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10 Things I Love About Middle School Choir: An Introduction

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 also become quite good at it, and I wear that as a badge of honor when middle level kids are often perceived as such a challenging age group to teach, especially for choral music. I have had incredibly accomplished choral directors, people who are giants in our state, tell me they tried teaching middle school earlier in their careers and it didn't go well. It's really hard to teach middle school choir, and I feel pride at what I've been able to figure out. In fact, I am legitimately concerned that I will never be as good of a high school director as I was a middle school director, but that's a post for another day.

As I say goodbye to working regularly with middle school singers, I have decided to write this series over the summer, 10 Things I Love About Middle School Choir (it's really more 10 Things I've Learned About Middle School Choir but that isn't as catchy and it obscures my 1990s rom-com reference). This series is my love letter to the unpredictable, hilarious, and beautifully rewarding world that has defined the first act of my educational career. I am writing this 10-part series in the hopes that:

1.) It will help me process all of the thoughts and feelings I am experiencing around this massive change in my professional identity, and

2.) That perhaps writing down my knowledge and experience will help other middle school choir teachers, or other young teachers just starting out in the middle school choir world. I have learned a lot in the past 12 years, and perhaps you the reader can find something helpful in what I've learned, or can share it with a young colleague who could find it to be of help.

I'll be posting the series in installments throughout the summer. If you read, I hope you find it useful or at least entertaining. If you don't read, that's cool, I am going to write it anyway. Here we go!

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