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 DOI: 10.1177/0027432113496538

2013 100: 23Music Educators JournalJoshua Boyd

Levels of MusicianshipIdea Bank: Progress through Incentives: How One Music Program Helps Students Progress to Higher

  

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Idea Bank

Copyright © 2013 National Association for Music EducationDOI: 10.1177/0027432113496538http://mej.sagepub.com

www.nafme.org 23

Progress through Incentives: How One Music Program Helps Students Progress to Higher Levels of Musicianshipby Joshua Boyd

Students are motivated when they have a constant system of rewards.1 They have a desire to please others

and be recognized.2 It was with this idea in mind that the Smokey Road Middle School Band in Newman, Georgia, started using the “Power in the Progress System” in 2011. This system, created by H. Dwight Satterwhite, a professor of mu-sic at the University of Georgia, is based on the idea that students will exceed ex-pectations when they have an incentive program that provides constant positive reinforcement as well as a clearly charted path to success.

When students join the beginning band in sixth grade at Smokey Road, they are each given a workbook that contains a clear path for them to progress through from their first days in class until comple-tion of eighth grade and through high school. There are five key levels rep-resented in the “Power in the Progress System” workbook: Jump-start, Begin-ner, Intermediate, Advanced, and Master Musician. Each level is achieved by com-pleting a respective checklist of fifteen to thirty pass-offs that range from writing an essay on a music topic, to performing all major and minor scales, to composing and arranging music. Students can skip around throughout the progress book but must complete the level before they are given their progress pin. (This is also a form of differentiated instruction, and it

provides an opportunity for the teacher to recognize academic weaknesses in read-ing, writing, or math skills.)

The walls in our band room are now called “Walls of Honor.” Each wall lists the names of students who have com-pleted specific levels. Every day, students are recognized and praised as they place their signs on the wall after having com-pleted specific checklists. Little did we know that this new system would revolu-tionize our band program in five signifi-cant respects:

1. When students have a clear path to success, it makes their individ-ual practice specific and organ-ized.3 Students no longer go home without an idea of what to practice, but instead focus on a clearly laid-out path to achievement.4 As students work through each level, they learn to incorporate vocabulary, evaluate what they are hearing, focus on key charac-teristics of tone production, and work their way individually through multi-ple sight-reading sources and method books. Students know that they will be rewarded at the conclusion of each level. This motivates them to practice every day. Practice is focused on mas-tery so that students will be able to pass off the exercise.5

2. Students want to be recognized.6 We learned that there were good things going on in our band program

of which we had not previously been aware. Using a computerized track-ing program, we now watch as stu-dents go from three pass-off marks to becoming a member of the 100-point club. Before our activating strategy each day, we recognize students who have achieved a new level. A sense of pride permeates the room as students proudly hang their wall signs. When parents visit, students take them straight to the walls to show off their achievements. Even more reward-ing is watching a student who has been unable to find success in other places in the band or school day as he or she hangs up a completed wall sign. To ensure that all students have an opportunity to be recognized, we have a “Perfect Practice Wall.” As long as students maintain a practice record of 180 minutes a week without interruption, their names remain on this wall. Even our most challenged students start to reach new levels of achievement when their names stay up on the Perfect Practice Wall. Our rewards ceremony at the end of the year is based on what the students have actually completed, and all stu-dents have an equal opportunity to receive top band awards.

3. The “Power in the Progress Sys-tem” has been the key to dif-ferentiation of education in the music classroom.7 Within a single

Joshua Boyd is the director of bands at the Smokey Road Middle School in Newman, Georgia. This spring he completed his doctorate in curriculum leadership at Liberty University in Lynchburg, Virginia. He can be contacted at jsu2203j@gmail.com.

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Music Educators Journal September 201324

classroom, band directors may have students at many levels of learning and degrees of musicianship. This is especially true in middle school, where transient students can come from sys-tems where they begin band in earlier or later grades. Using our progress approach, students in a given class can be working on any of the Geor-gia Performance Standards (modeled after the National Standards for Music Education published by the National Association for Music Education; see www.nafme.org). Each of the levels is based on the corresponding Georgia Performance Standards for band. Com-pletion of each level also signifies that a student is ready to progress toward mastery of the next set of content standards. In one of my classrooms, we have students working on begin-ner, intermediate, and advanced levels simultaneously. In Jump-start, students who have just started performing on their instruments are given an oppor-tunity to experience immediate suc-cess. It is literally a “jump start” into the program. Advanced students are no longer limited to only being able to work on concert music that is chosen based on the needs of classroom as a whole, but can now push ahead of

their peers. Our band is also not lim-ited by the school schedule as far as the level of band classes. We use flexible grouping, even in band.8 We are able to place students in the appropriate classes each year based on actual data and evidence from their individual per-formances, and, just as in math or sci-ence classes, students can change band classes based on individual needs and progress.

