Retired Band Director Speaks Out About John Chavis Band Program
Letter to the Editor by: Harriette G. Gilbert
As a retired Band Director with 30+ years experience teaching Band in Gaston County Schools, I am the individual who started the Band Program at John Chavis in its first year as a Middle School.
There, I was fortunate to have been allotted a full-time position and the resources in order to establish an exceptional program for 6th, 7th, and 8th-grade student musicians. At that time, in transitioning from junior high schools to middle schools,ย every middle school was allotted full-time positions in Band, Chorus, and Art.
It was then recognized by Gaston Countyโs Administration that each area required a separate position due to the specific qualifications necessary for establishing and maintaining strong programs. The middle school Band, Chorus, and Art programs and their success have historically been critical to establishing a continuum necessary for strong high school programs in the Arts.
This current move on the part of the administration to eliminate the Band Directorโs position at JCMS to accommodate the projected reduction in student population is a loss of a highly valuable position that most likely will never be reinstated.
In so doing, the Choral teacher will assume the role of both Band Director AND Choral Director. This proposal is unfair not only to the Choral Director, but also to students in Band. Although a highly qualified and superb Choral Director with a stellar record of maintaining a strong program for many years at JCMS, what is the acceptable justification for increasing the number of students she must teach by tripling that number daily?! The issue here is total disregard for the fact that the qualifications and training for teaching Chorus and Band are entirely different skill sets.
The perception that promotes the idea that both Band and Choral teachers are trained in the same way is an erroneous supposition held by many administrators. Beyond the basic components of course tracking for all music majors, the requirements for each separate concentration becomes highly specialized, with each having its own selective skills set.
As a Band Director, specialized training in the areas of brass, woodwind, and percussion instruments requires achieving a level of proficiency in playing every instrument that makes up an instrumental ensemble. Be it a tuba, trombone, euphonium, French horn, trumpet, flute, clarinet, saxophone, oboe, bassoon, snare drum, tympani, and a host of additional auxiliary instruments, a Band Director must be able to play every instrument.
Every instrument group has its own unique method of tone production, hand position, and fingering for each note in bass or treble clef. Teaching a child the necessary and specific way to hold two snare drum sticks, or a brass player the correct way to position their lips on a mouthpiece, or a woodwind the method of producing tone with a reed are all essential skills an instrumental teacher must master.
As odd as it may seem, a Band Director doesnโt have to be a vocalist nor play a keyboard instrument with much more expertise than a beginner. Nor do Band Directors have to be familiar with Choral Music literature, vocal ranges for the adolescent and changing voice, proper breathing technique to support tone, or how to increase vocal ranges. These things few instrumental teachers know are critical skills for a Choral Teacher.
With extensive knowledge and expertise in establishing numerous beginning Band Programs, I feel confident that these factors are being overlooked in making this very unwise decision. Even with the claim of partnering with the High School Band Director in assisting the combined teaching position at the Middle School, numerous questions arise regarding the feasibility of this arrangement.
When problems at the High School level already exist with scheduling conflicts for Band students, how practical is the idea of scheduling concurrent classes in two separate locations? The expectations for this to successfully solve two distinctly different problems is highly doubtful.
It appears to me that this solution is offered only to appease the concerns of parents who want their children to continue to benefit from full-time instruction in both Band and Chorus. In light of the projected reduced student population at JCMS for the 2025-2026 school year, the consensus would be fewer student numbers, resulting in smaller class sizes for all core curriculum classes across the board.
In compensation for this, keeping student-teacher ratios at current state requirements would dictate position allotments in all areas. In this supposition, I am in no way endorsing the elimination of any teachersโ jobs but a relocation to schools suffering from teacher shortages. We hear so much in this day and time, especially at the start of a new school year, about the frantic search for qualified teachers to fill positions throughout the system.
I personally during my career was assigned to teach Band at Hunter Huss High School, Ashley Jr. High, Cherryville Jr. and Sr. High School, Tryon Jr. High, Highland Jr. High, York Chester Jr. High, Southwest Jr. High, and John Chavis Middle School. All Band Directors for many years were assigned by the County to go where needed without exception.
These moves were made for a variety of reasons mainly to achieve program equity and strengths in all programs. The days in which a teacher remained at a single school for their entire career has undergone radical revision with the drastic reduction of those pursuing degrees in Education. With these pertinent factors in mind, there IS a way to preserve the exceptional Band and Chorus programs at JCMS without enacting the elimination of the Band Directorโs position.
The exceptional students that I taught at JCMS are now parents and even grandparents of current Band students who deserve the benefits of continuing to receive quality instruction in both Band and Chorus. I encourage all concerned parents and administrators to speak out and voice your opinions in opposition to this detrimental proposed plan for JCMS.
Ask any successful administrator in the entire Gaston County School System about the value of supporting a strong arts program in their school and learn from those with experience.
Harriette G. Gilbert
Click HERE for the recent WNN Article on the John Chavis Band Issue
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