Phew... second round of concerts done, and boy, was it a doozy. It should seriously be made illegal for people to schedule a music teacher's concerts so close together. I blame the fear and stress for my current illness... because, obviously, it wasn't given to me from the cold weather or lack of sleep or the little germ-disseminators I see every day ;)
Let's start with 6th grade... just to get the bad news out of the way. I guess the concert wasn't so bad. Everyone got through their songs. They (mostly) sang in tune and (mostly) remembered their words and (mostly) pulled off the harmony. But I don't do mostly. If I'm going to show off a choir, I want it to be great or nothing at all. Mistakes were made, and the audience was forgiving. However, what I was most embarrassed about was switching between the two groups--while one choir was getting off stage and one choir was getting on, it was like this roar of talking and yelling and pushing in front of the audience. What I had been warned about and able to hold off with my 7th and 8th graders, my 6th graders were suddenly doing, and I could not have been more ashamed. Here's what's ironic about the whole situation: Backstage last concert was a mess, but when they got on stage, they didn't speak and they successfully performed all of their music at a level that I was fairly happy with; this concert, backstage was much more organized, but the behavior and singing in front of the audience was much worse. And yet, last concert I got berated by email for not being on top of my job, and this concert I got nothing but thank-you notes, kind words, and friendly emails. That school is definitely odd.
Last week, starting a new round of concert music, I had all but given up on my 6th graders. I worked my ass off to create a fantastic plan for teaching "An die musik" by Schubert to one group, and then essentially got it handed to me when there were actual kids doing it. They were to read (with helper notes, then helpers taken out) the do mi re do re mi do (mi's notated in red... so if we got to that point, they could physically put more emphasis on the red notes) pattern that comes back frequently in that piece while I sang the rest on solfege for them. Then we would add the sol la la ti ti do do pattern that also returns (in various octaves, which I would coach) off the board. One group would take the do mi pattern, one group would take the sol la pattern, and I would be in charge of the rest... until eventually I would hand out the music and we would sing it on English text, except for the two returning patterns we knew on solfege (with handsigns, obviously). I don't care who you are, that is excellent music teaching by anyone's standards, right there. In retrospect, that plan is exactly what we ended up accomplishing (it didn't seem like it at the time)... but, jeez louise, what could have been a short, sweet, and simple act with my 7th graders was like pulling teeth with 126 (the number I'm up to in the big group) sixth graders. It's like they would rather die than work or (God forbid) think in choir. I thought I had broken them of that long ago, but I guess the beginning of every concert cycle really is like starting over. I have ideas for modifying our reading in the future, but I will be damned before I give up on making them use solfege in the score.
Now, on to the good stuff. The 7th and 8th grade concert went splendidly! Of course there were minor things that I wish I could have fixed before presenting it to an audience (and one mistake the 7th graders had never ever made before that caught me off guard... but I'm sure almost no one noticed...), but I've chosen not to dwell on that because the rest of the concert went so well. By far, what I'm most proud of was their sound. We spent waaayy more time working on producing a mature sound and developing our voices for this concert. So much so, that my musicianship plans suffered a little. I think, in the future, if I have to sacrifice one for the other (which I probably won't, I'm still getting used to this whole "teaching" business) I should choose sound for the first concert and CMP for every concert after. I do know a certain choir director--the one who taught me CMP!--who does just that, after all :)
I may not have taught quite as much skill or knowledge with this concert as I had originally planned, but I'm nothing if I'm not an affective outcome based teacher. Since last concert we focused inward on writing about our own lives, this concert, I wanted to focus them outward (mostly) through visual art. Both groups discussed in great detail the meaning of the symbolism in the texts of their slow songs. For 7th grade, it was "Ode to Trees" by Mary Goetze. I had them sit in a circle and discuss some very sequenced questions about their understanding of the text and how the composer chose to set it. Then, everyone put a green thumbprint (a leaf, if you will) on canvas and wrote a personal dream of theirs around it to encourage the lyrics, "may I ascend like the poplar." One of my more artistically-minded girls finished the work by painting in some branches. The 8th grade did a similar process with "Omnia Sol" by Z. Randall Stroope. I had them sit in a circle and answer questions about how the text related to their own lives and why the composer chose to put two opposing musical ideas into the same piece ("wandering" vs. "stable" which I also encouraged with some movement activities). Then, on canvas, I had them make an anchor of words (people, places, dreams, ideas) that represent what we turn to when life gets challenging. Imagine my surprise when I looked at the finished product--I had essentially turned the whole project over to the students--and my own name appeared on that list.
And.... we actually do sing in my classroom too! This trimester was all about breathing and "ironing out the kinks" (as my old voice teacher would say) between the registers, as well as vowel and vibrato work. We started out the semester with vocalization on a simple "soo" set to sol fa mi re do. The s to get the air flowing and the vowel to teach them how to create backspace. It worked like a charm--I guided and corrected as they sang and did the hand motions I had created for this exercise. Then, we added "soo ee oo ee oo" to help them add the maturity of the oo vowel to the spread/bright ee vowel. Hand motions and coaching helped us right along there too. Finally, we added the "soh" to the mix... with the bend and shake. This forced them to open up on top notes and add some vibrato (sparkle!) to long-held notes. For breathing, the sizzle game and beatboxing worked nicely. I thought my middle schoolers would find those games lame, but they were on board! And it totally worked to get them attached to their core while singing. Sirens, sliding, and million games and hand motions helped us get started on ironing out the kinks... but a lot more work is going to have to go into that soon.
I'm excited/nervous for this next set of concert pieces. Seventh grade is singing "Firefly" by Andy Beck (I judge me a little for choosing this one... it's not a great piece, but it has exactly what I want to teach, so there it is), "Inscription of Hope" by Z. Randall Stroope (I think I'll stick with this one....), and "Oye" by Jim Papoulis. I'm not entirely satisfied with this choosing. It occurs to me that the only harmonic challenge is "Oye" and that there are no veggies in this meal; but I make no apologies. My seventh graders have sung Haydn and Schubert... I'm content with their veggie content for the year. My eighth graders are singing "Ma come bali bene bela bimba" arranged by Mark Sirett, "Family Tree" by Stephen Hatfield (Challenge alert! I have a back-up plan ready!), and "Up on the Mountain Shouting" by Caldwell and Ivory. I'm suuuuper nervous, but I'm so inspired by this music that I have some serious teaching plans... which I'm definitely going to need if we're going to pull this off! Just thinking about it makes me tired and excited all at the same time--I think this last set of concerts is bound to be a doozy, as well!
