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Eye-catching & informative!

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Always a helpful refresher. :)

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Recruiting Tips for Teachers all levels Get em’ in and keep em’.pdf

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I like this one, but it's pretty wordy - I doubt it would convince someone on the fence to join.

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Video to send to/show parents at the Instrument Petting Zoo night (if time)

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Video to send to/show parents at the Instrument Petting Zoo night (if time)

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How playing an instrument benefits your brain - Anita Collins

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Make sure to buy colored paper to make the flyers eye-catching!

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Great post detailing the structure of a good recruiting event!

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Great post detailing the structure of a good recruiting event!

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Lots of info about good song choices.

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Recruiting has always been a little bit stressful for me. Let's face it, we need numbers for our programs to be stable! When I started at my current school 3 years ago, I had 63 total orchestra students in 3 grades. After recruiting, I was able to grow the program to 101 students the next year. This year, my program grew again to 155 students. Next year, I will have around 210.

I follow a recruiting agenda/program every time I go recruiting and it has been working pretty well for me. During my first year, I was about to take my 3 rd year advanced orchestra to the elementary schools to recruit, but my beginners were sounding really good, and I realized that it would be better to bring students only 1 year older than the students I was recruiting. That way, many of the students at the elementary schools would recognize and know students that are in my orchestra.

Recruiting is really a year-long process. I really don't think my program has grown over the last few years solely on my recruiting style. Word of mouth has been huge for me. If students know you as a fun and successful teacher, they tell friends. After concerts, parents tell other parents about your program. It is important that every performance/event that you do all year creates a little buzz. After my last concert, a few parents posted short clips of my concert on facebook and raved about the concert. Facebook is a great way to reach out and connect with people. I created a facebook page for my school orchestra where I can promote my class and post things that create good public relations with people in my area. I also make sure that any big event I have with my orchestra is in the newspaper, so we were featured in the newspaper (in print and online) twice this year. All of these things help with recruiting.

I begin preparing my recruiting program right after our Christmas Concert. This is when students can really start learning some fun music! It has worked really well for me to bring my beginners because once they go through that busy day for 4 performances and lunch together, they bond and become better friends - which makes them like orchestra even more. Plus, since I take beginners, I can focus on festival music in my more advanced classes.

As recruiting time draws near, we begin running the program over and over and make sure it lasts around 20 minutes. I also rehearse the set-up. Students have to be able load buses quickly, unload, set up chairs and stands, and set up instruments at 4 different schools. We have a tight schedule, so students need to be able to do all of the set up in 5 minutes. I took all 75 of my beginners this year, and I was really worried about them taking too long to set up, but we practiced setting up chairs and everything in class, and they were super quick! We were able to easily stay on schedule.

Our program for this year was as follows:

1. As 6 th graders enter the gym, we are already set up and we perform 'Appalachian Hymn' by Soon Hee Newbold over and over until the elementary students are seated and ready.

I tell the audience that orchestra is fun because music is fun and that they already know a lot about music. I say, "I bet you can even recognize a whole bunch of different tunes" and I say I want to find who my music nerds are. We play little snippets from popular music on the radio, YouTube and movies. The audience raise their hands if they recognize and can name the piece. I give bumper stickers that I create for prizes, and funny nerd glasses for the 'music nerds.' ( http://www.orientaltrading.com/spacey-eyeglasses-a2-83_5-11-0.fltr?xsaleSku=25/87400 ) For these movie snippets, I let my students volunteer to find some movie/popular music and play a short clip. This year, I had student soloists demonstrate short clips from Roar by Katy Perry, Star Wars, Harry Potter, and Mario Bros. video game. Then the entire orchestra played 'Jurassic Park' arranged by John Higgins (very easy version) and 'Pirates on the Caribbean' arranged by Longfield (easy). I made the Pirates of the Caribbean more exciting by having one student play the drum part on my little cajon box drum.

5. I demo a tiny bit of 'Devil Went Down to Georgia' and then my orchestra plays 'Fiddles on Fire' by Mark Williams.

10. Audience experiments with instruments for 5 minutes until we clean up and head to our next school.

Here are the forms that I give to the 6th grade teachers to pass out to students after our performance:

Here's a link to a funny little video I used for recruiting this year for when students visited my school and were given a tour:

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Recruiting has always been a little bit stressful for me. Let's face it, we need numbers for our programs to be stable! When I started at my current school 3 years ago, I had 63 total orchestra students in 3 grades. After recruiting, I was able to grow the program to 101 students the next year.

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Include pictures of Carowinds performances in slideshows to hype up the potential students (and parents!)

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Include pictures of Carowinds performances in slideshows to hype up the potential students (and parents!)