This episode is part 6 of the Building a Band Program series on the Rock School Proprietor podcast, hosted by John Kozicki (Michigan Rock School and RockSchoolProprietor.com).
In this episode John shares strategies for managing student behavior during band rehearsals. He explains how to address poor behavior from band members when it comes up, and how to redirect and create a positive environment that promotes musical growth and student accountability.
Included:
- Key principles of behavior management in band rehearsals
- How to use personalized approaches like “The Talk” to address individual student issues
- How to implement group strategies such as band meetings and email communication with parents to get the behavior you need in group classes
- Effective use of consequences and the “five-minute break” strategy to reinforce rules
- The importance of clear expectations and routine for a smooth rehearsal environment with kids.
If you’re interested in starting a band program in your music teaching studio or looking for ideas to enhance or grow an existing program, this series is for you! In it we will cover how a band program can create a strong community in your studio, increase profit margins, and lead to greater student retention.
Interested in the Building a Band Program webinar?
We’re planning a free live webinar to accompany this series on Friday, July 24, 2026. John will go deeper on these topics and answer your questions directly. If you’re interested, send an email to info@rockschoolproprietor.com with the subject line Webinar and we will be in touch with details.
Rock School Proprietor is a podcast for independent music school owners and lesson studio operators. New episodes drop Wednesdays at RockSchoolProprietor.com and on all podcast streaming platforms.
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Episode Transcript:
(Please note: This transcript was generated by robots. There may be errors. For the best experience, please listen to the podcast episode.)
John Kozicki (00:01.334)
Welcome back to the building a band program series of episodes on Rock School Proprietor podcast. My name is John Kozicki. And if you’ve been following along on this little series of episodes of the podcast, this is for instructors and studio owners who are interested in either adding a band program to their music school or
expanding that program, looking to compete with those big franchises like Bach to Rock or School of Rock. This is where it’s at. I’m sharing all the info that I’ve gained over the years of running a rock school for 10 plus years. And today, what we’re getting into is we’re going to talk about how to manage behavior in band rehearsals. So on part five,
I talked a lot about setting expectations in band rehearsals, setting up and communicating rehearsal rules, clear communication with the band coaches and the band members and the private instructors, essentially setting up a predictable routine so that things in rehearsals run smoothly. And that’s all well and good, but
We’re dealing with these kids with instruments, particularly we can see real issues with impulse control with some of these kids from the ages of about eight to 13 maybe. So what do you do when you’ve done all that, you’ve set up the expectations, you’ve got clear communication, things are still going sideways in your band rehearsals.
This episode is all about that behavior management when things aren’t running as smoothly as you need them to be running. I’m going to cover three tactics that I’ve developed over the years to deal with difficult behavior in band rehearsals. And each one, I think, can be used as a series of tactics for if and when those poor behaviors escalate or just as strategies to employ.
John Kozicki (02:19.328)
when you’re sort of looking at the rehearsals and assessing how to improve behavior in a group, if it’s getting a little bit of out of hand. So the first one that I’m going to mention is it’s real easy to implement provided you have clear communication between band coaches and private instructors in your studio. And we call it the talk.
So what the talk is, it’s a coordinated effort between the band instructor and the private instructors for each of the band members in that group. So you can employ the talk if you identify maybe a single band member in a group might be the source of some of these problems that are arising in band rehearsals like
yelling or noodling or whatever the case may be. Or you can employ the talk for all of the band members. And what you’re doing is the band coach is going to communicate with the private instructor the specifics of the problem that that you’re seeing in band rehearsals. And then that private instructor in the next
private lesson is going to spend just about five minutes with that student. Or again, if you’re employing this for all of the band members in your group, you’re gonna communicate this with all of their private instructors to give them the talk. Real simple, you just have your private instructor say something like, hey, I heard that rehearsals have been getting a little out of control.
