Quiet Quitting Music

Quiet Quitting Music

Ed Dumas

There is a trend in the world of work lately that is making plenty of headlines in the news. The trend is called “Quiet Quitting” and is one of those developments that seem to be all the rage right now. This is a response from employees that are finding expectations at work have become unbearably high while compensation for their work has lagged continuously further behind. The response from a lot of employees is to do less while working, and only cover the minimum effort required according to the contract or the agreement that the employee was hired under.

I am quite sure that quiet quitting is not a new thing, but the name applied to it is very recent. I am also less sure of any positive effects of quiet quitting, as it seems to me that then the problem of expectations from both management and employees is not being met. Instead, the problems of a communication disconnect between both sides are just pushed farther into the future with no resolution in sight.

While I am not here to debate the merits of quiet quitting, it dawned on me recently that this trend is also happening in the school system. I believe, though, that the term used to name this trend in the schools is that of students “Disengaging” from active learning in their daily school work. Again, this is nothing new, but I still find it surprising to see it more commonly now in secondary music classes where students must make an elective choice to enter studies in music. One huge benefit of secondary music programs is that they have tended to keep students more actively engaged in school which has a spillover effect into other subject areas.

The Covid pandemic since 2020, though, seems to have changed this dynamic somewhat. More students now seem to be Quiet Quitting in the classroom than before Covid arrived. I am sure that most working teachers today are aware of the changes since Covid began, but here are some strategies that you might find useful to help counter this effect.

Quiet Quitting in Band

The first strategy for teachers is in knowing what this Quiet Quitting, or Disengagement, looks like in a band class. If you cannot identify the problem, you certainly will have more trouble in dealing with it. Therefore, we must have some basic idea of what disengaging in music class looks like.

There are some common tell-tale signs of disengagement from learning that teachers should watch out for. The first one is excessive use of cell phones in class, and an inability to set the phone aside. Anyone is susceptible to making an error in a classroom and having their cell phone go off when they thought they had turned the ringer off. But the disengaged student is constantly looking at their phone, texting someone else who is not in the room, or playing games on the phone when they should be focused on making music.

Disengaged students are also often behind the rest of the group in their ability to play their part correctly. This happens because the student has spent such a large amount of time thinking about other things than the music content and the directions from the teacher that their learning is just at a slower pace as a result. At the same time, these are often the same students who rarely practice their instrument at home to progress.

Besides watching the teacher less, the disengaged student will generally interact less with classmates as well. They tend to be more isolationist, or only interact with a small group of friends who are also likely interacting less than desirable in your class. The sound coming out of the disengaged student’s instrument will often sound more monotone, dull, and lacking in definition. When you ask for changes in the sound, you will receive only small minor changes from the disengaged student, which at times can seem like no change at all has been made.

Emotionally, the disengaged students usually seem kind of “flat-line” as compared to everyone else in the room. They usually have fewer interests and less likelihood of them expressing excitement at any of the music that they are playing in your class. I am sure you will find more symptoms of disengaging, but these should suffice to help you identify the students in question.

Reaching the Disengaged Student

Helping students that have disengaged from their studies in music class can be a challenge, but there are some things you may try doing to help reach them. First, I would suggest talking to the student one on one outside of band class so that you can bring up the issue without drawing class attention to any one student. Sometimes students don’t even realize that they have been quietly undermining their studies in music class until you point it out to them. For some students, just pointing this out can be enough to draw them back in.

Many of the suggestions for disengaged band students come down to finding ways to excite them in your band classes. One of the most common sources of student excitement is the music choices that your group is playing. Many young students that are becoming disengaged with your music program often say that they want to play more pop and rock music.

In contrast to that, though, I have generally found that playing too much pop music can be disappointing for many band students. Once they find out that no matter how they play it, the tunes will never sound the same as what they have listened to simply because the instrumentation is different. Instead, I have found that when concert band classes play great music that is written specifically for concert band medium, as opposed to transcriptions, students get more excited about what they are doing. If you choose to do some pop or rock tunes to try to reach the disengaged band students, I would suggest limiting the quantity of these types of arrangements. Accompany the rock and pop tunes with some very exciting compositions written specifically for concert bands which help to capture the students’ imagination.

Teachers should also check the difficulty level when trying to reach disengaged band students. If the level is too simple, the students could get bored too easily. If the music is too hard, students can find themselves unable to keep up with a class moving farther ahead. In cases like this, it is sometimes worthwhile to choose one or two pieces of music to keep in the folder that is specifically geared to the level of the “Quiet Quitters” to try to bring them back into the fold. It is important to know what level they are at, though, before choosing music just for them.

Another tactic that I have tried with some success is to suggest an instrument change for a student that is quietly not engaging as fully as you would expect. Sometimes an instrument change is enough to give that student a feeling of a fresh start and some hope once again to move forward.

