A Look inside the Dartmouth Program: Middle School

Our philosophy in the middle school is to include as many kids as possible in the program. We are fortunate to have a very large percussion section in the 6th grade. If we only allowed 5 percussionists in the program to balance the winds, there would be a lot of kids who would miss out on the music experience. Sometimes our middle school may not have the quality or musicality that some other groups have, but our philosophy is geared towards our total program. Frankly, we need large numbers in middle school so that we have enough for the high school program.

At the middle school, we have a 6 day cycle in which we have 3 music periods. There are two days for full band and one lesson day. The lesson day is where we split up into separate classes and really work on reading, technique and percussion ensemble literature. During the full band periods, we focus on the concert band literature.

The middle school band marches in the Armed Forces Day parade, along with the Memorial Day parade and the Dartmouth Pride Day parade. We'll put all three bands together for those parades, so that's where you'll see our 350 piece "green monster" coming down the street. We don't play difficult music because of the large numbers, but that's where they get a taste of the marching experience.

 

In order to retain kids in the program through high school, we have developed lots of different strategies. My philosophy is to include everyone as much as possible. Every percussionist in the program is always playing. If there aren't enough parts for the numbers, I'll write more.

We also try to get the middle school students involved with what we do at the high school. We'll invite them to the high school's "Night of Percussion and Dance," in addition to running our own indoor show and marching band show. I think one of the main reasons why the middle school percussionists stay in the program through high school is because they get to see the quality of what we do there and in turn, they get excited about being a part of it.

On the next page, we'll look at Tom's successful high school percussion program. Included are mp3 files of the 1999 WGI indoor show and video clips the 2000 show and "Night of Percussion & Dance" concert!