Habits of a Successful Band Director

Book excerpt: In Habits of a Successful Band Director Scott Rush provides: A how-to book for young teachers; A supplement for college methods classes; A commonsense approach to everyday problems band directors face; Sequential models for instruction that are narrow in scope; Solutions, in the form of information and probing questions, that allow assessment of a classroom situation; Valuable information in a new format and references to other helpful publications; A contemporary text for all band directors. Some of the topics covered in the ten chapters include: classroom organization and management, working with parents and colleagues, the importance of the warm-up, rehearsal strategies, selecting high-quality literature, and student leadership. The appendices provide valuable outlines and reproducible forms such as medical releases and pitch tendency chart.