You're listening to that music podcast with Bryson Tarbet, the curriculum designer and educational consultant behind that music teacher at the elementary music summit each week, Bryson and his guests will dive into the reality of being an elementary music teacher, and how music can truly be transformative in the lives of the students you serve. Show Notes and resources mentioned in this episode can be found at that music teacher.com.
Hello, and welcome back that music Podcast. Today we are going to do a little bit of a reflection, I guess I'm going to be doing a little bit of a reflection on the past few months. Well, this a little bit longer than that last year, basically of me teaching sixth grade choir. So I'm sitting here recording this in February of 2024. And I actually started teaching choir for the first time in August of 2023. So my typical schedule for the right, like majority of my career has been pre K through sixth grade general music split between two schools, one of the schools is pre K through four, and one of the schools is fifth grade and sixth grade. So as my district continues to grow, we have been getting creative with making our schedule work because there are just so many kids, especially at my fifth and sixth grade school, because we're only there a few data periods a day. So one of the ways that I offered to help make the schedule work a little better, was offering a section of choir. Because quite frankly, in the way my contract works, I have a class cap for general music, but I don't have a class clap cap for choir. And I was super excited. Because when I brought this idea to my principal, I was like very clear in saying, Hey, I know that you can put as many kids as you want in this class, and it'll work. But it's only going to work if we have kids that really want to be there. And much to my wonderful. I'm so thankful that he responded with the exact same thing. He says yes, I don't want to have the students that want to be there or have it ruined by kids that don't want to be there.
So that's been great. So we have about 50 Kids in the choir, which is a lot of sixth graders. But it's been really cool to figure out how to make it work. I've student taught in the choir setting, but it has been a hot minute, I did that very, very first thing I did when I was student teaching. So it's been quite a while now. So I student taught in the choral setting. But it's been a while I did my student teaching at a seventh and eighth grade school to doing choir. And I learned a lot about myself during that time. One thing being that at the time, my piano chops were nowhere near what they needed to be to be an effective choral teacher, choir teacher. So thankfully, I can share that my client, my piano skills have gotten a lot better since then, I'm still by no means a pianist, but I can get by I can lead warmups, I can do some basic component. And we're good to go. So a little bit about how the schedule works. With my choir, I see them for about 35 minutes or so every three days, which is great.
I quickly learned that
when you have 56th graders all in the same room, you have to, I was quickly reminded of the fact that classroom management is such a huge deal, especially when you have that many kids. So there were quite a few times at the beginning where I really felt like we didn't get much done in the rehearsal. But I was okay with that. Because I was being very clear with my expectations. For instance, if they were talking with over me, I was done, I was not going to continue talking, I was going to wait for them.
And I did this in a way that really made it clear if these are my expectations, I'm going to hold on to those expectations. And if we're not reaching those expectations, we're not making music, which is a problem. So I'm really thankful to say although although we've had some issues with classroom management, and with just 56 raiders in a room, the majority of our classes have been great. And we definitely kind of have figured out how to how to make it work and how to understand each other and how to have fun and be silly, but also make being aware of where that line is and not crossing it so we can still get done everything we need to get done.
So I one thing that probably drives
my students nuts about me is that I put a lot of focus on the warmup. One, I think it's so important, especially it's fourth period, like it's really early. It's not even 10 o'clock yet. And we're we're singing and I want them to not only warm up their voices, but also get used to using different parts of their voices that they aren't necessarily used to using and I like doing that in a
way that's a little silly. i A lot of my warm ups are super like, funny and getting them to to laugh and kind of distracting them from the idea that they're singing outside of their comfort zone. Even those that really enjoy singing, sometimes when I'm having them go in there higher ranges or lower range, it's not what they're used to. So that's something that I think that has gone really well is putting in such a strong emphasis on warmups.
On the flip side of that, I have learned very quickly that I need to be very, how do we want to put this?
I have to be very honest with the kids, because sometimes these kids are like, Why are we doing these warmups? Why are we still doing warm ups? Why do I have to warm up, this isn't the fun part, I just want to sing this fun song.
