Editor's Note: This is the final installment of an ongoing series of stories about sixth grade band and orchestra students in the Traverse City Area Public Schools district, focusing on Cherry Knoll Elementary School to represent their peers.
After a year practicing scales, mastering notes and perfecting technique — or trying to — sixth grade band and orchestra students around the district have given their final concert.
Cleaning and packing up their instrument for the last time this school year, the 454 sixth grade band students are now at the next musical crossroads: whether to continue their instrument into junior high and beyond.
It is a tough decision that Wendee Wolf-Schlarf, the district's K-12 music administrator, estimates washes out 50 percent of sixth graders every year.
"This is not a good thing and there's a lot of factors," she noted.
The band and orchestra students who started the year not knowing in most cases how to even hold their instrument, much less make a pleasing sound, have to decide how important it is to them by next fall.
Right now, enthusiasm runs high among Cherry Knoll band students, who have gotten a glimpse of the friendships and camaraderie possible from playing in a group.
"It's fun being in a band because you can play with your friends," said Alex Philion, a sixth-grade student at Cherry Knoll Elementary School.
Classmate Joe Prokes noted that the group enhanced the learning process.
"It's easier to play in a group, easier to learn and understand," he said.
Philion and Prokes and their 16 classmates say they intend to continue their instrument next year. This high ratio counters the 50 percent drop, but it may change before fall schedules are solidified and interests defined.
Wolf-Schlarf noted that the decision to continue may be peer-driven: friends are (or are not) going to play next year. Or a student realizes after sixth grade just how much work mastering an instrument takes and is not interested putting in the necessary hours.
Then there is the jump in class choices and electives that hits in junior high, where students decide what to take after spending elementary school in one-size-fits-all days. Or, jumping at the one scheduling choice given to sixth graders, they signed up for band or orchestra just for the change but were not really committed to music.
"The reality is that when they get to junior high, they have a lot of choices," noted Wolf-Schlarf. "Playing an instrument at the beginning is not very pretty, not easy; it really takes two to three years of skill building at least to say, 'I'm playing this good enough to say that I like it.' Many times they say, 'Forget this, I'm not good enough.'"
On the other hand, there is the dedication and enthusiasm of the elementary school band and orchestra staff, who bring in older students to play and share their passion. Who work hard to instill a lifelong love of music that is a foundation whether a student plays an instrument after sixth grade or even after high school.
"We certainly encourage them to go on, we have outreaches from the junior high directors and they come on tour with different ensembles," said Steve Weldon, who has taught music for 32 years, 13 in TCAPS as an elementary school band teacher. "We also definitely see kids with a spark, they will come up and brag about how much they practice."
The award-winning and rigorous music programs at both the junior high and high school levels, in both band and orchestra, can inspire some students to continue.
"It truly ends up being a group of dedicated students: to their instrument and to arts education in and of itself," said Wolf-Schlarf of the high school band and orchestra students.
Academic requirements are another factor competing with the pursuit of an instrument. Increased foreign language requirements, for example, may consume electives in the schedules of future graduates — or so parents think. Wolf-Schlarf said that creative scheduling and planning ahead could keep the door open for music students, whether vocal or instrumental, through high school.
"Language only counts in the ninth grade on but we have people panic, thinking that kids have to start it right away, that it must mean they've got to drop music," she noted. "That's what's going to be key for us, these new graduation requirements and what we offer when; the district is still working it out."
For Wolf-Schlarf and the district's music teachers, a student who trains in an instrument for six years and reaches a level of mastery has accomplished something that may not be quantified on specific academic tests. But studies have shown that music provides both an overall intellectual boost and the mastery of crucial skills.
"We believe that in reality, we do have an impact on those test scores because of the variety of methods that we use for teaching reading music, critical thinking and creativity," said Wolf-Schlarf of the MEAP test. "And there's a phrase that I know is so overused: life skills. It teaches respect, dedication and teamwork and not doing something just once. Those life skills are things that employers will want."