Classroom Observation Brass Techniques

Classroom Observation Brass Techniques
11/22
Holmes Middle School
Luis Perez
Intermediate Brass Class
Mr. Perez started his class almost immediately after the bell rang. When the students were first
coming in, the classroom seemed like chaos, but when Mr. Perez started the class on their daily
warm up from the Habits of a Successful Musician book, the students tuned right in and started
playing. Even the students that were lagging behind rushed to get ready to play. After the class I
asked Mr. Perez how he took control of the class so easily, and he responded that it took
building a routine. At the beginning of the year it took the students much longer to start class.
He explained routine is even more important for these students because they spent so much
time doing classes online that had no real time expectations. Right from the beginning of class, I
noticed Mr. Perez played along with the students on trumpet. I was curious if this actually helped
the students since they can’t really hear him. My question was answered when Mr. Perez said “I
made a fingering mistake and I know some of you are just watching my fingers because you
made the mistake too.” It makes sense that he played trumpet with the class because it is small
and easy to see the fingerings which apply to all the valved instruments in the class. Mr. Perez
also did a really good job of prompting the students with questions rather than giving them the
answers, which helped the students stay engaged. I found it surprising that he had his whole
class tune. He projected the tonal energy tuner on the board and had each student go down the
line and tune. I found this surprising because I have a young student who is about intermediate
level on clarinet and she hasn’t really grasped the concept of how to tune. It makes sense
though, considering brass tuning is a bit more intuitive. Another thing that I found surprising
about the students is that they keep each other in check. When one student was playing out of
turn another student would tell them to stop. I wonder how much of this was the students
genuinely wanting to do the right thing and how much of it was taking an opportunity to boss
around their peers. In either case, it helped the classroom environment stay more organized. I
noticed many differences between how my ensemble directors conduct versus how Mr. Perez
conducted the class. His movements were a lot more obvious. There wasn’t really any fancy
conducting. He was more keeping the beat and cuing sections. He also would shout an
instruction such as “second ending!” to the band to keep them in the right place and knowing
what’s going on. I found it really impressive how he was able to hear individual students playing
the wrong thing, especially considering that it was a medium sized class of middle school brass
players. Overall, Mr. Perez’s methods lined up with what I have learned in class, however he did
a few things differently. First, he told his students to raise their eyebrows to hit the high notes. I
know some teachers have strong feeling about not doing this, but it must be working well for
him. Secondly, he had his students keep their cases at their seats, which is something I
remember talking about specifically not to do in class. I asked him why he didn’t have the
students keep the cases in their lockers and he explained that he only gets his brass class for
45 minutes every day, while his woodwind class is 90 minutes every other day. Because of this,
he looses a lot of class time to setting up instruments. In order for class to start as fast as
possible, he has them keep their cases at their seats, because the convenience of not having
the cases at their seats is not worth the time lost to putting cases in lockers and there is not
enough room to assemble instruments in the locker room. I think something to keep in mind with
everything we learn about how to teach is that we learn how to teach in the most ideal setting,
not always the most realistic. It was really informative to see a teacher in a real classroom
setting adapting these concepts that we learn to work with what fits him and his classroom the
best. I really enjoyed observing Mr. Perez’s classroom and it defiantly affirmed my desires to
teach middle school band.

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