So I'll flat out say like, We're doing this because it's warming up your muscles, just like you wouldn't run a marathon before warming without warming up. You wouldn't sing. But also we're learning skills. And we're practicing listening, we're practicing singing together, we're practicing, practicing, and all these things are going together. So while it might look like we're just, you know, doing a warm up to get started, we're actually doing a lot of learning through that. And I feel like for the most part, once I was explicit in that, the kids got it and the kids were like, alright, even if this isn't my most favorite thing that we do in this class, I can kind of see what the point is. Before we continue, I wanted to let you know that today's episode is brought to you by the steady beat Survival Guide. In this free ebook, we'll dive into my top 20 songs chants and activities for steady beat, so that you can truly build the strong foundation of mutual understanding that is just so incredibly important when we're talking about concepts. So core, like study beat, to grab your free copy of this ebook, head on over to that music teacher.com/study Beat, or you can check up the description wherever you're listening. Now let's dive back into the episode. I also tried to do a lot of sight reading, I don't try to do it every day. Because let's be honest, no one wants to sight reading every day. And we're gonna get eye rolls, and we're gonna get oh, and I feel the same way when I was in choir. So I get it. So I try to do every few lessons, I'll do something, some sight reading. And I typically use this kind of out of the examples of like, hardcore like this is sight reading rather than sight reading a piece using the code 8333 One I love because I can tell them, hey, I use this in grad school. They're like, what? No way. We're not in grad school. And like, Yeah, I know how cool is that. But also, it's pretty simple. Well, they can be there are ones that are not.
But also it's just easy to fit in their folders, and things like that. So I use that I try to make it really short sight reading. And I'm also pretty explicit with the fact that hey, I know sight reading isn't everyone's favorite thing. But this, the more we focus, the quicker it'll go. And we'll be able to go through this. Sometimes if I don't have their focus, and they're really just not give me any effort to say, hey, we're not moving on until we do this. So like, let's give it a good, let's give it a good old college try, right. And the kids do pretty well with it. They I've tried to kind of scaffold it in a way where even those that don't necessarily have a super strong foundation in salt as feel like we're not necessarily seeing from scratch. But we're also not starting so far ahead. That we're not at all able to access it. But I'll also be honest,
I'm not super sure stringent with my sight reading Beisel fish. Yes, I think there is so much value in being able to look at a piece of music and break it down to the solfege pieces and sing it on sofa, and things like that. But I also want them to understand how it connects to other things. So for instance, a lot of my students are in band as well. So I want to have them be able to see if we can connect it in with that. And but also, I wanted them to be able to connect it into the pieces were using. So whenever possible, I will do a selfish thing from the 333. Even though I use the 333 a lot. I think it's also important to connect that to actually what we're doing whenever possible. So whenever possible if we're working on solfege that has or working on site reading that has a specific concept if I'm able to say Alright, we just practice me right now. Cool. And this song book, everyone look at measure 24 What do we have me right? Oh, perfect, connected. Awesome. Let's move on. Because I know one thing that really kind of drove me nuts when I was in school is when we would do sight reading, kind of for the sake of doing sight reading, or at least that was what it looked like as a student. So that's something that I wanted to be aware of with my students. Now when it comes to repertoire.
I probably would have some choir people laugh at what we're doing because honestly, we're just kind of all over the place. But the reasoning behind that is I wanted to be able to expose my students different types of singing. So we're doing
a million dreams from the greatest showmen. We're doing a blog tacos and various different styles we're doing the Gallup or we're seeing
are, you know the solfege suite. But what I like about that is everything is, is still music, which again is bringing that all in. But it's also allowing them to sing in different styles to learn singing in different styles. So for instance, some of the songs we've learned completely by rote some of the songs we have, you learn, really from reading off of the October's, and then some a little bit back for a little bit, kind of a mix between the two.
And I think that's important, because quite frankly, we never know what kind of teacher they're going to get in the future. Maybe they're super light, heavy, maybe they're super, let's read off the score heavy, and how can we prepare them for both, but also prepare them for the reality that they might not get the other stuff later. So that's why I like to kind of do it a little bit different ways of kind of approaching it more as like a survey of wire in general. And we're we're kind of trying a lot of different things, and exposing or giving them a lot of exposure to a lot of different things. But at the end of the day, we have a high quality product, and they had fun doing it. That's kind of my goal. I'll be honest, right now, we don't have any concert scheduled, I would love to give them some sort of performance opportunity. But just because this is something new, that's not something we really put on the calendar at the end of last year.
So really, my goal for this whole class was to get them singing, keep them singing, to keep them wanting to come back. And I think I've done that so far. I think that there are definitely things that I would do differently in the future and will continue to do different in the future. And I'll briefly touch on that in a little bit. But I think overall, I've met my goal. So far, the kids are loving it, for the most part, or at least most days, they're making music, they're being experiencing all different types of music. And be honest, I'm having a blast as well. So what would I change? First of all, I would start the year with a little bit more of a specific plan.
