The competitive nature of today’s wind programs is hindering collaborative learning and limiting the focus of music education. Early education systems integrated music into their curriculum as a means to develop the whole child, but since the First Band Contest of 1923, directors and school administrators have begun to value music based on a number—the grade an ensemble receives at festival. Many wind band directors have embraced the festival rating system in such a way that they believe their reputation is defined by that number, thus establishing a classroom environment dependent on winning. The heightened pressure on students to perform well encourages those driven by competition while isolating those who are not, dividing the ensemble and impairing the performance. I propose a different approach to classroom management: one that is based almost exclusively on collaborative learning techniques. By adapting a well-researched cooperative learning strategy and applying it to multiple band classes, I found that embracing a collaborative classroom management style can increase student collaboration as well as the ensemble’s quality of performance.