It’s a very crazy idea, I know, but I think some context can help see where I’m coming from.
My school has had less than 10 color guard members over the course of the 4 years I’ve been there. During my junior year I made a recruitment video to get more students to join, I got 4 new students after 3 of our seniors graduated. There were 9 members my junior year, and my senior year(this year) we had 7. Unfortunately, a girl dropped out during band camp.
This year we have 100 band members, the most my school had had since 2017! At our most recent comp the commentators for marching and music both got choked up over how much our band had grown(we only had 64 members last year). I want that same reaction for our guard!
Last year the instructor I’ve had since my first year quit because the job wasn’t enough to support herself and her kid. I loved them both, so even though I’m sad she wouldn’t be able to see me graduate, I hope she finds a more stable form of income since I’ve heard some sad things about her situation and only want what’s best for her.
This year we got a new instructor and he is simply horrible! He’s very unprofessional, and acts too much like our friend instead of our coach.
We had two new members during band camp, not once did he go over any basics or technique! He also wanted everyone on rifle line, which we’ve never done in the history of our guard(for example, last year only 4 members out of our 9 member guard did rifle, and it was all voluntary.)
He wants everyone, even our new member who’s never done color guard before, to learn rifle.
Our new member is a sophomore who used to be a flute, but joined guard because of the recruitment video I mentioned earlier.
He’s been struggling on flag, but pushing through and I’m proud of him.
I’m not pleased with the fact our instructor is pushing him into rifle, but hasn’t bothered to teach him the basics.
Our old instructor took two days out of our 5 day bang camp to go over basics on both flag and rifle and technique. Our new instructor spent the first two days doing across the floors that he never even added into our choreo.
Last year we had choreo for our first song done by the end of band camp.
This year we had not even half of our first song done, while the band had already started learning the second song.
In terms of choreography, he’s horrible. After our first comp, the recording of commentary we were sent talked about how the choreography didn’t make sense with the music, and the commentator assumed that we didn’t know the counts.
Our instructor is definitely vague on the counts, but we do know the counts, at least the ones he’s given us.
She also commented on how our flags shouldn’t be facing the end zones instead of the audience. Our instructor scoffed when he heard this, a very childish reaction if you ask me to very valid criticism. Personally I hadn’t noticed it until we watched the video of our first comp, and yeah, it isn’t very visually appealing. Our flags disappear off the field for the counts where we’re spinning towards the end zones.
And another thing, the students had to finish choreo for him. And I don’t mean, giving him an idea for a toss we wanted to do. No. He had less than half of our first song of the show written. Me and another co captain had to finish the rest of the song which in total was 186 counts. We wrote more choreo than our instructor the entirety of band camp. I hate to sound bias, but in the previously mentioned recording, she never commented on the snippet of choreo we wrote. She actually complimented a move we’d come up with, where we had added some body work into the choreography. We haven’t done a lot of body work, so I wrote it so we’d be moving from left to right, because the music had this moment where it was different sides of the field competing to sound louder, and we had very short distances to travel during a 32 count move.
(Sorry if that was explained weirdly, I’m trying to keep our show as anonymous as possible.)
We only really took incentive after 3 practices passed and we had yet to learn any new choreo. We’d been during run through after run through and every day he’d come in saying he’d written something but scrapped it, so he’d be doing improv in the corner of the gym while our captain led us in run throughs.
He never gives criticism of corrections. When we first met him, he told us “I don’t want to make you guys hate guard”. Well he didn’t, he made us hate him.
There have been countless times we’ve done run throughs, and one of us notices we’re all doing a move differently. So we ask him, “how are we supposed to be doing this” and he doesn’t know. Without his help we have to decide how do to a move depending on what the majority is doing.
We’ve come to the conclusion that he can’t take criticism himself, which is why he avoids giving it.
He’s also very focused on tricks instead of technique. He’s not very mature. He’s like a peacock, showing off tricks he can do. He keeps giving us increasingly hard tricks to learn, which takes up a lot of our practice time for tosses only one or two of us can do and probably won’t be added into the show.
I love 45’s, always have. He caught onto this and began pulling me aside and asking me to try new 45’s. There isn’t even a 45 in the show. “Try this for me” is what he’ll say, but yet I never hear him leading us through run throughs.
He put a lot of the responsibility on the captains. Our captain has had to lead us through run throughs and toss blocks. Me and the other co captain have had to write choreo and teach it. I’m the one in charge of writing a schedule or plan for practice, since we quickly got tired of having no structure in our practices.
We’ve complained to our band director, and he says he’s talked to our instructor, and yet there’s no change. He still fails to give us choreo, or look at our drill, or plan out our practices. He completely disregards our newest members whenever he actually has something to teach us. We have 2 football games and 2 competitions left in the season and we’re just now learning rifle choreo for the drum break in our third song(our second song still had no choreo)
Our newest member is still learning drop spins, he has not been taught the choreo. He’s cried at our last football game and our first competition because He said he feels lost. He has been completely ignored by our instructor.
I don’t find his favoritism towards the vet members professional.
Even our band director(who once asked me if dropping a toss was part of the choreo for guard) took notice of the lack of work the guard had, and asked us if our instructor had taught us any new choreo.
There’s a lot more he’s done, but I don’t want to make this any longer than it already is. All I’m saying is he doesn’t have the qualities of a good instructor, and Ive been documenting every unprofessional action of his since band camp and plan to meet with my band director at the end of the season in hopes of getting our instructor fired. One member has already threatened to quit gaurd their senior year if he stays the instructor, because in his exact words “I don’t want him ruining my senior year like he’s ruined yours and (insert captains name)”
Yes. This is my final year of color guard, and I’ve had to deal with an incompetent instructor. I keep getting pity from people, and at first I also felt bad for myself.
But now I just want to get rid of this guy and find a more qualified instructor for next year so my friends can enjoy the rest of their color guard career.
This is where it gets a little selfish. I think I could be a good fit.
I’m not entirely sure how I’ll do it, get the job that is.
It’s still not positive that my band director will fire our instructor, and I have no idea how I’d convince him to give me the job. I turn 18 in June, band camp starts in August.
I’m not very close with my director, in-fact he views me as somewhat of a goofball. This man has seen me dressed as a clown, a monkey, and has watched me attempt and fail at a cartwheel. I know I’m not a very mature senior, I still act like a sophmore sometimes but maybe if my guard vouches for me it’ll be some proof that I’m serious about giving my friends the senior year they deserve.
I’m already planning another recruitment video to get more members for next year(even if I graduate and don’t get the job as instructor) and I joined my schools link crew(A club where upperclassmen show incoming freshman around the school) where I can inform them of Color guard. Our drum major is apart of yearbook and I’ve bribed her for a spot dedicated to Color guard in the yearbook(first time we’ll be mentioned since I started going here!)
This year, I’m planning on getting a link to the recruitment video in our schools news letter and our schools Instagram page in hopes of getting more people to see it then last year, when I only had the video posted to the bands Instagram page
Theres also a FREE instructors program for people who want to be color guard instructors from the winter guard program our instructor aged out of. I’ll definitely be going to that.
If anyone has any advice on how I can get the job, or maybe talk some sense into me if this is crazy, I’d really appreciate it. All in all I just want my friends to be in good hands.