I when I started this year, I basically started with two pieces of music. And I said I want to do this. And then I want to see what happens next, I wish that I would have had a little bit more of a plan with how I was going to tie everything together, which is something that I can see both sides. But I want to start next year if we end up doing quorum scheduled, because frankly, we don't know how that schedule is gonna look back next year. yet at least. But if I end up doing choir next year, I would love to take it one step farther in the planning side of it, to make sure that I can see where all the things connect throughout, you know a little bit sooner, because now we're starting to see how we can weave everything together. But it definitely wasn't there at the beginning.
Also, I would do a better job at getting students opinions on what we what we're singing. Thankfully, I've had, I've done a little bit of that so far, once I kind of realized that was missing. But when I started the beginning of the year, the music that I really thought they'd enjoy, they really weren't a fan of, but also vice versa. So I think it's a good for us to go in with a plan. But I also think when it you know, if I were to do this again, in the future, I want to build in more opportunities for them to give feedback and to learn how to respectfully give feedback, I'm gonna leave that there. Leave that at that.
And then another thing that I really just want to change is I want to get even more comfortable using the piano. I don't use the piano in my other classes. I use a lot of singing and a lot of you know, unaccompanied or self accompanied or having the students accompany or even where you Lily. But quite frankly, I don't use the piano often. Part of that is I move around like a crazy person. So being stuck behind a piano just isn't my vibe. But part of that is the fact that I'm just not great pianist. So I went over the summer I started practicing a few things again, and kind of brought out some Bulldog tacos. And that's something I want to continue again this year, over the summer, even if I don't end up teaching choir again, because it's cool to have those skills. Because for so long, I never thought I would have piano skills. If you knew me in college, Oh, lordy. But that, I guess everything all together. I feel really good about the music education that's been going on in this choir classroom. I firmly believe that giving students the opportunity to do choir is great in sixth grade, especially since the vast majority of them
also have some other type of music. So it might be band. It might be the some of them still have general music as well.
I liked that we're giving them more more choice and more agency. We're talking we've been doing a lot of talking about how can we get students more opportunities and more abilities to choose in their education? I think this was a great one.
Overall, I think the process has gone really well. I love that my administration has been on board with protecting the scheduling of that to make sure that the students that are in that class are there because they want to be and not because that what's worse. That's what we're
So that schedule, which has been great, I have some work to do as an educator, I have some work to do, of, you know, figuring out how I can scaffold everything back and a little bit closer. So that it's not a complete shift if they end up going from, from Michael from a general music classroom into choir. But quite frankly, I've been having a blast, I leave that school because that's my last class that I teach, before I move into my other school.
The vast majority of times when I leave the choir classroom, my heart is so full, because
it's just a different type of music making, and also a different type of energy. Because when you have 56th graders that have chosen to sing in front of you,
together,
and they let you be this crazy guy at the front, who's flapping his arms around and making all kinds of weird sounds and faces. And it's just really good model of what
a classroom should be, in my opinion, joyful, and focused on what matters. I'm not focused on keeping the kids quiet and keeping the kids you know, in their boxes, we're focusing on making music, and doing so in a way that allows all of us to move towards that goal. So I really hope this isn't the end of me teaching choir. Honestly, I'm going to advocate to keep it, it all comes down to what the schedule looks like next year, how that'll all work.
Because as much as I love choir, I firmly believe that all students deserve to get music, even if they don't want to do choir. So I want to make sure that we keep the general music side of things as well.
So we'll see, we'll see what happens. We'll see how the students continue to surprise me and make me grow and make me figure new stuff out. And I hope I can take you on that journey with me. So if you teach choir, or if you are looking to teach choir, I would love to continue this conversation. Send me an Instagram message at that music teacher. And we're going to be doing a lot of a lot of more discussion discussions on acquire over the next, you know, whoever knows how long.
So I hope you'll join me on the journey. If you enjoyed this episode, please go ahead and leave a review. Wherever you are listening. Those reviews really help us understand what episodes are resonating most with you. And also it really helps because sometimes it feels like I'm just here in my basement studio screaming into the void. So it's nice to know that somebody's out there listening and finding some value in the podcast as well. If we haven't already had you join us inside that music teacher community, I would love to invite you to join us. It is our monthly membership where we have a community of elementary music educators as well as a growing library of content specific self paced professional development. You can check out the link to join in the show notes wherever you're listening, and above everything else if no one has told you lately, thank you so much for making a difference in the lives of the students that you teach.