what’s going on in there? And what this does is one, you’re kind of opening up this conversation. Gets the student talking first about what they’re identifying as maybe the problem. It’s inviting the student to be a little bit introspective about the behaviors that are happening in private lesson or the band rehearsal. And then,
John Kozicki (04:45.57)
What that does is opens up the door for an honest conversation for that private instructor to reinforce the rules that you have in place for band rehearsals. So why this is effective. Number one, I think the kids really respect their private instructors. They look up to them. And this is sort of putting them in a situation where if…
a particular band member is breaking those rules or maybe acting out a little bit in band rehearsal, there’s a realization that like, my private instructor knows what’s going on in there, right? It’s almost like they’re getting caught. And the other reason this is effective is you’re taking that student out of the group dynamic. And this is in private, in private lessons. There’s no posturing. There’s no,
you know, trying to entertain the other kids in their group or whatever the case or the reason for these behaviors that are coming up. So that’s eliminated. It’s all in private. you know, there’s again, there’s no posturing. Now, the next tactic that we’ve employed is we call it the band meeting. Now, the band meeting is similar to the talk, but
the band coach is going to do this with the entire group in the rehearsal. I’ll mention that we also pair this with an email to parents. So I’ll talk about both the email and the talk. But if you’re employing the band meeting, sorry, I think I said the talk. So you’re gonna pair the email with the band meeting. So if you’re employing the band meeting, you’re gonna plan on doing that two times also.
So I’m going explain the email first and then I’ll talk about the band meeting. So the email is sent to all of the parents of the group, the band members in that group. And essentially you’re just explaining what’s happening in band rehearsals. you know, kids are getting a little talky. It’s getting a little hard to manage them and keep them on track. Explain what your rehearsal rules are because parents might not know.
John Kozicki (07:07.787)
and explain what your expectations are for each kid in band rehearsals. Pretty simple. And then you’re just gonna ask the parents to reinforce that stuff at home. That gets them, the parents on your team. So the last thing you’re gonna do in that email is you’re going to explain what the future steps are going to be.
if the behaviors that you’re seeing in rehearsal persists. And I’ll reference that in kind of the third tactic a little bit later. So the email is a good idea because again, parents might not know what the expectations are. Parents certainly don’t know what the behaviors are in band rehearsals for the most part, unless they’re in the lobby and they can hear what’s going on. Hopefully they don’t. And then again,
it’s sort of putting the parents on notice that you’re on top of things, right? It gets the parents on your team. Now, when you go to do the band meeting, again, you’re gonna plan on doing this two times. The first time you do the band meeting is you do it at the end of a band rehearsal. You wanna do it at the end of a band rehearsal, because chances are it’s going to follow those
negative behaviors that you’ve been seeing in the rehearsal. So I would plan on a little extra time, like maybe end rehearsal 10 minutes early. how you do this becomes important. Turn off all the amps, all the equipment, have the kids put down all of their instruments. Maybe you even have them sit down on the floor or sit down in chairs or whatever. But what this is going to do, it’s going to do…
to dramatically break the routine of what normally happens in rehearsals. You know, if you normally spend five minutes at the end talking about what they’re supposed to do next rehearsal and have them clean up and wrap cables and whatnot, this is breaking that routine and they’re gonna notice it. But by putting instruments down, turning off the amps and everything, you are getting everyone’s focus.
John Kozicki (09:34.601)
on you as the band instructor. Once you have their focus, you just name the problem. Here’s what’s going on, kids. Group, whatever. There’s a lot of noodling. There’s not so much listening when I’m trying to explain things. This is not okay because we’re not seeing the progress that we need to see. You guys are not meeting your expectations.
And you guys are breaking the rules of rehearsals. You all know the rules of rehearsals. You all know what the expectations are. So you’re identifying the problem and then you’re going to explain how things are going to go moving forward, right? You reiterate the rules. We’re going to be a little bit stricter about this. Now the second time, so that’s the first time you do the band meeting. Now the second time you do the band meeting,
You’re do it at the very beginning of the next band rehearsal. At that point, assuming you time the email to the parents correctly, they’ve already gotten the talk at home too. Parents know what’s going on. So the second time you do the band meeting, do it at the beginning of the rehearsal, probably doesn’t have to be as long. But what you’re gonna do is you’re gonna…
restate the rules and the expectations of band rehearsals. I’d suggest you do this similarly as the first band meeting with no amps, no instruments. You need their full attention. And just state that we got to get back on track. know, the past is in the past. We’re going to move forward from this. We’re going to make progress. Now, the third thing you’re going to
The third tactic that we use, and you might want to employ this and sort of drop this in during the band meeting, we call this the five minute break. So the five minute break, these are the consequences for those negative behaviors that you’re seeing persistently in band rehearsal. Essentially, this is a timeout, right? If a band member is
John Kozicki (11:58.297)
Breaking one of your rehearsal rules if they’re noodling if they’re talking while the band coach is talking if they’re yelling whatever that negative behavior is You’re going to have them take a five-minute break Outside of the rehearsal room if you see them doing that Now if you tell them
Maybe put, you know, like a big exclamation point on this one, because I think this is important to say. If you put that out there and you tell these band members that if this negative behavior persists, if you see any of the band members noodling while you’re talking, and you’re going to ask them to take a five minute break, you absolutely must follow through.
