| ELEMENTARY GENERAL MUSIC | MIDDLE & HIGH SCHOOL BAND | HIGH SCHOOL BAND CAPSTONE | PSU EXPERIENCES |
Middle School and High School Band
Jacquelyn M. Martin, Principal; Randall Seely, Asst. Principal
4545 Penns Valley Road Spring Mills, PA 16875 |
Phone #
814-422-2003 Fax 814-422-8280 |
Paul Leskowicz
Secondary Instrumental Music Teacher Cooperative Teacher |
Duties
~Worked with the High School Band ~Worked with the Middle School Band ~Taught the Middle Level Guitar course ~Taught Middle School Band group lessons ~Worked with Jazz 1 & Jazz 2 ~Worked and performed with the pit orchestra for Once Upon a Mattress ~Helped out with homeroom and RAM time coverage ~Helped out at lunch duty everyday |
High School Band
Being that my emphasis is in secondary instrumental music, I have spent a great amount of time working with the high school band during my time at Penns Valley. By my second day, I was rehearsing the high school band on several of their pieces as Mr. Leskowicz juggled between being at District Jazz with select high school students and County Band with many of the middle school students. After things calmed down with festivals, I spent a couple weeks observing Mr. Leskowicz in action as well as assisted him with his unit of study of chamber music. In this unit, he let students choose who they wanted to work with, what they wanted to perform, and gave them time during class to rehearse with their chamber ensembles as we went around and offered assistance to the various groups. Within these couple weeks, we decided that I would rehearse Clare Grundman's Hebrides Suite with this group for the rest of my time at Penns Valley as well as developed a unit of study around the piece. Below is a link to my unit study:
Unit of Study for Hebrides Suite
In addition to rehearsing Hebrides Suite with the high school students, I also worked with them on David Holsinger's Adagio and Claude Smith's Anthem for Winds and Percussion. Below are some of the videos from these rehearsal:
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Another major role that I adopted in my time at Penns Valley was revamping their music library. When I arrived, I walked into the music library room to find a counter-top covered with heaps of papers and music scattered all over. After several weeks of working on it, I sorted through all the music into individual pieces, organized existing music folders, and cleared the counter-top so that they music library was functional once again (apparently the first time in 14 years!). I did this not only for the concert band music, but also with the marching band library and jazz repertoire library.
In conjunction with my teaching in my area of emphasis, I developed a classroom management plan to possibly implement in our own program. Below is a link to my classroom management plan:
Classroom Management Plan for Secondary Instrumental Setting
One perk of student teaching was being able to accompany Mr. Leskowicz to the PMEA District 6 Jazz auditions and festival as well as the PMEA Region 3 Concert Band festival and Centre County Music Educator Association County Band Festival. Having gone through similar experiences growing up in Virginia, it was eye-opening to see what goes into organizing and hosting these festivals as a band director as well as see what is unique about the PMEA festival system. For all these festivals, I spent half of my time staying behind at Penns Valley helping run the ship while juggling the rest of the time at the festival. While I was at these festivals, I got to meet many of the different band directors from schools across central PA as well as learn what goes into organizing and hosting these festivals and how auditions work for these festivals. I have many great memories from these experiences as well as a created large network of fellow music educators.
Middle School Band
In addition to working extensively with the high school band students, I spent a large amount of time working with the middle school band students in their group lessons as well as through their band rehearsals. At Penns Valley, many of the band students are involved in both band and choir, which end up meeting at the same time each day. To help facilitate student involvement in both ensembles, Mr. Leskowicz has worked out a system with the choir director to rehearse with the full band every other day and work with those students not involved in choir on full choir days. As with high school band, Mr. Leskowicz allowed me to rehearse a piece with the middle school band students, which ended up being Douglas Akey's A Praetorius Prelude. I have used my rehearsal opportunities to work with them developing their ranges, expanding their rhythmic and musical vocabulary, exploring the different styles of these Renaissance dances, working on developing their musicality and sense of expression, and building up their playing endurance with a technically and musically-demanding work. Below are some of the videos of my rehearsals as well as the lesson plans for those rehearsals.
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As part of my coursework while student teaching, I completed a case study on one of the students I interacted with in middle school band. If you would like to see this case study, please contact me and I'll forward you a copy.