4. Not all class time has to be full-group instruction to improve stage performance.9 Listening to all 200 students perform individually takes time. As students become more motivated, they are almost always fighting to see who gets the after-school or before-school slots to pass off material. On any given day, twenty to thirty students stay after school to practice with the band director or pass off material.10 Since there is not enough time to hear all of the students before or after class, we usually take a day every two weeks to do pass-offs in class. At first, we thought that this would decrease our productivity, but we discovered that the opposite was true. We redirected four hours of whole-class instruction every nine

weeks and gained hundreds of hours of individual instruction at home, which has more than made up for the loss. As students started to work their way through Rubank, Arbans, Haskell Harr, and other method books, they actually received more individualized instruction than we could offer them in a forty-five-minute class period by ourselves, and it increased and maxi-mized our full-group band practice.

5. The most important contribution of the “Power in the Progress Sys-tem” to our band program can be summed up in the word relation-ships. We now meet with students individually at least once every two weeks.11 As they try to pass off materi-als, I am able to give them a five-min-ute mini-lesson. But there is something much deeper that happens in these five minutes. I get to remind each stu-dent every other week that I believe in him or her. I tell students that they were destined to do great things as long as they are willing to work hard to achieve their goals. Each time I meet with a student, I am able to provide a mentoring relationship, which fosters growth in all areas of the student’s life. Trust is being built between the ensemble and the conductor, which is becoming clear with each rehearsal. As teachers, it is easy to become so busy with all the paperwork that we forget to acknowledge and speak to each student. I have been able to “progress” toward becoming a better teacher through establishing a professional relationship with each student.

Fostering SuccessTitle I schools such as Smokey Road Middle School have a population that often struggles with motivating students. However, our school’s band program has defied the odds by sending more than two hundred students to our district solo and ensemble festival and almost twenty students to the District Honor Band. We have had students earn placements into the Georgia All-State Band in just the last two years. These achievements occurred because every student is valued as an

A student’s progress is noted in front of the "Perfect Practice Wall." (Photo courtesy of the author)

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www.nafme.org 25

individual, recognized daily for his or her success, and given a clear plan to assist with personal achievement. What started as a new curriculum to encourage students to practice at home has turned into a new way of thinking about how we teach band and how we are striving to reach and motivate students through music at Smokey Road Middle School.

Notes

1. Susanne T. Gurland and Victoria C. Glowacky, “Children’s Theories of Motivation,” Journal of Experimental Child Psychology 110 (2011): 1–19.

2. Uco J. Wiersma, “The Effects of Extrinsic Rewards in Intrinsic Motivation: A Meta-Analysis,” Journal of Occupational and Organizational Psychology 65 (1992): 101–14.

3. Ibid.

4. Harvey C. Foyle, “The Effects of Preparation and Practice Homework on Student Achievement in Tenth-Grade American History.” Dissertation Abstracts International 45 (1985):

2474A; Harvey C. Foyle and Gerald D. Bailey, “Homework Experiments in Social Studies: Implications for Teaching,” Social Education 52, no. 4 (1988): 292–98; and Harvey Foyle, Lawrence Lyman, Loren Thompkins, Sharon Pern, and Douglas Foyle, “Homework and Cooperative Learning: A Classroom Field Experiment” (Tech Report; Emporia, KS: Emporia State University, 1990), ERIC Document Reproduction Service (ED 350 285).

5. Alice L. Kahle and Mary L. Kelly, “Children’s Homework Problems: A Comparison of Goal Setting and Parent Training,” Behavior Therapy 25, no. 2 (1994): 275–90; Deborah L. Miller and Mary L. Kelly, “The Use of Goal Setting and Contingency Contracting for Improving Children’s Homework Performance,” Journal of Applied Behavioral Analysis 27, no. 1 (1994): 73–84; and D. J. Vollmer, “The Effects of Goal Setting on Homework Behavior, Self-Efficacy, and Attributional Aspirations of High School Students,” Dissertation Abstracts International 54 (1995): 4-A.

6. Wiersma, “Effects of Extrinsic Rewards.”

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7. Pearl Subban, “Differentiated Instruction: A Research Basis,” International Education Journal 7, no. 7 (2006): 935–48, http://ehlt.flinders.edu.au/education/iej/articles/v7n7/v7n7.pdf#page=69.

8. Chen-Lin C Kulik and James A. Kulik, “Effects of Ability Grouping on Secondary School Students: A Meta-Analysis of Evaluation Findings,” American Educational Research Journal 19, no. 3 (1982): 415–28

9. David W. Johnson and Roger T. Johnson, Learning Together and Alone: Cooperative, Competitive, and Individualistic Learning (Boston: Allyn & Bacon, 1999).

10. Kenneth T. Wilburn and Barry C. Felps, Do Pupil Grading Methods Affect Middle School Students’ Achievement? A Comparison of Criterion-Referenced versus Norm-Referenced Evaluation. (Jacksonville, FL: Wofson Senior High School, 1983), ERIC Document Reproduction Service (ED 229-451).

11. Herbert J. Walberg, “Productive Teaching,” in New Directions for Teaching Practice and Research, ed. H. C. Waxman and H. J. Walberg (Berkeley, CA: McCutchen Publishing Corp., 1999), 75–104.

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