the blog for a while, back in October 2022, I wrote about fostering student leadership within my orchestra with tips and ideas on how to implement some of the concepts I’ve tried over the years in any ensemble.
This year I’ve been even more focused on giving students opportunities to develop their leadership skills. In this blog post, I am going to share what this has been looking like this year and how to celebrate student leadership.
Leadership Discussion Lesson
We want students that can take charge and are responsible and reliable.
Students that are motivated and take ownership of the success of our ensembles.
One key to this is teaching them how to lead and giving them invested interest and responsibilities within the ensemble. Here is how leadership is looking this year in my ensemble.
Prior to getting kids up to lead the group, I did a lesson on what leadership looks like. In that lesson I asked the students what qualities they thought a leader should possess. All grade levels came up with incredible ideas and shared qualities like caring, confident, serious, and empathetic.
I then shared what I felt leadership should do and that is to inspire others, build them up, promote positivity, and work toward a common goal. We discussed the power of our tone of voice and our words and how we can use those two things to encourage our ensemble members. Our tone should be positive, confident, and clear.
What Do Students Say or Do?
After the foundation was set, I gave students a quasi-template to follow which I reviewed for several weeks before each student came up to lead the group. We even practiced saying and doing the template together. The template looks something like this:
- Step 1: Give directions.
- For example, say “Good afternoon orchestra, We are going to start by tuning. Everyone get up your tuning routine worksheet.”
- Step 2: Invite everyone to play
- For example, say “instruments up” or give a nonverbal cue.
- Step 3: Give a prep
- For example, give a count off, conducting pattern, or musical cue.
- Step 4: Give feedback or an encouragement
The template is a guide for the students to follow so they have an idea of what they are saying and doing once they are up and in front of the group. Students have been utilizing this script to help them lead our tuning routine and warm up routines and they've been doing fantastic! I've set up Wednesday and Friday as "Leadership Day" and the kids really look forward to it.
Celebrating Leadership - Leadership Cards
Once the students have led the group, I’ve been having them fill out a leadership card.
It’s a simple card where they fill in their name, the date they lead the group, and what they did.
The card also explains the goal of the activity which is that they are working on using an encouraging tone, giving clear directions, starting the group, leading exercises, and showing responsibility.
Students have been posting their leadership cards on a bulletin board in the orchestra room. This is an idea a student in my ensemble came up with and I love it because it very visibly displays all the leaders we’ve had and celebrates their progress .
Conclusion
This exercise has become something students seem to really enjoy and look forward to each week. There have been many students that willingly volunteer to lead the group and who truly demonstrate a confident and self assured presence in front of the class.
For those students who are not so keen on leading, I’ve been encouraging them to do something small or just allowing them the space to choose when they will give leadership a try.
Let me know your thoughts on this idea and how you like to foster leadership in your ensemble.