10 Things I Love About Middle School Choir Part 10: Choir Kids Are Made, Not Born, and Middle School is When We Make Them
Part 10: Choir Kids Are Made, Not Born, and Middle School is When We Make Them
Consider the choir kid. I don't mean simply "a kid who is in choir," but rather the choir kid. You know the one I'm talking about, the one that eats, sleeps and breathes choir. Who is obsessed with music and singing and seeks out as much choir in their lives as they possibly can. They probably end up a student leader and/or volunteering a great deal of their time to the choir program in high school, and they might even major in music in college. They will, at the very least, end up lifelong lovers of (and hopefully singers or supporters of) choral music, and will look back fondly on their choral experiences. They are that kid, who truly loves being in choir and giving their all to the choir, even if they never end up studying music past high school.
Those kids aren't born, they are made. Kids who love to sing and sang from a very young age? Sure. I've encountered kids like that. But few of them grew up singing in choirs. I'm sure this was more common in previous generations, but as fewer people attend church regularly and fewer churches feature choral music and four-part congregational singing (not making a value-judgement on that one way or the other, just stating the fact), I don't think there are a lot of kids with much of a choral/group singing background.
Furthermore, stereotypes about singers aside, there is definitely a more level playing field when it comes to singing. You don't have to rent or buy an instrument, you don't have necessarily to spend hours practicing and struggling to learn technique on said instrument so you can make a good sound (of course that sure helps), you can just show up. If you wander into a choir class with no prior musical experience, you can still maintain pretty much the full level of participation alongside people who have been singing for years. In fact, just standing next to those people that are way ahead of you will help you catch up faster.
I live for finding that kid, the kid who hasn't found their thing yet, who just randomly ends up in choir or gets persuaded to join, and then making that kid fall in love with choir.
Singing in all its forms is wonderful. Ensemble singing, choral singing, has communal, unifying qualities that makes it unlike other singing experiences. One of my favorite things about teaching middle school choir was introducing kids to this experience, and then getting them hooked. Middle school is where we make choir kids. Middle school is where the vast majority of kids start deciding who they want to be and what they're going to do. A negative singing experience in middle school will turn them off to singing and choir forever (believe me, I've talked to enough adults who tell me as much when they found out I was a middle school choir teacher). A positive one can turn a quiet, uncertain sixth grader into a confident, passionate eighth grader who lives in the choir room. And it's all the more amazing to see that happen when the student in question hasn't found their thing yet, or they end up completely altering their trajectory because of the experiences they had in choir.
I will give my usual caveat (because I'm pretty sure I have readers who teach other levels) that this transformation can happen at any level. There are kids that fall in love with choir in elementary school or maybe they sing with a children's chorus. Many kids end up joining choir for the first time in high school and it changes their life: I was definitely one such case. But this is a series about middle school choir, and I believe that the years of young adolescence are a critical time in many students' decisions about whether they will ever sing in a choir, whether they will continue doing so, and I have seen firsthand the transformation that takes place when you light that fire in a middle school student.
So many middle school kids are unsure, uncertain, longing for connection and a place to belong. Choir can be that for them, it can get them through difficult times and inspire them to keep creating and expressing themselves through music. I had a tough time in middle school as a kid, and I didn't find my thing, my choir family, until I was in high school. I would tell my eighth graders at the end of each year, "For the vast majority of us, middle school sucks. It is a difficult time. My goal has always been to try and make it suck less for all of you. If I have been able to do that for you, then I did my job."
Tomorrow is the first day of school. I am not going back to Prairie, to the room that was my home and home for hundreds of my students over the course of eight years. For the first time in my whole twelve year career, I'm not going back to a middle school at all. All summer, while I've been writing to say goodbye to my daily work with middle school singers, I've been preparing and planning to teach high school choir, a journey which I will truly start tomorrow when the students show up. I'm excited and terrified, but most of all I am resolute that I needed a new challenge and I needed to take a risk and experience discomfort in order to grow. Coming to Prairie in the Fall 2011 was the most uncomfortable experience of my whole career (and top three for my whole life), but the discomfort forced me to grow and to become a better teacher. I am grateful to that place and to my colleagues and to all of the students I met there who changed my perspective and made me better. I fell in love with teaching middle school choir and first saw what was possible with middle school choir during my student teaching with Emily Martin at Louisville Middle School. Northglenn Middle School taught me how to find the strength to survive and to never try to be anyone else but myself in the classroom. Mesa Middle School taught me to love my kids and how beautiful choir can be when we are all vulnerable together. Prairie Middle School taught me that I didn't know nearly as much as I thought I did. It broke me down and built me back up again into the best version of my teacher self so far.
I have learned a lot of lessons from the sixth, seventh, and eighth grade students who have come and gone through my doors over the years. I wanted to share them here before I started to forget. Hopefully they will help someone. Hopefully other middle school choir teachers and potential middle school choir directors will find this blog series at some point and these words will provide some help, some insight, some encouragement. I am excited for my new adventure, but I will dearly miss middle school choir, which was the core of my teaching identity. I will miss middle schoolers' humor, their weirdness, their ability to detect and their refusal to tolerate bullshit and insincerity. I will miss winning them over so that I could push them and motivate them into doing incredible things. I will miss them absolutely rocking repertoire that they had no business singing. I will miss being in the trenches with wonderful and amazing colleagues, people like Kelly Carmichael who made it known that they very much wanted to be given a shout-out in this blog post. I will miss the joy and the struggle and the maddening inconsistency. I will miss it all, and I will never forget where I came from. Farewell, middle school choir world, I always want to stay a part of you in any way that I can. Hello, high school choir world, you have some pretty big shoes to fill.
