Use the same idea as hiring a visual staff; find recommendations from other marching bands in the area or contact local winterguard circuit to post “job classifieds”. Ask any drum corps in the area for recent age outs interested in teaching a band or color guard and make sure this is someone you communicate well with! You will end up working very closely with this person. Tell them how you see them fitting into your marching band program. They will most likely have someone they will bring on as a tech. If not, you can do the same process to find techs that you did to find your ‘director’ or ‘caption head’.
Most color guard instructors work at multiple schools, meaning the way they do it at one place may be specific to that other director or high school. If you will be using choreography on video, find a reputable choreographer who offers professional work on video. If your person in house will be the choreographer, here are a few guidelines to work with:
- Check out older videos of your candidates past choreography and watch the guard work like you would watch So you think you can dance or American idol.
- Is the work musical?
- Does it fit the musical phrasing?
- Most importantly is it clean & does it all move together?
Ask this person to come in and teach the color guard for an hour or so. Give them some music you like before they come in and ask them to choreograph 32 to 64 counts to it. They can then teach that choreography to the color guard. This will give you a good idea of the persons teaching and writing skills!
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