February 14, 2011

The Trust Factor – An Imperative Part of a Successful Choral Program

by Justin Wisness, R&S Chair for Multi-Cultural Music

Building trust between the teacher and students is one of the biggest factors in running a successful choral program at the secondary level. You can possess oodles of knowledge about choral music and have every trick and tool in the bag known to mankind and not be as successful as you could be if the students trusted you and each other.

Being accepting to all students who come to our program is a challenge, but by building trust, you can be successful. I am in no way an expert in this field, but I can see the importance and make a conscious effort to work on it. In order for trust to occur, you must create a safe environment for your students to emote, make mistakes, sing solos, share opinions, be artists, and lead each other.

How do you cultivate a safe environment where there is trust? One thing I learned from my high school teacher and mentor Pat Michel is to make a connection with every student, everyday, by greeting them at the door with a handshake. You can also get a sense of the emotion pulse of the group as they’re coming in. There are days when I change my warm-up plan to something more energetic and fun and other days where I change the plan to something more calming and focused. I’ve heard many of my students complain about teachers who are unapproachable. Greeting students immediately breaks down the barrier that might exist and makes you more approachable.

Is there a time in the year where you have a retreat and/or a tour? Using class time for non-singing related activities can be stressful for some with rigorous performance schedules. Help alleviate some of this by having a retreat and going on tours.

Building trust at the choir retreat
During our retreats for example, 80-90% of the time is spent on non-singing activities. This year we had a blindfold obstacle course where students in each section of the choir were led by their peers. Students were not allowed to talk. They were led up and over tables, around chairs, through lines taped on the floor, and through a wall of rope. It was so amazing how much they had to trust each other without the ability to see or communicate verbally.

We also do our section goal-setting and section motto for the year. The students write these on butcher paper, share out the goals, and then post them in the choir room. We also play some games. We usually play “Shipwrecked” which you can find the rules online. Any game works, but something preferably everyone can play at the same time and just be themselves.

We usually finish our retreat with something called the “Web of Affirmation” which I learned from Rich Nace. You can e-mail me or call me if you want to know more about this. There are lots of team-building activities that you can find and try that work beautifully.

Building trust when on tour
As far as the tour aspect, we always plan activities that are all-inclusive and group related. For example, last year we played games from the television show “Minute to Win-It.” You can find a list of the games on the NBC website. I give this responsibility of planning to the choir board. We split up the teams by section and each team had a section color (alto-red, sopranos-pink, tenors-orange, basses-black). We altered the games a bit to make them more team-like. It was pretty incredible to watch sections come together and pull for each other.

We always finish our tours with a sharing night. It’s difficult to put into words the power of this night. It’s empowering to the students and an inspiration to all.  With meals on choir tour, we have at least one group dinner on tour where everyone is sitting together. I always enjoyed WWU’s choir tours because at our last dinner, we had “Tour Awards.” Every student would get an award for something they did on tour. It was pretty funny and a good way to reminisce on highlighted moments. Of course, you’d have to be very careful at the high school level to make sure awards were appropriate. I haven’t tried it at the high school level!

It seems like every year, my students ask if we can have tour earlier. My students come together the most during and after choir tour. Retreats and tours are essential in building trust and growing together.

Building trust through musicianship training
Building trust through musicianship is another important factor. I have struggled in the past with this because students would blame each other for mistakes or others not knowing their music. And the students were blaming others because they cared about the group.

That’s when I immediately looked at my teaching. Are you setting your students up for success by adequately preparing them? For example, I might say, we are going to have a quartet test on this song in a week, go learn it! If your choirs are anything like mine, you have some very good readers that might have piano skills, and then you have some who aren’t as good and have no piano skills. Is there a way for that student to practice and learn parts? Is it their fault that they didn’t learn the part if they don’t have the knowledge or resources to figure it out? It’s a one way ticket on the blame train if you don’t provide these resources.

Building sight-singing skills is a huge part of the success of the choir and building trust. In addition to that, do we take time to teach our students the life skills of how to communicate appropriately to each other? Defining roles in the choir is very important. If you have section leaders, then make sure your choir understands that the section leader is there to lead at the appropriate time. Then teach your section leaders how to lead and make sure there are opportunities for them to lead. Relinquishing this responsibility is very difficult. Sometimes when a student gets up in front of their peers, and they struggle. That is where we can make a big impact in teaching them how to lead effectively.

What is the environment like in your classroom? This is a determining factor in building trust. First, learning does not occur in a chaotic environment. Secondly, lack of focus from the few brings everybody down. Teach a lesson on investing. If you invest a little bit of time (rehearsal time) everyday, the compound interest will help the choir grow exponentially.

Provide life perspective on how precious time is and your students will understand. Share anecdotal stories about your choir days. Trust me, students can relate! The key is that YOU hold them accountable for having self-discipline. It is easy for them to forget if you don’t constantly remind them of the importance of self-discipline. Pat Michel always told us that we can’t ride on the coattails of the Rogers High School tradition. Keeping that perspective and understanding of the privilege to be in choir is something that our students understand. They are the living tradition. It keeps the driving force to be great within us.

Your teaching style/empowering students
Teaching style can determine the path to your destination. There are many ways to get what you want out of a choir. I can bestow all of my score study onto to a choir and tell them what to do. Or I can try and make the journey a little more organic.

Think of ways to empower your students in the musical decision making process. Rather than tell them what to do, find ways for them to create in your classroom. Asking students to read text aloud and listening to text stress can lead to appropriate phrasing. Encourage students to make musical decisions and be able to articulate their thoughts and reasons for those decisions.

Teach students to conduct and have individuals conduct a phrase or passage of music in front of the choir. Make sure the choir follows! This might even benefit you and your conducting. Assign students to lead warm-ups.