with that five minute break. you cannot, you can’t waffle on this. If you put it out there that, hey, breaking the rehearsal rules is gonna mean you’re gonna take a five minute break, you have to follow through. Because if you do not, the kids in that band rehearsal are just going to take that as an empty threat and the five minute break becomes meaningless.
it essentially means there’s no consequences for their poor behavior and They don’t have a reason to improve that behavior, right? So at that point, it’s almost like you’ve lost so just Very important make sure that when you employ the five-minute break you follow through on it. So How do you do it? Well number one you want to detach any emotion from it
If you see that kid noodling, if the kid is noodling while you’re trying to talk about what you’re doing in band rehearsal, you want to detach emotion. And I get it. You know, it’s difficult because you feel like these kids aren’t respecting you. They’ve been, you know, they’ve been yelling, they’ve been noodling while I’m trying to get them to progress on this song, whatever the case may be. Do your best to sort of detach those emotions. You don’t want to yell. Don’t want to get angry.
John Kozicki (14:19.31)
You just stop everything, get everyone’s attention, and you say something like, hey Mason, put your instrument down and go take a five minute break outside of the rehearsal room so you can get refocused on what we’re gonna do here in rehearsals. That’s it. Real simple, real clear. What this action does is it sends a very clear message to everyone in the group.
Mason is likely really embarrassed because all of a sudden he’s sort of been singled out in this rehearsal as the one who’s breaking the rehearsal rules, you’re reinforcing those rules, he’s gonna go take five minutes outside of the rehearsal room. For the rest of the group, the seriousness of this then sinks in. we are gonna be held to these consequences. We do have to…
take this seriously and there might even be something in the back of their head like oh no what if my parents find out this is going on right because parents know by this point right you’ve emailed them so Mason goes outside you go back to doing what you’re doing with the band five minutes later you invite him back in and again no emotion attached to it you know you casually just like hey you ready here’s what we’re doing you catch him up and then you go right back to playing
So this, we’ve got those three tactics, right? We’ve got the talk, which is, you know, a bit more intimate. You’re utilizing your private instructors to help them reinforce what the expectations are in band rehearsals. You’ve got the band meeting, which paired with the email at home, you’re getting the students’ parents on board with what the expectations are.
in band rehearsals and you’re re-refocusing the kids and the band members on what the expectations are in the band room. And then the third one, the five minute break, that’s a clear message that we’re not joking around. We’re here to get some stuff done. Yes, we’re allowed to have fun, but we’ve got to balance that. We’ve got to find the balance. So.
John Kozicki (16:46.286)
This type of behavior management, I think, is generally not the norm. And you can avoid most of these behaviors, and most of the time we do, these are kind of the outliers, but you can avoid most of them by having clear rehearsal rules and expectations, clearly communicating those expectations and your plan for each rehearsal.
And I think most kids feel comfortable and secure with the routine when they know what that routine is. So going back to the part five of this series, you know, how to run your band rehearsal. We talk a lot about that communication and setting those expectations. So you might want to go back and listen to that part of this series, that episode.
to understand really how these two things work. Setting these expectations and running your band rehearsal in a way that is predictable so that the kids know what to expect and then how the behavior management then comes into play. I think it’s all about consistency with the band rehearsals and your routine and what the expectations are. So there you go.
Behavior management in band rehearsal. We only have one more part left in the building a band program series of episodes and that’s going to be elements of a great concert. So I want you to remember I’m offering that free webinar with this series on Friday, July 24th. If you have specific questions about behavior management and rehearsals or really any questions.
on the topics that I’ve covered in the series, I encourage you to join me on that webinar. It’s going to be informative, it’s going to be casual. I’m gonna really tailor it to what you need help with in your studio, whether that’s implementing a band program or modifying a band program or making tweaks to it.
John Kozicki (19:09.046)
And we’ll just go deeper into some of these topics that we’ve covered in this series. So get registered for the webinar. It’s really simple. Just send an email to info at rockschoolproprietor.com with the subject webinar. And that’s it. And then I’ll see you for that webinar on Friday, July 24th. Thanks for listening and we’ll see you next time.