Middle School Band Group Lessons
During my time at Penns Valley, I worked very closely with the middle school band students in their rotating group lessons. On my first day, I ended up successfully teaching a baritone lesson aside from forgetting the fingering for a high E. I carefully observing Mr. Leskowicz working with students, noticing what content he covered in lessons, how he worked with each student, and the report and enthusiasm he had while teaching. In lessons, he emphasizes taking time to really warm-up through long-tones and scale exercises before even going on to other things. He's spent entire lessons working with students on developing a warm-up routine using pg. 4 & 42 from the Fundamentals.... to make sure students knew what to be doing on their own when they practice. Aside from long-tones and scales, Mr. Leskowicz gave out solo repertoire for students to work on. We rarely use this time to just rehearse band music; rather, we focused on material that will improve the students as musicians in which the students can apply the acquired skills to any music placed in front of them. We used this time to instruct students on technique development, sound production, musicianship, basic music theory, and sight-reading. Lastly, he would spend time working on band repertoire that students were having trouble with or were going to be rehearsing later that day. I used this model for group lessons when I started taking over lessons and eventually taught all group lessons. Below is the schedule students received to know when their lessons met each week as well as videos of some of the group lessons I taught.
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Middle Level Guitar
One class that I was very fortunate to be able to work with was Mr. Leskowicz's Middle Level Guitar Class. This was one of several music electives offered at Penns Valley, including a Music of the Worlds course and a High School Guitar course. This class met for one marking period and was open to 7th and 8th grade students. During this course, students learn about the history and origins of the guitar, what parts make up the guitar as well as how it is constructed, how to care for and maintain a guitar, how to tune a guitar, how to read standard notation and tabulature, how to play simple songs and chords and eventually move to strums and power chords. By the end of the course, students have a greater understanding of the guitar and can perform a range of musical styles with different melodies, chords, and strums. During my time at Penns Valley, I've had the opportunity to work with two different groups of students in Middle Level Guitar. In my first five weeks, I watched Mr. Leskowicz work with the students on the performance aspect of the class and assisted him with teaching lessons.
When the marking period changed, I took over teaching the entire class with a brand new group of students. This increased my responsibilities to include taking attendance, preparing and organizing lessons, developing materials for students, administering quizzes, and grading activities. In addition, I was responsible for maintaining order in the classroom and running the show with occasional help from Mr. L.
Below are some of my lessons with the middle level guitar class in which we were learning and reviewing about the parts of the guitar. The students had gotten a worksheet with a picture of an acoustic and an electric guitar with lots of blanks corresponding to the different parts of these guitars. In class, we had been breaking down the guitar by sections and discussing not only what the part was, but the importance of that particular part. I did this through a PowerPoint presentation utilizing lots of pictures as well as a hands-on demonstration with an electric guitar. Also attached is my lesson plan for that day and the PowerPoint that I used for that lesson detailing the different parts of the guitar.
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Jazz Band
When I was applying to for my student teaching placement, I noted on my application that I wanted to go someplace where I would be able to have some jazz experience. Little did I realize that I would get that and more when I arrived at Penns Valley. Penns Valley has seen a huge rise in participation in its jazz program in recent years (400% increase in two years)! Currently, Mr. Leskowicz has two jazz bands that meet Mondays after-school as well as a third jazz group that meets during activities period on Fridays. During my time at Penns Valley, I have had the opportunity to work with both ensembles during after-school rehearsals and with smaller groups during RAM time sectionals. Aside from rehearsing, we have worked on developing a range of musical styles through listening and experiencing the music, focused on improvisation and how to make the solo your own, study and rehearse the blues progression, and reflect on our performances.
In addition, I have been able to travel with them to several local jazz festivals to help out with their performances. I traveled with the jazz bands to the Penn State Jazz Festival and State College Jazz Festival. For the State College Jazz Festival, I had the opportunity to conduct for Jazz 2 on George Vincent's No Clams, Just Oysters as well as learned to play baritone sax to help out Jazz 1 at their performance. The videos of the performances from both festivals can also be found below.
Penns Valley Jazz Band 1 at Penn State Jazz Festival
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Penns Valley Jazz 2 at the 35th Annual State College Jazz Festival
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Penns Valley Jazz 1 at the 35th Annual State College Jazz Festival
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