I was talking with my students this week about being performers versus being students. I wanted to share some thoughts with you all and see what take others may have.
How this started was in rehearsal, the members (this is my high school group BTW) were just making silly mistakes in runs of larger show chunks. Normally, I would give them a bunch of information about what to think about, how to avoid the mistake, what to listen to, etc. However, this is all information we have gone over before many times (like MANY times) this year. The groups normally functions and plays at a high level, but can also be typically high school kids and make silly errors. The biggest issue I was having is that we were not recovering from these errors, but creating more because of them. Now, I will add on here that this group is the most well trained groups of high school students I have taught, and they have the ability to be really great.
So we got to talking and I got on the topic of being "performers" instead of being "students" at this point in the season. We are in our last 3 weeks of the winter season. The biggest difference I tried to impress upon them is that students want/need more information and performers deliver with the information they have. It is not to say that the "performer" will be perfect, but they will not let one little mistake spiral into multiple ones (under normal circumstances). This mindset of needing to be taught everything (being a student) is something that my groups have normally struggled with if I think about it. I give so much information all the time that I don't know if they get the chance to really focus on it and figure out how to deliver it on a consistent basis.
Now, I would not (and will not) talk about having a performer mindset early in seasons. When we transition to marching band in a few weeks they are students and I am a teacher. They need information that I can give them. Early season is when the teaching/learning process happens. I will say that is also when the "discovery" process happens, which is a topic for another post. However, in the late season with groups that have received the information and can execute on it, I believe we need to transition our members out of the student mindset (wanting/needed to be taught) to the performer mindset (executing on a consistent basis). Again this does not mean they are perfect by any means, but it means they are at a level in which the expectation they have for themselves changes.
This has just been a recent thought/change of thought process for me. I think I have done this in the past, but never explained it in this way. But it is true, when our students go on stage, or in a gym, to performer their music be it in a concert or marching arts show, we can no longer teach them and there is nothing more they can learn. So we need to set them up for that change.
What happened after our talk about the student versus performer mindset you ask? They played the best rep they had all season and it was by far the best recording session we have had for the winter season.
So how do you train your students to be performers instead of students in the moment? Is it even something you think/talk about?
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