Substitute Teachers: Never go to "Plan B"

For some reason, band classes give more trouble to substitute teachers than any other class. I suppose it is because most students know that the average substitute teacher knows more than they do about English, history, or math, but likely does not know as much as the students in music. Even if the substitute took band classes when they were in school, even if they were extremely talented in their band classes, it does not mean they will be successful at teaching band.  Students somehow know this and take advantage of it to sometimes disastrous results.

The easy cop-out solution to this problem is to leave a video for the students to watch, but is this really beneficial to the students?  I have a variety of music related videos in my library, but none of them relate directly to what we are rehearsing in band at any given moment.  Some of my least favorite of the bunch are historical fiction.  Each features a composer in a fictional story that involves a child about middle school age and somehow the child and composer interact to solve each others problems and they all live happily ever after.  Do the students really learn anything about music?  Probably not.

As dangerous as it might seem I prefer to leave lessons for my subs in which the students play their instruments.  If I'm lucky I will get a substitute that is a skilled music teacher who will be able to teach the students something new about the music, or give them insight that perhaps I had not.  If I'm not so lucky, the substitute will have no music skill.  In that case I instruct my students that their job when we have a guest teacher is to show-off for them how well you can play.  

If I know that I will be missing school in advance, I prepare the students for their guest teacher by running parts of a rehearsal with no conductor.   Often times when a non-musician tries to start the group they will not count properly (ie not in the tempo or time signature of the piece).  Have you ever been to a birthday party where someone has started singing Happy Birthday by counting to 4?  It drives me nuts!  So to combat this (or rather cope with it) I run a rehearsal in which I start everything WRONG.  I'll start by counting to 3 in the wrong tempo when a piece is in 4/4 time.  I'll start a piece by saying (with no particular cadence) "On your mark, get set, go!"  Each time, the students have a somewhat rough start, but listen to each other and finish the piece.  I figure, if they can play the piece well when I start them off wrong, shouldn't they also be able to play it well when someone else starts them off wrong?

When I leave the plan for the sub I tell them that they students have a variety of tunes prepared to show off how well they play and that they should ask them to play each of them and if something doesn't sound right, they should play it again.  If it sounds worse, move on to something else.  

Now here is were "Plan B" comes in.

I have had guest teachers before have the band play and then decide a short way into the rehearsal that they were in over their heads.  Often times this happens when they play something badly and the sub tells them they did a good job.  Right away the kids know that it is open season on subs!  "These kids are out of control!"  the guest teacher says to himself.  The guest teacher then decides to go with "Plan B" and whip a trusty video out of their brief case.  As soon as the video goes in, things go down hill further and further.  Why?  The minute the sub when "Plan B" the kids knew that they were in control and they took it.  Stick with plan A next time.