CWEA Education Session 3

Sunday Sessions 1/19/2025:

It’s Week #3 of 2025 - and many of you are preparing for your Premier this week. What a time of excitement, adrenaline, and, above all - time for that debut of your program.

Use this Sunday to finalize your lesson plans, rehearsal schedule, to-do list, communications, and logistics, and get as much rest as you can. It’s going to be a great week - stay focused!

You can create and manage your success or be a victim of unpreparedness. It’s GAME TIME - be amazing this weekend

If there is a topic you’d love more information about, email your ideas to [email protected] to get it covered.

All the best,

Jen Barton

CWEA Education Coordinator

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PHYSICAL TRAINING - Content by Marching Health

Staying on top of fitness is crucial to making it to the end of the season healthy and strong. Marching Health has provided a winter workout for all three divisions - see the PDFs through the buttons below for your division’s winter workout to keep your students physically locked in all year long.

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COLOR GUARD TIMING + REMINDERS

Reminders for your color guard timing requirements!

PREMIER WEEK: Regional A/AA guards must have 1:30 of the show, and AAA/AA/A, Open, and World must have 2 minutes of the show to present at Premiere.

EQUIPMENT TIME: You may not have your full show on, but keep track of your minimum equipment times with the handy graphic below. NOTE: A Class applies to AAA, AA, and A! Only when groups are promoted from Regional A into AAA mid-season does the consideration for minimum equipment times differ.

INTERVAL TIME: This is the time from when you cross the timing line on entrance, perform your show, and cross the timing line on exit. If you haven’t practiced this process several times by now, make sure that is on your to-do list before Saturday!

ANNOUNCEMENTS: The announcer will give the ready-to-go announcement (Presenting their 2025 program….) at 1:30 for Regional A, A, and Open Classes and at 2 minutes for World - if you have a recorded intro or other considerations, like recorded pre-show, make sure you or one of your staff is at the sound table to guide that process.

SOUND CHECK: Make time to sound check and make sure you have the correct version of your soundtrack uploaded by WEDNESDAY NIGHT. If you’re not sure, re-upload anyway.

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MINDFULNESS AND FOCUS - Content created by Andrew Elkins, Powdersville HS + Etude

There’s a great PowerPoint linked HERE with more information about Mindfulness Journals for your students - this fantastic clinic was presented at the CWEA Summit in November - I highly recommend checking this out if you want your performers to be calm, cool, and confident for 2025.

Here is your journal prompt for this week:

As SHOW DAYS loom on the horizon, start to shift your focus to performance-ready mindsets. Students should be striving for consistency, performance, and control. Each one of the following prompts can be greatly supported by staff sharing personal anecdotes, teams sharing thoughts or ideas with each other, and creating team benchmarks or goals for the upcoming show. Here are some notes to add for show-day specific journal prompts:

1. Warm-Up & Exercises: Students should know what the routine should be for the whole day, including what technique or warm ups you will be doing. Then, they can see what may be missing from their own personal warmup rotation needs, so when they get a chance on their own they can focus on their own, individual routine to be set up for success.
2. Practice Log: Record goals, feedback, and personal observations - set the goals for the performance on Saturday and keep track of what effort is put in all week to build consistency and confidence
3. Emotional Check-Ins: Capture feelings, challenges, and gratitude - many groups do preview shows to feel all the energy and excitement of a show day, so many have already started to process these feelings. If you haven’t done a preview show, lean heavily on this prompt so students can process their range of emotions and have control and poise.
4. Post-Show Reflection: Identify performance highlights and actionable improvements - post-show is a great time to re-focus, set new goals, and get ready to get even more dialed in with both team and individual progress. Every performance is a learning experience, taking the challenge with the success, and growing from that.

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LOGISTICS 411 - Content by Jen Barton, CWEA Education Coordinator

PREPARING FOR CRITIQUE

It’s your first judged performance - ready or not, here it comes! Over this week, start to prepare for the first critique conversation. Gather your thoughts about your program, and try to look objectively at different components. Some internal conversation starters:

1. How complete is the show in comparison to what the vision for the final product may be?
2. If you are telling a story with your show - is the story well-represented?
3. Do you have your entire production - floor, costumes, flags, props, etc. - if lacking any of these, does that lack create a major issue for comprehension?
4. Evaluate the skills of your performers - technique, excellence, performance, etc. Have a good analysis of where you think they fall in accordance with your class.
5. Do I know the judging sheets? Which sheet has been a concern for my team in the past? Can I learn more about this sheet so I can be prepared to respond to the evaluation?

SHOW DAY

Competition day is hectic, hurry up and wait, and that hospitality food with your crisp can of Diet Coke is not going to go far. Make sure you take care of yourself with proper hydration and nutrition so you can conquer the marathon.

If there is one thing I can impress upon you - LISTEN TO YOUR JUDGES TAPES. If you do not have time, listen to the recap (last minute or so of the tape) - that can give you an overall impression of where the particular judge is landing. TAKE NOTES - get a notebook for the season, date each entry, note which judge, and jot down comments.

If you are teaching solo without a staff, listening to recaps will be infinitely more helpful than not listening at all - and should take 5-10 minutes. You’ll have that time while waiting for critique to start.

If you have a staff, assign the tapes out to them for listening and summary (don’t forget to have them on your team’s Competition Suite)!

Here are some external conversation starters:

At the end of the critique process, keep what makes sense and discard what is not useful. Remember: you are involved with this program every day, and a judge sees only the performance of that day. Take a step back and look at the big picture and keep what will be useful for your next steps.

“So, what did you think” —-> just kidding! This question does not start a conversation - the tape tells you what the judge thought. If you weren’t able to listen to tapes - use those INTERNAL conversation starters to navigate through critique.

Ask clarifying questions - if you don’t understand a phrase or commentary, make a note and try to give as much context as you can. The judge may or may not remember what caused that comment - but you can absolutely ask for clarity.

What happens when judges are in disagreement - you can certainly ask to discuss this, especially on GE.

Feel free to explain what’s missing, where you are going, what the vision is - while judges can’t tell you what to do or write or produce, it can be a sounding board and an investment into future viewings.

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See you on the floor!