It might seem at first that giving a disengaging student a different instrument is making it harder for them because this now sends them “back to square one” in terms of their progress. But, under the right conditions, this strategy can be a benefit. If the student is attempting to turn over a new leaf and begin practicing once again, this at least signals a step ahead of where they were before the switch.

As well as reinvigorating their practicing by switching instruments, you can then possibly control better where the student sits and who they sit next to. You could then be breaking up a negative dynamic between your disengaged student and someone else nearby which means they have a better shot at a fresh start. You can also place the re-engaging student near a more successful student who can help them out and possibly be a better role model. It does not always work, but at the point of “Quiet Quitting,” you have little to lose.

Sometimes the students that are the quiet disengagers are also the ones who have few friends in the band class. It is not that they are not friendly types, but more likely that they just have not “put themselves out there” to make friends because they are just not very good at it. In cases like this, it is worthwhile spending some class time in “ice-breaker” activities to help students get to know each other better. Students becoming more familiar with each other means that they will make better music with each other as well.

An ice-breaker activity could be something as simple as pairing the students up with people who they do not yet know, and giving them the assignment of having to introduce their new friend to the entire group. This means that they would then have to spend some time getting to know them before attempting to introduce them to the whole group. I used to do activities like this on retreats for young band students. Now that Covid has impacted the school system so heavily, a simple activity like this could dramatically change the nature of schooling again just by allowing the students to develop more friend contacts.

Since Covid is fading and overnight activities are allowed once again, it is worthwhile considering taking your band students on a short retreat to help students to become more fully engaged in your program. On retreats, you can hire instrument specialists to come out and run some sectional rehearsals, you can hire a guest conductor, you can learn new and more challenging music, and you can spend more time in “fun” (non-musical) activities that help bring your students closer to the program.

After running retreats like this for many years, the students in my schools looked forward to a Murder Mystery game we played each year called “Clue.” In this game, the students are grouped into teams in which the members must learn to work together to solve a hypothetical murder mystery. The game was so much fun that every year students who never participated in the band program before had heard of it and looked forward to playing Clue when they entered the program. Besides being a great ice-breaker, a big upside to Clue was that participating students learned to cooperate and work together in the music program which helped our programs develop.

Another fun activity that helps music students get involved is taking them to see and hear great performances. I would suggest that you take students to concerts and events that they would not normally consider doing on their own, suggest as a concert by a local adult concert band, a touring jazz band, or the nearby university music program. Any opportunity for students to hear adults making music on instruments like theirs is a worthwhile activity.

Participating in music festivals geared for students is also very helpful in getting your band students to more fully engage in your classes. Not only do your students then have a chance to hear some feedback from a great conductor, but they also have an opportunity to see and hear other student groups in performance as well. Make sure to schedule some “audience time” for them, but give them an assignment to do while they are listening such as evaluating one of the bands. Be careful, too, to put some tight limits on cell phone use when they are in a performance area as either an audience member or performer.

While there is nothing like live performances to fire up your music students, even using a recorded show in your class can help you reach your students’ imagination. I used a show called “Blast!” for years to show new young band musicians that the possibilities of how to use these instruments to entertain are nowhere near exhausted. If you have not seen Blast! and do not know what it is about, I highly recommend you find the show and preview it for yourself. This stage show is a huge eye-opener for young band students.

Finally, another idea that is worthwhile using to help draw in your Quiet Quitting band students is to create some fun activities that are not necessarily music-related that they could participate in. These could be something as simple as going bowling, paintball, curling, or even just seeing a movie together. Take some parents along as chaperones, and finding volunteers for these is usually not difficult as the parents want to participate too!

One of the fun activities that I used to run for my beginning band students was a movie event at a local theatre. We would book an entire theatre, usually on a weekend daytime showing, for some special show that was coming out such as the latest Star Wars or Pirates of the Caribbean. The manager of the theatre would give us discounted ticket prices which covered only the royalties paid to the movie company. The theatre was happy to make their profit on the concession, and our students had a good time just sharing a great movie.

Conclusion

When Covid hit us in the spring of 2020, it did significant damage to the education system and hit music programs across our province especially hard. Now that the rules for living with Covid are easing, it is evident that some students need to be re-engaged in the world of music as well as in their education as a whole. With these students being forced into more isolation kind of activities for so long, some students need help to learn how to become more actively involved with others once again.

Music teachers are particularly well placed in our education system to draw in disengaged students and help them develop some more excitement about life and education. Music teachers can feel confident that finding ways to re-engage students back into their music studies will be an effort well spent, and will likely pay off much larger dividends in future years.

Ed Dumas is a retired band director who taught his entire career in the Maple Ridge-Pitt Meadows School District. Ed is now living with his lifelong partner Laurie in Parksville, BC.  Ed & Laurie also work as Mid-Island reps for Tapestry Music while enjoying making music in retirement.

You can find Ed’s other writings for the MusicED Blog at: https://www.tapestrymusic.com/news.aspx

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