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The Right Turn that Changed a Culture An Interview with Mitch Bahr

Dan Blaufuss | October 2017


    Director of bands and 2016 California Teacher of the Year Mitch Bahr is in his 16th year at Foothill High School in Palo Cedro. The school opened in 1991, and when Bahr arrived in fall of 2002, he was already the ninth band director. “There seems to have been great difficulty getting the program started. The freshman band had eight students and my advanced band was in the low twenties. The band students were the laughingstock of the school, and students were ashamed to be in band. The jazz band students were not required to sign up for concert band, which led to an elitist attitude from them. When a program is in disarray like this, the only solution is to start working.”

What were the first steps you took to build up the program?
    Prior to my arrival, the band was tucked away in the corner of the bleachers, playing songs like The Chicken Dance. At my first football game, students trudged toward the field and made a left toward their usual spot, but I made a right. I got to the 50 yard line, saw them still by the end zone, and waved them over. When they got to me, I said, “This is our spot now,” and we played from there that week. The next Monday, the varsity cheerleaders came into band room in full uniform. They brought us cookies, thanked us for adding to the football game, and applauded the band. My drum major that year was a senior, and she broke down crying when the cheerleaders left the classroom. It was the first time she had ever felt proud to be a musician at Foothill.
    That was the beginning of the culture change at the school. I told students right away that I would never put them in a situation where they would be embarrassed about a performance, and this showed them that I was telling the truth. People began to see what we were building.
    It takes time to gain that trust from students, but once that trust is earned, students buy in wholeheartedly. Children thrive on reassurance, and they need it often. A former professor who I admire greatly, Bob Feller of Biola University, is someone I describe as firm, but giving grace, which is the approach I take with my students. It means I have their back, I am in their corner, and I will fight for them. It does not mean I want students to be content where they are. I will push them and urge them to keep improving themselves as people and musicians. High school students have days when they only want to give minimal effort, and I want them to understand that unless I see someone is about to break under life’s circumstances, I am going to push beyond what students think they can handle That is where students learn. I want students to understand that everything I do on the podium is for their benefit.
    When people ask what drives me every day, I say to serve the students and serve the music – in that order. I liken a teacher’s job to that of a servant, but not someone to be walked over. You are still the authority, but if students do not see that you have compassion for them, they won’t believe that you really are in their corner. If they don’t see you walk down to the gym and cheer on that freshman volleyball team that has a couple flute players, they won’t believe that you care about who they are outside of band.

What are the unexpected difficulties of teaching in a rural area?
    If you take on a high school job in a rural area but come in with unrealistic expectations of how much a student who lives five miles down a dirt road off a poorly traveled highway is going to do for you, it can become frustrating quickly. We have students who hop on a bus long before I need to leave for work. Many of them also get home later than I do. This has to be taken into account in your teaching.
    Some people might bristle at this, but I think the Foothill band was built with a Frisbee, a deck of cards, and food. When we have Friday night football games, I leave the band room open all day and am at school until the game ends so the students who usually ride the bus after school can stay in town and have a place to be. Students can practice a little bit if they want or just hang out with friends. They look forward to it. We have snacks and hearts tournaments. This is how you build memories with students, especially in a small town.

What courses do you teach at Foothill?
    My current job assignment is two concert bands, two jazz bands, and a string orchestra, but it started differently. My job assignment when I arrived was jazz, freshman band, advanced band, and two enormous acoustic guitar classes. I had never played acoustic guitar before but learned over the summer. I also had a music appreciation class, now taught by the choir director. I realized there were many future band students in the guitar and music appreciation classes, so I helped these students love and appreciate music. My guitar curriculum included reading music. I know tablature is traditional, but it doesn’t give you everything you need. I loved teaching that class.
    Once I had started to win over the students and community, the next step was setting expectations for students and parents. The biggest hurdle was telling jazz band members that they would also be enrolled in concert band. That was a multi-year struggle; the last entitled students from before I arrived started to see the importance of that during my fourth year. After I brought the jazz band students back into concert band, everyone interacted, and interest in jazz skyrocketed to the point that I convinced the district to add a second jazz band that feeds into the first.
    There are a number of students at Foothill who were home schooled through eighth grade. A few of them were string players, and they clearly missed music. I received permission to start an orchestra and funding to buy violas, cellos, and basses, and we have an orchestra of 15-20 each year. Some kids aren’t wired for band; they are meant for orchestra. We are a great grade 2-3 orchestra and have fun with it. Students learn about Vivaldi, Mozart, Bartók, and many other important styles of music.
    Band students are required to learn all twelve keys, so at the end of the orchestra’s second year I combined the two groups for graduation. I seated the orchestra students in the middle of the group and put condenser mics on them. I commissioned a band piece for a festival a few months earlier, and the composer wrote in some string parts. It was incredibly well received.

