Several years after joining the Forney High School Band staff as Director of Percussion and Assistant Band Director, Riley Warren started the Forney ISD Middle School Indoor Drumline. “The beauty of this group is that it creates opportunities for our middle school students to perform together and advance their percussive skills, while also providing leadership roles for our high school students, who serve as the primary instructional staff members of the ensemble,” he explains.
“At any given rehearsal, we will have 10 or more high school students instructing the middle schoolers. This helps foster a positive relationship between our high school and middle school programs, and gets our middle schoolers even more excited to join band and percussion in the future,” he says.
Warren’s well-structured teaching approach “starts with the development of the individual musician. Great programs are made up of great individual musicians,” he explains. “We spend a lot of time year-round developing specific skill sets in each student.”
In the fall, his students are given a 12-week pass-off sheet that guides them in learning the Texas All-State Etudes. They receive feedback on the etudes from Warren, their private lesson teachers, or virtually through video submissions. The spring semester focuses on solos, with students preparing a snare drum and mallet solo of their choosing. At the end of the year, they perform their solos for a judge.
This approach has proven to be successful because Warren’s percussion ensemble performed at the Percussive Arts Society International Convention (PASIC) in 2022 and at the Midwest International Band & Orchestra Clinic in 2023.
Outside of his work at Forney High School, Warren started Rhythmic Wavelengths, a percussion arranging and consulting business. “Working with other percussion directors and their students has become one of the greatest joys of my life,” he exclaims. “Throughout the year, I visit clients for a full day or just a morning or after-school rehearsal. At these consulting sessions, I am able to work one-on-one with students or even run an entire rehearsal. Afterward, I meet with the director to debrief and make a plan to help them accomplish their goals.”
In 2023, Warren started the “Dream Job” podcast with his colleague Shannon Jacobs. “To me, teaching music is a dream job,” he says with a smile. “Despite the many challenges prevalent in the education field, at the end of the day, how lucky are we to be able to help young people become great musicians?”
During the pandemic, Warren noticed that more and more music educators were leaving their teaching positions. “This made me think of how I would feel if I were a high school or college student considering music as my career, which motivated me to start the podcast,” he explains.
Warren and Jacobs have interviewed over a dozen notable high school music educators, college professors, fine arts directors and industry professionals on “Dream Job.” “Our hope is that these conversations will inspire young — and even seasoned — music educators to continue teaching music in a world that seems to value education less and less,” he says.
