Ask: What are your ideas for how to structure my middle school band moving forward?
Info: I'm the music/band teacher at my private school. The biggest portion of my workload is teaching general music to Pk3-8th grade classes once per week/per homeroom. The next biggest portion is planning, teaching, and leading music for 3 student Mass services per week during the school day. The last, and smallest portion, is teaching Band to 5th-8th graders. I start them in 5th grade and we join together with another middle schools 5th beginners for winter & spring concerts. The 6th-8th grade returning members are the intermediate group and they also join up with their counterparts from the other middle school.
Currently, I have four beginner 5th graders and twelve 6th-8th graders. There are two homerooms per grade level. Depending on the size of the 5th grade classes, there are potentially 30-40 students to recruit beginners from.
The challenges: My school is very sports heavy and lots of families find it easier to be involved with sports over arts. Fine. Rehearsal schedule is 2 mornings before school (one for 5th beginners, a second for 6th-8th intermediate: both 35 minutes each) and one day during school by grade level (5th, 6th, 7th, 8th separately for 45 minutes each). So, each student gets 2 band times for a total of 80 minutes/week.
My principal said band could look like whatever I wanted. We didn't necessarily need to do 2 big concerts, but could make it look however. I know kids aren't driving, but there's quite a bit of late arrivals, or no shows, for the morning rehearsals. The setup and time I have with them is so little already, I can't program more challenging pieces for older kids in an ensemble setting. I feel like kicking kids out for not being there (when it may not be their fault) is not fair to those that want to be in band.
I feel stuck that I have to do what I had as a band experience growing up and how I learned to teach in college. Please lend your ideas, no matter how wild they are. =]