How do you recruit students?
    Out of fourteen schools that feed into this high school, only four have a band. They are all too small to go to the local college festival, so each spring we have the Foothill Feeder Frenzy. The feeder bands come to the high school’s small gym and play for each other. My classes are the audience. I assign three seniors to score each band, and they recognize a couple people from each group and give out treats as rewards. Then I give each group a clinic with the aim of making students feel good about their work.
    During the rest of the day, the feeder school students rotate between several classes taught by my students. These might include marching practice, an improv class, or even a trivia game. At the end of the day, my band plays so the younger kids hear what life could be like in high school. I avoid showy or difficult music for this performance, because I don’t want them to feel nervous about high school band. It is easy to forget how intimidated sixth graders can be at the sight of sixteenth notes.
    In addition, we also invite middle school students to join the high school band at a football game once a year. For this game, we exchange our up-tempo, difficult tunes for music middle schoolers can handle. We play a simple arrangement of the Star Spangled Banner, Go! Fight! Win!, Louie Louie, and Land of a Thousand Dances. I have seen similar events at other schools where the feeder school students sit separately and only play on a couple of the songs in the stands because the high school director chooses not to change the music. Why invite them? It is better to bring all of the pep band music down to their level for a night and have high school students set between them and get to know them. The football audience hears the same songs from week to week; the change is nice.
    In the high school, band students started to recruit their friends. I have 75-80 in the symphonic band, and I started a third of them in high school. Not knowing how to play is no excuse. Few high school students know anything about physics, but this doesn’t stop them from signing up for physics class. Nonetheless, there is a stigma that no one should sign up for music unless they are already a musician. This can only be overcome by helping students understand that my job is to educate them in music. Being a musician has to do with how much someone will work at long tones, scale patterns, and etudes. I tell students that my only expectations are that they listen to my words and practice. The rest takes care of itself.
    Maybe your best future trombone player is a sophomore with no musical experience. Put an instrument in his hands and send him to his trombone-playing friend to learn the basics. By next year, that student might be one of your best musicians. I had a student approach me last spring to say, “I haven’t been in band for three years, because I have had an extra class, but I’ve always wanted to be in band. Can I?” I gave her an instrument and a few lessons before summer and told her to go have a good time” I want students to look back and be glad they experienced music. If you do not give students that chance, all they know of music is what they hear on the radio.

How do you assimilate beginning high school students into the band?
    I always loved playing basketball, but I was too chicken to try out for the team. Finally, my senior year buddies begged me to try out for the team, but I didn’t know how to play basketball. I just knew how to shoot. I went over to a friend’s house, we made a Lego court, and he moved the characters to demonstrate how the game worked. People will put in hours with sports, but musicians rarely think about getting together and sharing things like that. There is so much worry among musicians about whether it is perfect and how others will react if it isn’t. The reality is that it will not be perfect, so I tell students to be content where they are, where they started, and to cherish the opportunity to be on the journey of learning music.
    My section leaders are not in that position because they are the best players. They earn the position because they care about everyone in their section. They are servant-based leaders. I do not believe in chairs; I believe in finding one or two people that care about building the musicianship of the section. Their job is to carry new students for the first couple months until they get up to speed with the band, even if that means they have to come in at lunch or after school.

What are the keys to improving musicianship?
    There is no magic exercise that changes a band’s sound for the better. The primary way to improve musicianship in the band is getting students to care how they sound. When someone sings, you can tell what music they like – if they sing with a twang, they listen to country music. Likewise, I can tell if an instrumental music student listens to people who play the same instrument, and I tell students when I hear improvements and when I do not. This is especially true for jazz band. I hand students my tablet and ask them to pull up what they have been listening to.
    I had a guitar player last year who had only been playing two years planned to attend California Polytechnic State University and hoped to get into their jazz band this year. He spent all his spare time listening, and we had wonderful conversations about John Scofield and Pat Metheny. He was listening to everything.
    I often burn mix cds together for students. If they listen to them, great, but if not, I do not worry about it. When I pass out a cd, if two or three people listen to it, the effort was worth it. This is the same reason I grade practice sheets in high school. I know some students are going to forge a parent’s signature, but there are many in band who want to please their director. If I say, “I know everyone is busy with sports, travel, and work, but I would like everyone to practice at least this much,” and I get a dozen band members to do it, collecting practice sheets is worth it. How many of that dozen would have practiced without that expectation?

How do you reach out to the community?
    It saddens me to see people at a wedding walk down the aisle to recorded music; performance should be part of our culture, and the school music program should be woven into the culture of the community. If there is an assembly at school, we play in it. If there is music performed on the campus, we want to be the ones playing it. If a community event music needs music, I want us to be the ones providing it. The veterans’ community cannot afford to bus us over there, so we pay for it ourselves; to me the expense is worth being able to teach students how to sit through the military services for Veterans Day and Memorial Day and what that music represents. I want the community to understand how much everyone would lose if the Foothill band ever went away, or if funds were lost. A director who only serves his needs does not build that connection with the community, and that program will not be considered valuable.
    We also reach out to elementary students by bringing classes to the high school for 25-minute demonstration concerts. We start by performing while students listen. Then we have them stand behind a chair and watch music go by. We demonstrate different dynamics, but none loud enough to hurt any ears. We have mouthpiece sanitizer available and set up stations for students to try different instruments. Finally, we give them some percussion instruments, and let them play along with a song. We test them by getting softer or louder or speeding up or slowing down. It is a fun day for everyone.

How do your school exchange programs work?
    A school exchange is calling up a school and setting up two days, one this school year and one the next, where each band plays for the other, and then both bands play a piece together. These happen during the school day; the idea is to take a couple hours out of school to share ideas. This shows students that bands at other schools are doing the same thing they are. Each has a culture.
    The last school we went to was struggling. The students there had had a new director each year for a long time. I warned my students, “They probably are going to have little trust in their director. I am going to pump up the kids, and we are going to find the good in their performance. I want to you be celebratory when they’re done and appreciative of the music you’ve heard. Be genuine and positive.” It takes few brain cells to be a critic. Mistakes in music are easily heard. It takes more skill to find the good in a struggling program. What do you hear that they’re doing well? If a group is far behind on music, you may have to praise the culture of the classroom. It may be the only thing you can find to compliment is eye contact with the director, but this matters, too.
    The truth is that I rarely stop for a missed note. They happen. It is more important to me that students commit to good tone and finishing phrases well. The discipline it takes to commit to a course of action or to self-improvement transfers to every area of life, while fixing a wrong note takes just a pencil mark. It is more important to me that students, most of whom will stop playing their instruments after they graduate, master the former two. The discipline, accountability, and compassion we learn from each other goes way beyond whether someone misses an accidental.