New Student Assignments

FOR ASSIGNING NEW STUDENTS TO TEACHERS

General Guidelines: In general, the Associate Dean will assign new students in a “round-robin” manner with the following guidelines and exceptions:

Guidelines and Exceptions Pertaining to Instructors and Interns:

• Intern / Instructor: ECMS registration forms have check boxes to indicate a request to study with an intern or instructor. The director honors these requests. ECMS students, once in the school, are free to move from an intern to an instructor or vice a versa. (personal note) The Intern/Mentor program should facilitate students moving from interns to instructors as interns depart the school, as a natural progression of their study in the ECMS.

• Student level of Achievement: The director does not take into consideration any indication of student achievement or performance level when assigning registrations. The ECMS considers all of its teachers capable of teaching all levels. The school measures teacher achievement not on the number of high achieving students in a particular studio, but instead on student outcomes, learning, motivation, excitement, and student progress over time. If a particular faculty member wishes to teach a disproportional number of students of a certain level, they will have to make an effort to recruit those kinds of students.

• Requests for a particular faculty member: If a registration form requests study with a particular faculty member, that form goes to that faculty member. Sometimes a faculty member will inform the director that he/she is full. Even if a faculty member has indicated they are full, if a registration form has their name on it, it goes to them first. If they do not wish to take the student, they must return the form to the director with an indication as such and the director can then redirect the form to another faculty member.

• Voice Dept Auditions: The voice department has held auditions for many years. Our current system is that if a registration comes in within a month of a scheduled audition date (there are 3 dates per year), the student is called and is scheduled for an audition time. The chair brings the voice folders to the audition and notates each folder accordingly and then returns the folders to the office. If a registration comes in at any other time of the year, they are assigned as all other registrations are assigned (without audition).

• Faculty positions which are tied to particular programs: The string department has determined that for a faculty member to work within the Eastman Beginning Strings program, that faculty member must be an active member of the program’s meetings and system. Therefore the director only sends students who meet the EBS criteria, to those faculty members who are active in that program.

Guidelines and Exceptions Pertaining to Instructors:

• Senior Instructors Studios are filled first: It is incumbent on the Associate Dean to insure that the studios of the senior instructors are filled first. Senior instructors are salaried and unless they are at capacity, the school will lose money. There is an expectation that senior faculty will recruit students to fill their studios and their efforts in this regard are monitored. If senior faculty members fail to recruit students to fill their studios on a consistent basis, they risk losing their position as senior instructors.

• Non-Senior Instructor studios filled second: Once senior faculty are full, the director can assign new students to Part-time instructors and then to TAR instructors. It is imperative that senior instructors keep the director informed as to their load.

• Rewarding recruitment efforts: Recruitment is very important in any community school. Recruitment is seen as a shared responsibility between the school and each individual teacher. Senior faculty and part-time faculty are required to recruit to maintain their special status in the school. Normally, TAR instructors and interns have no special requirement to recruit by the school. They are hired to simply handle the flow of students for their particular area. In some cases, the school will hire an instructor for the purpose of boosting enrollment in their area. In these rare cases, the instructor may only have students in their studio which they have recruited. In time, if these instructors create a flow of students into the school, the school will begin to send students their way. The school tracks teacher requests and equates this with teacher recruitment effort. The director rewards faculty recruitment efforts with a disproportional number of new student assignments.

Guidelines and Exceptions Pertaining to Interns:

• New Interns studios are favored over current Intern studios: There is a constant turn-over of interns teaching in the ECMS. If there are two or more interns teaching the same instrument/voice, and one of them is new and the others are not and already have a number of students, the director will favor the new intern in assigning students until some parity is achieved.

• Interns who stay on after graduating from ESM: On occasion, interns stay with the school as interns after they have graduated from ESM. When this happens, the director rarely sends them any new students, favoring instead interns who are ESM students.

• Interns who may be struggling: If the department chair has informed the director that a particular intern is having a hard time meeting the needs of their students, the director will cease sending students to that intern. In some cases, it may be necessary to remove that intern from the school, but usually keeping their load low and mentoring them is sufficient.

• Hiring new Interns: If interns indicate that they are full, the Associate Dean will immediately inform the department chair, so that a search for an additional intern can be started. Movement of incoming and outgoing interns is fluid in the ECMS and happens at all times during the year. Because hire new faculty during the school year is less desirable, the ECMS will make all attempts to hire interns to start at the beginning of the school year.

Updated: 3/5/2010