Goober Music Teachers

R – I watched last night as a wonderful friend and colleague of mine, Dr. Sandra Howard of Keene State College, warmed up her own Chamber Singers along side those of York and Brunswick High Schools. She is on tour with them this week and did a 2 hour workshop with the three choirs at YHS. As she was warming them up, I noted that about 32.7 seconds into it she had them completely in the palm of her hand. Completely.

Why? How?

There are several things that jumped out at me. First, she connected with the singers as people. No stuffiness, no head games, no self concerned “agenda”, no baggage, no timidness, she simply got up there and engaged them as young adults. This establishes a trust factor that can’t be duplicated any other way. It’s a conviction that the people in front of you are exceedingly valuable, and you have the ability to transmit to them that you feel that way.

Second, she was real. It was evident from the start she was being herself… and herself is a pretty amazing person. She is gregarious and energetic, but it is an extension of her personality. I know Sandi. I know she can be extraordinarily reflective and thoughtful. She is a great listener. But she possesses the capacity to love the process of creating music to a very high degree. And she shows it. And it’s real.

Third, she knows her stuff. Right away she was engaging the students in unique, creative exercises which were developing immediate results… and the students could hear it. I saw them looking around and thinking to themselves, “wow, this is weird, but wow do we sound good!” As the warmup progressed the satisfaction on the singers faces only grew and their sound developed into something really special.

How should we engage our singers? Sandi reflected three starting points that serve as a pretty great foundation for any conductor. It’s not enough to be good at your craft  (you’ve got to be great… and that requires continuous study). It’s not enough to be enthusiastic (it has to be natural; it has to be you). And it’s not good enough to simply relate to your singers as people (although it’s the essential foundation). You need a wonderful conglomeration of all three. And I’d submit that establishing just one of those qualities – any one of those qualities – is a full time job. Establishing two or, in Sandi’s case, all three? That’s a work of art. It’s something for all of us to strive for.

R – For any debate of solfege vs. numbers, let’s establish a few things. First, solfege 1) has easier, more singing friendly vowels for all notes including chromatics, 2) uses a maximium of 2 phonemes (units of sound), 3) works in all languages, 4) incorporates hand signs that are naturally incorporated into solfege practice. Second, numbers 1) possess no learning curve whatsoever, 2) incorporates hand signs that are naturally incorporated into basic number practice, 3) relate directly to all studies of music theory. I’m sure there are more pros for each that I haven’t mentioned, but these are some basics.

Which is better?

The Apple vs. PC debate is an apt analogy to me. Does each have pros? Yes. Does each have cons? Yes. Is one better than the other? It depends. It depends on preference. It depends on familiarity. It depends on function. It depends on resources (financial). It depends on support (infrastructure). Are there biases on either side of the debate? Of course there are.

Here’s my take on numbers and solfege: it goes back to the why. Do I want to incorporate a system that develops the reading skills in a sequential elementary through College setting? Solfege. Do I want to take an apathetic High School Junior who hasn’t sung since 5th grade and takes my one semester chorus class and make him musically literate within 4 months? Numbers. Do I want to utilize a system that naturally incorporates the half steps? Solfege. Do I want to teach reading skills to the adult learner in my Community Chorus? Numbers. Do I want to utilize a system that easily incorporates good tone and phonation? Solfege. Do I want to utilize a system that requires the singer to consciously analyze their tone placement and phonation out of necessity? Numbers. Do I want to use the universally “accepted” system of teaching reading skills? Solfege. Do I want to utilize a system that immediately translates to Music Theory? Numbers. Do I have a rehearsal schedule that allows me to invest the time into teaching my students a new musical language to the point of functional literacy? Solfege. Do I have a rehearsal schedule that limits my ability to teach my students a new musical language to the point of functional literacy? Numbers.

York, Maine teaches solfege at the Middle school level and numbers at the High School level. “That’s confusing, isn’t it?” Yup. For almost a day. Sometimes even two. “But you can’t use hand signs with the High School kids.” Have you ever held up fingers in the air and had students sing those pitches? “Numbers are unnatural to sing though.” You mean, unlike the text my singers are going to have to sing on those exact same notes in the next phase of learning the music? “But it is difficult to use numbers if you also use them for rhythms/count singing.” Yes it can be. That’s why it’s called academic rigor.

The singers who learned solfege in York Middle School arrive at YHS with reading skills I only wish I had when I was their age. Solfege rocks. The most egregious thing I subject them to is the ability to fluently read music with two distinct systems by the time they go to College, and those who weren’t in Middle School Chorus are also able to sight read. Numbers rocks.

Mac vs. PC. Solfege vs. Numbers. Which is better? It depends.

R – The reason I went into music education was less to do with music and more to do with the personal impact I saw a powerful music program make on my peers when I was in High School. I suspect I’m not alone in that. Once a music teacher however, we are required to be held accountable for musical elements taught, practiced and mastered by our students. Yet that’s both the joy and the frustration, because we also want to get to the heart of the matter: our students. How do we reach them? How do we teach them about them?

My chorus midterm exam every year is a 5 paragraph essay. It always offers multiple essay options, including correlating Kohlberg’s 6 stages of moral reasoning to chorus (mwaa, haa, haaaa…). But it also always emphasizes one thing regardless of which reflective essay they choose: their grade will be based almost exclusively on their thorough substantiation of their opinion. The point to this? The “what” you say is not nearly as important as the “why” you say it. Lesson #1. Lesson #2 is the story I tell about the year I had a student rip me to shreds in their midterm… “you teach by intimidation”, “you talk a good game but don’t really know what’s going on”, etc. Yet she proceeded to follow up every one of her three points with thoughtful, insightful, supporting observations on the matter. She received an A-. She didn’t spell check very well and there were errors in punctuation so she didn’t ace it, but it was still an A-. She had earned it. I took her aside after I turned them back and she was dumbfounded. She expected me to fail her because she didn’t believe that someone would actually stick to their guns and follow through on the premise that the grade will reflect the support given the arguments. I told her that I disagreed with every single statement she made. She was also the only one out of 118 students to feel the way she did. But she supported her opinions thoughtfully and articulately and that was the point. It turned her around in some key ways, and to this day I am so proud of that. I also had a student write glowingly about me that year, how I was the greatest thing ever and my course was the most awesome they’d ever taken. They also didn’t support a word of what they wrote; no examples or justifications were written to support the statements. Guess what grade the student received?

And perhaps you don’t think the word got out that chorus was a class where your opinion mattered as long as you were respectful and articulate?

I also developed an exercise called “question box” where once every year or two, the chorus will walk in to class, I hand them a piece of paper and ask them to write down a question for me (without their names on them), personal or professional, theoretical or practical, serious or funny. I then collect everyone’s anonymous questions in a box and spend the class answering the questions. I toss aside any that are inappropriate but actually go through the process of answering all the rest. And some of the topics that come out of those questions, and the class discussion that follows (teen drinking, cheating, relationships, family, honesty, faith, decision making), well, some of those classes have been the most valuable of my career. I know I get to hit on topics that are near and dear to my students, and many times a student has come to see me privately as a follow-up to ask more questions, seek advice on something that came up or to thank me. They realize that teachers aren’t just there for the coursework… they realize that teachers are always there for them as people too. And that is perhaps the greatest lesson I get to teach them.