In my five years of teaching high school orchestra at two different schools, I never felt that any of the ensembles really became a cooperative, caring community. It is essential that musicians in an ensemble trust each other and work well together, so I began my research with the following questions:

Although I now teach elementary band, my questions remain the same and the answers are now even more important, as I am the first instrumental teacher these young musicians will have. The band we create together will be the whole of their ensemble experiences.

I drew on my positive experience as a member of the Northwestern Band Staff, and included many traditional music leadership roles in my classroom: section leader, student teacher, student conductor, instrument manager, and librarian. I also created a Band Board to oversee the whole organization. The first year I used many helpful teaching, assessment and data collection methods from our graduate texts. Observing students in action and noting what worked became my main source of data. The second year I streamlined my original methods and added new ideas from my group development and curriculum research.

To create my new curriculum I fully outlined and digested the content I should teach, and made sure to choose appropriate teaching and assessment methods for maximum learning. In addition I focused on the school community as I discovered it and contributed my ideas to it.

I found that the same philosophies, traditions, structures, routines, activities, and teaching methods create a community and a cooperative learning environment in any size group. Once people trust each other, and are dependent on each other to accomplish their goals, there will be a cooperative learning environment called a community. Members of the group will not gain entrance to the community if they cannot or do not contribute significantly toward reaching the group goals. I have found this to be true both in my classroom community as well as the school community.