Embracing the Struggle

Just joining the series? Go  here to start at the beginning! Part 3: Middle School Kids Are Inconsistent As choral directors, we are trained to approach rehearsal as a linear process. We introduce the music, the singers learn their notes and rhythms and text, we work on it together, diagnosing problems and introducing interpretative ideas along the way, we polish the pieces and then we perform them for an audience. And then after the concert we start the process over again from the beginning (okay so linear and/or cyclical).  But implied in this approach is the notion that each rehearsal builds on what transpired in the last rehearsal. Information is retained, skills are developed, ideas are remembered and transferred, and the overall cumulative effect builds towards a performance which is then the culmination of everything that took place throughout the process.  Now we all know it doesn't really work that smoothly at any level, high school, college, church...

Part 2: Middle School Kids are Hilarious Just started? Click here to read the Introduction to the Series Click here to read Part 1: Middle School Kids Won't Sing for an Asshole *After my first day of student teaching, I was feeling kind of down because I wasn't connecting with the fourth period 7th/8th grade choir the way I wanted to (first day, mind you, and not the kids in general, just one specific class ...yes I am a dramatic overachiever, nice to meet you). Some of the most dedicated choir students were in that fourth period class, these eighth grade girls who were incredibly loyal to my CT. I wanted to win them over, but no matter what I tried I just couldn't seem to break through. A couple of weeks went by and I just couldn't seem to figure it out.  "Your shoes are boring," one of the 8th grade girls said to me one day. "What?" I responded quizzically as I looked down at my black dress shoes.   "Yeah, you need cute shoes...

Part 1: Middle School Kids Won't Sing for an Asshole (Alternate Title: Middle School Students Need to Feel Loved and Safe Above All Else) But Phil, don't ALL students need to feel loved and safe? Why yes, reader who already understands the most important part of teaching, all students DO need to feel loved and safe, especially if you are going to ask them to be vulnerable and make music with their voices. But with middle schoolers, just go on and crank those needs up to 11. These kiddos are just little raw exposed nerves walking around all day, every day, dealing with constant changes to A.) their bodies, B.) their emotional state, and C.) the tectonic shifts from elementary school in both their social interactions and academic pressure that starts to take place in the middle years. Yes, high school students can be dramatic too. Elementary school students can have meltdowns too. But the middle years/early adolescence are this perfect storm of awkwardness, mood swings, discom...

10 Things I Love About Middle School Choir:                          An Introduction to the Series This spring, after twelve years (the sum total of my entire educational career thus far) of teaching middle school choir, I applied for and was offered the position of choral director at the high school I have been feeding at my most recent school. It wasn't an easy decision to leave the program that I have worked so hard to build, to leave my kids (the ones that won't be coming with me right away up to ninth grade, anyway), and to leave my team. In addition, the idea of leaving behind the middle school choir world as a whole made my decision even more difficult. Teaching middle school choir is all I have ever known professionally, and I have made "middle school choir teacher" an essential part of my identity, of how I view myself, over the past decade plus. I love middle level kids and I love teaching them to sing. I've ...