Professional Development Essay
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Professional Development Essay – Work with Spirit of Central

From the second week of June 2004 through the first week of November 2004 I was on “full-time” paid staff with the Spirit of Central from Lawrence Central. I would have volunteered to work with the band anyway, but last spring my band director, Randy Greenwell, approached me, requesting that I work, for pay, with the band this year. It didn’t take me much consideration to decide to accept.

Looking at this from a college-student perspective, it caused me to not spend *any* entire weekends in Muncie until the third week of November. Therefore, I missed out on some of “college life.” But I never would have traded the experience with the band for a little more social time at Ball State. Being on staff with the Spirit of Central was a lot of fun, a little money, and a terrific experience.

The experience I gained this past marching band season will serve to be invaluable in the future when I, hopefully, have my own marching band. While in the Spirit of Central the past four years, I paid a lot of attention to how the band is run, to how rehearsals are run, and even to the actual design process. For example, during two summers I went to Matt James’ house (our other band director and the visual co-designer) and watched and learned as he and Greg Hagen (his co-designer) worked on that year’s show – conceptual design as well as actual drill writing. But actually being on staff has given me many, many more opportunities to find out what it is really like to be on staff with a marching band.

First, I had a lot of experience running small rehearsals. When I was around (and especially early in the season when sectional rehearsals were more common), I would run the trombone section rehearsals. I started most of those rehearsals (which were anywhere from 20-45 minutes long), with long tones and scales. We then worked on music – either the parade music or, eventually, the show music. Also, I was asked, on a few occasions, to run rehearsals involving more parts of the brass section, or even woodwind sections. These opportunities gave me the chance to practice rehearsal skills. Also, I learned about other instruments and some of their particulars (like how to tune them, for example).

Probably most important, however, is what I learned about how to deal with students. I cannot pretend to understand everything already, or to have had complete success with those students. At times, it became very frustrating to me when they began, or continued, to talk as I tried to talk to them or run sections of music. On the field, they would call me over and then tell me something funny (or just downright stupid). I, of course, was expecting them to have a serious question. I realize that this was largely due to the fact that I am merely one year out of the band, but it still taught me a lot about patience and dealing with kids who just want to be silly.

The directors were good at letting me just work. They trusted my abilities a lot – in fact, they probably trusted my abilities more than I did. I was able to experience teaching (well, rehearsing, really) in several settings, over the course of several weeks. The best part of it all was getting to see the result of the work I did with the band. The National Championship was great – but I remember one specific personal “victory” during the season. The day of the Carmel Invitational (sometime in early October), we had practice for three or four hours in the morning. It was a tough rehearsal, but we were getting a lot done. In specific, I worked with the trombones (both in a sectional rehearsal and one-on-one), and was told to focus on tone quality and blend/balance. That night, after the show, I talked with Matt James and Greg Hagen about how the show had gone. They commented that the trombones sounded great – “like a choir,” Matt said, referring to a specific part that had always been poorly balanced, with several sticking out with loud, harsh tone. I felt great about that because, while obviously it wasn’t me on the field playing, I knew that I had a big part in helping them sound good. It is times like these, among others, that help me to confirm that this is what I want to do four years from now.

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