Illinois, Colorado, Pennsylvania, and others, are all on the schedule, as director of bands Jamie Weaver travels around the country teaching teachers and students about the qualities of leadership through seminars and interactive activities.

“I had been doing leadership stuff for a long time anyway, and I thought I should go out and do it on my own,” Weaver said. “Most of the things that you do in leadership stuff is about focusing someone’s point of view or even changing the way that people see things. Our own leadership team here at Liberty, does similar things and their goal is to try to look at things from someone else’s point of view and perspective, and understanding others’ motivations and getting them where they need to be.”

The Band Leadership Team on campus is about developing the skills of leadership and being dedicated to individual and group success.

“During the BLT training, Mr. Weaver coached us through a lot of teamwork exercises to show us how the best way to succeed as the BLT is as a team,” junior Eujin Chung said. “We also did a lot of activities just to get to know each other better because it’s important that the BLT itself trusted and liked each other. Specifically for the band, we did many activities where we got to talk about what we liked, what we didn’t like, and what we wanted to add or change this season.”

Weaver presentations focus on leadership and character, as well as the values and expectations that come with them.

“One of the standard, stock issue things I do recently has been communication circles,” Weaver said. “You are face to face, and eye to eye with another person, those kinds of things have to do with leading other people. We do some experincial things, physically where we might do games or some low level ropes courses. It’s a mixture of teaching time, asking questions, and physically getting engaged.”

However Weaver not only uses these exercises during his seminars, but also with the Band Leadership Team.

“We did a rope course to build trust with one another,” senior Aravind Dharmalingam said. “It was so difficult because one of us was blindfolded and the other had to guide us. We also did team building exercises like making two circles and meeting everyone on the team, talking about anything that comes to mind, without breaking eye contact.”

The Band Leadership Team used what they learned through Weaver presentations to help improve the marching show.

“I thought that the activities were really beneficial because we got to grow closer together as the BLT and figure out how we wanted to help improve the band,” Chung said. “Looking back at the season, I think that these activities really helped because it allowed the BLT to really trust each other and be able to work well together. I actually didn’t know that Mr. Weaver created Front and Center Motivational Seminars, but I think that it is very fitting of him because he is a really great orator and gives effective motivational speeches to the band all the time.”