Let's do this.
An Introduction to the Series (Go back to the very beginning!)
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
Part 7: Middle School Kids Will Rise or Fall to Your Expectations
Part 8: Middle School Kids Can Sing Challenging and Interesting Repertoire
Part 9: Middle School Choir Colleagues Are Awesome
Those kids aren't born, they are made. Kids who love to sing and sang from a very young age? Sure. I've encountered kids like that. But few of them grew up singing in choirs. I'm sure this was more common in previous generations, but as fewer people attend church regularly and fewer churches feature choral music and four-part congregational singing (not making a value-judgement on that one way or the other, just stating the fact), I don't think there are a lot of kids with much of a choral/group singing background.
Furthermore, stereotypes about singers aside, there is definitely a more level playing field when it comes to singing. You don't have to rent or buy an instrument, you don't have necessarily to spend hours practicing and struggling to learn technique on said instrument so you can make a good sound (of course that sure helps), you can just show up. If you wander into a choir class with no prior musical experience, you can still maintain pretty much the full level of participation alongside people who have been singing for years. In fact, just standing next to those people that are way ahead of you will help you catch up faster.
I live for finding that kid, the kid who hasn't found their thing yet, who just randomly ends up in choir or gets persuaded to join, and then making that kid fall in love with choir.
Singing in all its forms is wonderful. Ensemble singing, choral singing, has communal, unifying qualities that makes it unlike other singing experiences. One of my favorite things about teaching middle school choir was introducing kids to this experience, and then getting them hooked. Middle school is where we make choir kids. Middle school is where the vast majority of kids start deciding who they want to be and what they're going to do. A negative singing experience in middle school will turn them off to singing and choir forever (believe me, I've talked to enough adults who tell me as much when they found out I was a middle school choir teacher). A positive one can turn a quiet, uncertain sixth grader into a confident, passionate eighth grader who lives in the choir room. And it's all the more amazing to see that happen when the student in question hasn't found their thing yet, or they end up completely altering their trajectory because of the experiences they had in choir.
I will give my usual caveat (because I'm pretty sure I have readers who teach other levels) that this transformation can happen at any level. There are kids that fall in love with choir in elementary school or maybe they sing with a children's chorus. Many kids end up joining choir for the first time in high school and it changes their life: I was definitely one such case. But this is a series about middle school choir, and I believe that the years of young adolescence are a critical time in many students' decisions about whether they will ever sing in a choir, whether they will continue doing so, and I have seen firsthand the transformation that takes place when you light that fire in a middle school student.
So many middle school kids are unsure, uncertain, longing for connection and a place to belong. Choir can be that for them, it can get them through difficult times and inspire them to keep creating and expressing themselves through music. I had a tough time in middle school as a kid, and I didn't find my thing, my choir family, until I was in high school. I would tell my eighth graders at the end of each year, "For the vast majority of us, middle school sucks. It is a difficult time. My goal has always been to try and make it suck less for all of you. If I have been able to do that for you, then I did my job."
Tomorrow is the first day of school. I am not going back to Prairie, to the room that was my home and home for hundreds of my students over the course of eight years. For the first time in my whole twelve year career, I'm not going back to a middle school at all. All summer, while I've been writing to say goodbye to my daily work with middle school singers, I've been preparing and planning to teach high school choir, a journey which I will truly start tomorrow when the students show up. I'm excited and terrified, but most of all I am resolute that I needed a new challenge and I needed to take a risk and experience discomfort in order to grow. Coming to Prairie in the Fall 2011 was the most uncomfortable experience of my whole career (and top three for my whole life), but the discomfort forced me to grow and to become a better teacher. I am grateful to that place and to my colleagues and to all of the students I met there who changed my perspective and made me better. I fell in love with teaching middle school choir and first saw what was possible with middle school choir during my student teaching with Emily Martin at Louisville Middle School. Northglenn Middle School taught me how to find the strength to survive and to never try to be anyone else but myself in the classroom. Mesa Middle School taught me to love my kids and how beautiful choir can be when we are all vulnerable together. Prairie Middle School taught me that I didn't know nearly as much as I thought I did. It broke me down and built me back up again into the best version of my teacher self so far.
I have learned a lot of lessons from the sixth, seventh, and eighth grade students who have come and gone through my doors over the years. I wanted to share them here before I started to forget. Hopefully they will help someone. Hopefully other middle school choir teachers and potential middle school choir directors will find this blog series at some point and these words will provide some help, some insight, some encouragement. I am excited for my new adventure, but I will dearly miss middle school choir, which was the core of my teaching identity. I will miss middle schoolers' humor, their weirdness, their ability to detect and their refusal to tolerate bullshit and insincerity. I will miss winning them over so that I could push them and motivate them into doing incredible things. I will miss them absolutely rocking repertoire that they had no business singing. I will miss being in the trenches with wonderful and amazing colleagues, people like Kelly Carmichael who made it known that they very much wanted to be given a shout-out in this blog post. I will miss the joy and the struggle and the maddening inconsistency. I will miss it all, and I will never forget where I came from. Farewell, middle school choir world, I always want to stay a part of you in any way that I can. Hello, high school choir world, you have some pretty big shoes to fill.
Let's do this.
An Introduction to the Series (Go back to the very beginning!)
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
Part 7: Middle School Kids Will Rise or Fall to Your Expectations
Part 8: Middle School Kids Can Sing Challenging and Interesting Repertoire
Part 9: Middle School Choir Colleagues Are Awesome
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