Smart Singers Repost

As luck would have it outside forces got in the way of my completing my series of blog posts. I am reposting the first in a series of posts. If you have already read my post, thank you. If you have not, I hope you will enjoy it.

I will admit that I am generally a daily Social Media "scroller". It is one of the ways that I stay up to date with family and close friends. I subscribe to some lifestyle blogs and posts that interest me. But perhaps my favorite reason for scrolling is keeping up with the "pulse" of what is happening in music classrooms across the world. This blog is the first in a series of blogs about the Kodály-Inspired Choral Classroom.

It can be lonely being a music teacher. Often you are a "singleton" as a teacher. Or if you are lucky you might have one other teacher who teaches music in your school. When I was actively teaching in the public schools the sharing of ideas and stories was a wonderful way not to feel isolated. Although I am now retired from pubic school teaching, I am still actiively teaching at the college level as both a choral director and for want of a better phrase a "teacher of teachers" . Because of my new roles, I am reading through the many posts from a different lens, but I still find the time I spend scrolling still extremely valuable!

One of the main topics of discussions, especially in the first weeks and even months of the school year seem to center around sight reading, particularly how it relates to the music literacy skills of the students in the choral ensembles. More specifically, how to make it work and be relevant and not drudgery for students. In addition there are many posts and subsequent comments about how students struggle with taking the skills they are being taught through sight reading and connecting it to the choral repertoire. This was also a HUGE hurdle for me with the students in my choral ensembles. That is until I was in my Masters Program.

I completed my Masters at the University of Connecticut in one of the first Summers only Masters programs in the country. We were on campus for 6 weeks for three Summers, taking 12 credits each Summer. Upon completion of the program, you graduated with a Masters in Music Education with an emphasis in either Choral Conducting or Instrumental Conducting.

The "seeds" of the power of teaching music literacy skills in the choral classroom through a piece of choral repertoire were planted for me while I was studying at UCONN. It was while completing my final project for the class "Musicianship For Teachers" where the "seeds" started to "sprout". For this project we had to choose a piece of music that we had already performed with our students, or were planning on programming for an upcoming concert. I chose a piece that I had done a few years prior, and was planning on programming for the coming year. We had to create a series of lessons/rehearsal segments, that would work on our students music literacy skills, but also get the ensemble ready for the concert. The first time I used these steps with a group of students it was so amazing to watch my students really "own" their literacy skills and the repertoire they were learning. Because of their success, I kept working at teaching them their music using this technique, but I found it to not be efficient and often feeling rushed as we approached a performance. In addition, I struggled with sequencing the skills for the best learning outcomes for my students. My students were not always taking a skill they learned through one piece of music to another piece of music.

Enter Kodàly Levels.

It was during my work as I completed my Kodàly Levels that teaching my choral students their music literacy skills using their repertoire when it all "came together" for me. There was not one "moment" I can pinpoint. The three P's, Prepare, Present and Practice and putting these pillars of a Kodàly-Inspired Lesson transformed my teaching. It took a lot of trial and error as I worked to bring Kodály-Inspired Pedagogy into the choral rehearsal. My lessons would sometimes get bogged down with teaching them to become musically literate. When that happened I would often step back and return to my "old ways" of teaching them their repertoire. But, eventually I found the balance between the "work" of learning and the absolute "joy" of singing together.

As has often been the case for me as a teacher, it was a question from one of my students that became my real "a ha" moment. We were working on a section of one of our pieces, using solfege to read the music. This student said to me "Mrs. Young, what actually is the point of using solfege?" It was at that very moment that I realized that my students not only had to gain music literacy skills, but that they had to understand the "why" of gaining these skills.

I paused to answer the question and told a story about my first encounter with my Music Theory Professor my Freshmen year of college:

We had both an aural theory and written theory class. In the introductions of what we were going to learn etc in written theory, the professor was talking about written analysis. He was an accomplished pianist and was sitting at the piano playing and talking about a series of chord progressions that he had on the board. As he explained things he said: "Now, I know for those of you who are voice majors, some of this will be difficult for you to understand". I raised my hand to question the statement. He called on me and I said "Professor Deibler, I do not understand why you said that this would be difficult for those of us who are voice majors will have more difficulty than those who are instrumental majors". He said "Well Miss Vasil (my maiden name), in my experience, voice majors know how to sing but they are not very good at reading music." My reply: "Professor Deibler, I am certainly NOT one of those singers, and I am fairly certain that along with my fellow voice majors, we are going to prove to you that we are singers who can read music and will not struggle."

He smiled and said: "Miss Vasil, of that I have no doubt. I apologize for my generalization" To be clear, Professor Deibler became one of my very favorite professors, but it was at that point that I promised myself. My singers are going to be "smart singers".

After I told the story, my questioning student looked at me and said: "Okay, that makes sense. I am still not sure I like doing it this way, but if this is the way to become a "smart singer" carry on".

 In the next few blog posts, I am going to share my journey to helping my singers to become "smart singers" while working my hardest to never forget that singing together is one of the most joyful activities in the world. I hope you will join me on this journey.

Below is a video of the student leading her fellow classmates as they worked on learning a part of one of their pieces.