10 Things I Love About Middle School Choir Part 7: Middle School Kids Will Rise or Fall to Your Expectations

Part 7: Middle School Kids Will Rise or Fall to Your Expectations

The thing I most hated hearing during my twelve years of middle school teaching was any variation on the phrase "they sounded so great...for middle schoolers," or "that was so good...for a middle school performance." I know parents and audience members don't mean it to be, but I found it insulting, and I actively worked to make my groups and my performances so good that people wouldn't even think about saying it. I would even tell my kids that was our goal.  A lot of people out there just don't expect middle school-aged students to be able to do much of anything, especially where the performing arts are concerned. I wanted to produce quality that would cause my audience members to appreciate our performances on their own merit, that would overcome the inherent biases and low expectations that people far too often possess when it comes to middle school performers.

And then there's any compliment involving the word "cute." Don't even get me started.

I get it. A lot of people have seen a bad middle school performance. There are lots of them out there. The voice change and the hormones and the inconsistency create some obstacles when it comes to putting together a quality choral performance. But I think there is a more insidious factor that carries a large part of the responsibility for a bad or mediocre middle school choir/performance/program.

I am talking, of course, about low expectations.

There is an attitude I see in our profession where some choral teachers, even (and sometimes especially) ones who teach middle school do not seem to expect middle school singers to be able to do a whole hell of a lot. Elementary singers have unchanged voices and everyone singing in the treble clef (which of course isn't always true) and you can cultivate that pure, "ooh vowel that saved the world," choral tone especially if you direct a children's choir. In high school we can do the great music we sang in high school and give our students these amazing artistic experiences.

But then middle school is this no man's land where no one knows what to do or how to get them to sound good. No wonder middle school is where we lose so many singers and potential singers. Far too often I hear "oh middle school? I could never do that," or "Well it's just middle school..." with a tone that implies that really we can't expect much of them. After all, they're basically aliens! Their emotions are all over the place, they are hyperactive one minute and lethargic the next, their voices are all doing super weird shit...if we have a class that's even sort of under control and they are making a sound that actually sounds like singing, then that's a win, right? We did it, and now we're done!

If you expect your middle school singers to not be very good, then they won't be very good. If you expect them to have a ton of trouble being able to sing or understand music, then they are going to have a ton of trouble. If you expect them to be jerks who treat each other poorly, then that's what they will do. A middle school teacher with low expectations will get what they expect. A middle school director happy with mediocrity because they think it's a miracle their kids even sound as good as they do, will continue to get mediocrity. So many people in the general public, including a good portion of our audiences, expect so little of middle school students, as singers or just as people in general. We should not be doing the same. Rather, we should be trying to expand our vision of what is possible for our middle school singers, and then figure out how to push them like crazy to get them there.

My second year at Prairie, which followed my Hardest Year of Teaching Ever, I had an auditioned group of seventh and eighth graders that was basically all of my sixth and seventh graders from the previous year who actually wanted to sing and play ball with what I wanted. I was over the moon. They were nice to me. They enjoyed choir. They did what I asked them to do and they actually sang.

And for that year (and the first half of the following year), I was happy with that. My kids were regularly crushing three part rep, rehearsals were fun if a little aimless, and I rarely asked more than that because it was such an improvement over what I had started with at Prairie. I had really great singers, but I wasn't doing much to make them any better. And so halfway through Year 3, I started to change my approach. I chose harder rep, I started holding myself accountable to challenge my students more...I expected more of them. I held them to a higher standard and pushed them to reach that standard in order to really test how far they could go. As the years went on that become one of my biggest goals when it came to teaching middle school choir: How far can I take this thing? How far can all of us go together? 

Middle school students are capable of so much. They can work incredibly hard. They can achieve a high level of artistry and beauty and sing challenging repertoire (more on that in Part 8). They can create a culture of mutual support and respect. They can do great things. The first and most important step in helping middle school singers achieve greatness is to understand that it's possible, and to then expect it of them. When they know you believe in them, that you have no interest in making excuses for them but instead expect them to meet your high standard, everything changes. Yes they will still fall short sometimes, but the threshold has been raised, and the possibilities are endless. Take these students with incredible energy, loyalty, and potential, and then start pushing them towards greatness. They will amaze you with what they can do.

I am of the belief that middle school performances are something to be enjoyed, not something to be endured. You have a built in audience at school concerts: the parents are going to come either way and they are going to clap no matter what because their kid is up on stage. But I don't want the parents in the audience to just be sitting there trying to make it through until they can go home and get on with their lives. I want my students and my audience members to have a genuine aesthetic experience. I want them to feel something, to experience beauty and emotion and walk away from the performance feeling like they experienced something of quality. The age group doesn't matter, the age group does not preclude the possibility of a quality musical performance!

"That was so amazing, I cannot believe those were middle schoolers. They sound like high schoolers."

"That show was as good as X high school show I saw that time at X."

Subvert audience expectations. Give them a quality performance by middle schoolers whom you held to high standards. They can do it. They can create beautiful things, and we can expect that of them.

Closely related to this idea is the topic of repertoire: the kind of repertoire, the level of quality repertoire that you can do with middle school singers, something I am quite passionate about. I gave that topic its own post, which you can read next week in Part 8: Middle School Kids Can Sing Challenging and Interesting Repertoire.

An Introduction to the Series
Part 1: Middle School Kids Won't Sing for an Asshole
Part 2: Middle School Kids are Hilarious
Part 3: Middle School Kids are Inconsistent
Part 4: Middle School Kids Have a Unique Energy
Part 5: Middle School Kids Have a Unique Loyalty
Part 6: Middle School Kids Have an Unrivaled Capacity for Growth