This brings us to the plight of Ms. Mitchell, as documented on choralnet this September:
"This is my 3rd year teaching at a middle school in Indianapolis and
I'm facing a new challenge that I'm just 'stuck' on. Student's are
'shutting down'- rather than rising to the challenge.
In my 8th grade choir I have 56 students, 42 are girls. The girls
work very hard for me, but the boys become a distraction. The students
have the ability to sing SAB/3-part music, getting them to understand
section work is difficult, as well as getting them to even get along.
Talking is our biggest issue. When I work in sections its great, but
then another section will just start talking, and now students are
begining to show their frustration that the choir is not advancing as
quickly. The class period is an hour 1/2, which does not help. I'm
looking for any kind of inspirational ideas to keep students motivated,
and excited to sing because many of them are 'shutting down'. If you
have any activities, videos, group work suggestions! anything helps.
Please & Thanks in Advance!"
The responses to this post were all very positive and intelligent. One poster mentioned showing inspirational videos on YouTube of choirs all over the world. A few people advocated "active listening" to varying degrees for sections that weren't rehearsing, such as asking the non-vocal section questions about how the vocal section was singing. My response included a few different ideas, presented here:
"Hi Shelley,
It sounds for sure like you're in a difficult situation. Junior
high boys are definitely the scariest demographic for me to work with. I
have a few recommendations, some of which you may find helpful:
- Working in sections can be dangerous, as it takes away focus from
other sections of the choir. If you're addressing an issue in a
section, try to productively include other parts of the choir in your
discussion - this could include something like "Sopranos, we're not
blending well in mm. 14. Men, what do you think about their vowel there?
What could we change?" or "Men, we're going to sing from mm 4 to mm 30
for the women. Women, tell us what you think at the end". This helps
involve all sections in sectional work, and adds peer pressure - the
students care much more how they sound for each other (especially trying
to impress the other gender) than they care how they sound for you.
- Minimize your own talking. Some of my best "focused" rehearsals
were ones where I walked in, didn't say a word, and starting doing
warm-ups using only singing and gesture. I would find a round that would
work for a warm-up, and see if you can teach the round by rote,
pointing at yourself and at them, cutting them off with your hands and
singing the next part, putting it together by pointing at sections, etc.
See how far you can get in a rehearsal without saying a word. This is a
little extreme, but worth a shot. On a more moderate level, minimize
your talking between takes to a maximum of ten seconds, and a maximum of
asking for two changes at a time.
- An hour and a half is a very long rehearsal period - I think that
is the absolute maximum that anyone of any age can be productive in a
rehearsal environment. I would have a look at this website: http://secondaryfarm.blogspot.ca/2014/03/teaching-with-golden-ratio.html
The basic idea here is using segments of rehearsal time of
increasing length (i.e. 1 min, 2 min, 3 min, 5 min, 8 min...) to ratchet
up their attention and focus, and using different segments for
different purposes: reviewing what they've done before (retention),
rewarding their patience by singing things they enjoy the most (reward),
and working on new, difficult material. Even if you don't take this
route, tightening up your rehearsal plans and alternating pieces more
quickly is bound to alleviate some of their frustrations.
Best of luck! Keep fighting the good fight.
AJ"
Hopefully we get a response from Shelley to see if any of these ideas worked for her!
