If Your Students Are Watching You,
What Are They Seeing?
by David Newell

It has long been a personal practice of mine to watch concerts of school musical groups. I am one of those individuals of whom it could truthfully be said, "He went to see a concert." What I am looking for is the degree to which students appear to be watching their conductors. Unfortunately, I do not have very good results to report. The times I have left student concerts and felt that I have actually witnessed meaningful communication between performers and conductors have been far too rare. Not surprisingly, those few positive occasions have always been the most musically invigorating ones.
      When students and conductors actively communicate during concerts, magic seems to happen. The band beautifully performs a delicate and difficult passage that has required a considerable amount of rehearsal time. All of the students immediately notice the smile of immense satisfaction that creeps across the conductor's face. The students think, "Wow! This is going really well." The conductor in turn notices their reaction to the satisfied smile and thinks, "They are really watching tonight. Although we've never actually rehearsed it, I wonder if I could put a slight ritard in the next measure." The unrehearsed hesitation is executed perfectly, and everyone starts to realize that something special is happening. This concert is not a mere recitation of learned notes. Music is being made here tonight!
      Most of our students are enormously cooperative and will make every attempt to watch us following the "You must watch me" speech. But the new resolve to watch seems to quickly fade. After numerous honest attempts to watch us, students begin to realize that they have actually received a mixed message. Although they have been told that they must get their eyes out of their music, they can't help but notice that our eyes seem to be glued to our music. We are doing exactly what we told them they shouldn't do. It doesn't take very long for them to conclude that there isn't really much to look at up there, and they revert to doing what they see us doing — staring at the notes on the page.
     A conductor's most expressive tool is the face. A left hand jabbed into the air in the general direction of the trombone section while the head is buried in the score is a mechanical gesture, not a musical one. It is telling the trombones when to play, not how to play. Musically meaningful messages demand eyeball-to-eyeball, face-to-face, two-way communication. Students develop and embrace the habit of checking with us for musical messages if they notice that the vast majority of times that they look at us, we are looking at them. If the all-important lines of two-way communication are to be opened, it is the responsibility of directors to start the dialogue by watching their students. In short, the expected student behavior must be modeled from the podium.

A Challenge
     I invite each of you to run a personal and exciting experiment this school year. It could make a major difference in the musical results you achieve. At your next concert, I challenge you to conduct at least one number with no score. If a professional orchestra conductor can conduct a Mahler symphony from memory, surely we can learn a four-to-five minute band score. Decide which number it will be before the band sight-reads it. The two-way "conversation" described above is not something that can be added to the mix after a piece is learned. It must be an integral part of the students' experience with the piece from the beginning.
     After the initial sight-reading of the selected piece, rearrange your personal furniture in the room every time you rehearse this particular number. Change the location of your music stand from directly in front of you. Move it off to the side of the podium. Getting rid of that metal barrier that separates you from your students will psychologically do wonders. With your music stand out of the way, you will immediately feel a more direct connection with your students and they with you.
     This simple act of getting the stand out of the way is essential. Even when scores are completely memorized, if the music is in front of us, we will look at it. Looking at the score must be inconvenient! Measure numbers or rehearsal marks do not need to be memorized. Simply ask students where it is that the horns and saxes have the countermelody. They will tell you "Letter C," and the rehearsal can continue. If they canÕt tell you, your score is within easy reach — just off to the side. In fact, there will obviously be numerous times during the early rehearsals in which the score needs to be carefully checked for correct notes, rhythms, and so forth, but that poses no problem. It can simply be read from the stand off to the side, or the stand can temporarily be pulled around to the front of the podium again. (For ease of movement, your stand for this piece needs to be a regular student stand, not an oversized conductor's stand). Once the problem is fixed, move the stand back to its unobtrusive position and conduct with your eyes once again fixed on your students. Instead of the impersonal trombone cue referred to earlier, you are now free to conduct the trombones as though there were no other students in the room. With facial expressions and conducting gestures, with your body turned toward them as though you were reaching out only to them, demonstrate how the passage is to be played. When it is played well, tell them so visually, not verbally. These facial "pats on the back" condition all of your students to check with you to see if they can also please you. It is feedback that students feel is well worth looking for. The lines of communication are now open.
     As time progresses and the concert draws nearer, place your score on the stand off to the side, but donÕt open it. Keep it closed unless you absolutely have to check something. For the final rehearsals before the concert, just keep the score in your folder and have no stand anywhere near you for this number. On concert night, leave the score in your office and enjoy the results.

Watch Them!
     Non-verbal, visual communication between performers and conductors is enormously important to a truly musical performance. Simply telling students to watch will not work unless there is something meaningful to see. Directors need to know that the greatest responsibility in achieving this goal lies with them. They must set the example on a daily basis. The next time you hear yourself say to your students, "Watch me," it is my hope that you hear a small but insistent voice in your head that immediately says, "Watch them!" Or, as your students might put it, "You first!"

A Self-Assessment
     There is an easy and very interesting way for you to privately assess how well you are watching your students. First of all, have a reliable student take daily attendance. Then, as soon after the rehearsal as possible, look at a list of your students different from the official list used by the student who took attendance. As you peruse each student's name on your list, you should be able to recall whether or not he or she was in rehearsal. Write down the names of any students you don't remember seeing that day. Finally, compare your "after the fact" absence list with the attendance list compiled by the student. If you are making meaningful, visual contact with your students, you will find that on average, your personal attendance list is highly accurate.

David Newell has taught instrumental music for thirty years in the public schools of Berea, Ohio. In 1979 he received the Martha Holden Jennings Foundation's "Master Teacher" Award for Excellence in the Classroom. He also received the Alumni Achievement Award from Baldwin – Wallace College in 1987.

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