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School Performance Etiquette
These are kids on stage, not professional adults, and we have to treat them a little better.
I taught band and orchestra for five years in south Phoenix, at a minority-majority school that qualified for Title I funding. Out of my peak of 160 students, four of them took private lessons. Four, out of one hundred and sixty. Three of those four were siblings.
Out of those 160 students, more than 120 of them had been absolute beginners in seventh grade. They had never, not once in their lives, touched any kind of instrument prior to junior high. The biggest feeder school for our JH/HS had band and choir available as after-school clubs with hefty fees associated. No orchestra available. In fact, of the eight local K-8 schools, only one of them had an orchestra.
To say that there was no long-standing culture of performing arts was an understatement.
After my first performance with those groups, I realized we had to educate the community about how to be a good audience. Parents, grandparents, and other family members simply didn’t know, and that wasn’t their fault.