Have students write in a journal to help develop characterization of each piece you sing. Have them make personal connections to the music through their own life experiences.

Use the various individual characteristics of your choir members to help to teach the whole. For example, you might be singing a Spiritual and you want a rich, dark tone color. Ask a student who you know has a rich, dark tone color to sing for the class as an example of appropriate tone color. So often we ask our students as a whole to sing brighter or darker. This can be detrimental in technique of individual students. The student who already has a darker tone placement who tries to darken more ends up swallowing the sound, which results in poor technique. Individualized instruction is an educational catch phrase that is so important in the choral classroom.

If the environment is set up to be safe and you have some ground rules for when individuals sing, you can do this. Make sure this is set in place before you ever have individuals sing or do solos.

Empowering students to help make musical decisions will make the music making process much more authentic. Building trust within choirs is an essential part of the art of teaching. When achieved, the musical journey is much more enjoyable for all. We can all teach notes and arrive at a destination that we call music, but building trust within our choirs will make the journey more meaningful for you and your students.

March, 2010

High School Choir Tour
Places, spaces, and a justification!

by Justin Wisness,
R & S Chair for Multi-Cultural Music

Thinking back to my first high school choir tour, the first thing that comes to mind is seeing a ray of light magically beaming into the church during our performance of "There is No Rose of Such Virtue," by Robert H. Young. Probably because I was insecure, I remember glancing across the choir after the song to see if there were any other tears other than mine. The rest of the choir was having the same sentiment. Thank goodness!

All of the hard work, dedication, living the tradition of a great choir program, and the musicality and life lessons Mr. Michel had taught us all came together at this little church in Kalispell, MT. It was my junior year at Rogers High School in Puyallup and my first choir tour trip. Before the trip, I remember being excited, but also remember thinking, "Why would we go to Kalispell, MT? Let's go to Disneyland."

It didn't take long to realize why. At some point in our lives as choristers and/or choir directors we've had these experiences. For me, tours from high school were enriching, meaningful experiences that I'll never forget and that inspired me to continue in music. It is now my goal to provide the same experiences for my students.

Let me paint a picture of my experience with tours. I'm in my seventh year of teaching and have never done a "big" tour with my own choirs. We've never gone on a plane or toured for more than four days. My tours have always been planned by me and my choir board, and have always been in Washington, Oregon, and Idaho.

Although I've only had seven years of touring experience as a director, I feel like I've endured many more years. In my first year of teaching and my first tour, I had to send home four of my thirteen boys because of a choice they made. It's a funny story in hindsight, but at the time, it was the most traumatic thing that could've happened. I had to send almost 40% of my guys home and we were singing for my alma mater the next day. 

In college I traveled with the choir to Eastern Europe. I've also traveled with the Washington Ambassadors of Music twice to Europe.

Why should you tour? I've talked to colleagues who don't tour and have valid reasons for not doing it. Some tour, but only every other year. I truly believe that you should tour every year. The extent of tour doesn't need to be grand. In fact, I challenge you to weigh the reasons for doing the things you do on tours and choosing the places you choose. It's not going to be the city you go to, it's going to be the spaces you sing in, the enriching activities you choose to do, and the people you're with.

Last year we toured from Puyallup to Portland. The three essential things to plan on a tour are performances in great spaces, performance exchanges, and workshops.

Some of the great spaces we sang in are the Rotunda in our state capital, Holy Redeemer Church in Vancouver, St. Mary's Cathedral and The Grotto in Portland. We also had a workshop with Dr. Stephen Coker at Portland State, who recently departed. On the three day tour, we squeezed in friendly exchanges with Heritage and Rex Putnam High Schools. The final night was the traditional sharing night where the choir basically has a lock down in a room we all could fit in for the night. You never have any issues with students trying to sneak out when you've got them all in the same room!

I don't know what kind of acoustic you have in your auditorium or cafetorium, but singing in a live acoustic is an experience that students will never forget. Instead of planning lighter music in the spring, I try and plan music that is great for cathedrals or live spaces. The Bruckner Os Justi and Rachmaninoff Bogoroditse Devo became favorites for the students. My students would not have been asking to sing Bruckner and Rachmaninoff in our performing arts center over and over, but in the live acoustic, it came alive! The students didn't get tired of it either.

On a recent trip to Western Washington University for the WWU High School Invitational, we stopped at St. Mark's Cathedral in Seattle for an informal performance. They were very accommodating and we were able to sing for about a half an hour. The music came alive and the students were so excited. I remember looking at some of my newer students who had never sung in a space like St. Mark's and seeing smiles from ear to ear. This is inspiration and motivation for both you and the students! It helps the students develop an appreciation for great choral music.

If you're not touring now, please consider it. Although it's more work for you, do it for the students. If you're already touring, remember why you're touring. Meaningful and enriching experiences will create lasting memories for you and your students.

March 2, 2009

Tapping into Technology
By Justin Wisness, Washington State Multicultural R&S Chair

Utilizing the technology that is literally at the finger tips of our students is seemingly an easy task, but to use it effectively is the challenge. 

As many of our students are practicing the “art” of texting whenever possible, and internet becoming accessible whenever we’d like to get it, we need to find ways to connect to our students through this technology. 

I’ve seen some very creative web pages created by choir programs that include syllabi, practice parts, links to web pages including ones to music theory web sites, video clips of performances, blogs, and much more.  I know of choir programs that have used Facebook as a way to create discussion about characterization of pieces that they are singing.  Google also has some discussion boards, document sharing tools, and blogs that are user friendly.  Last year I tried connecting with my students after a workshop we had with a guest conductor through a blog.  This is something I’d like to do more of. 

I offered a day’s worth of participation points for any student making an intelligent comment on the blog (check it out at www.squalicumchoir.blogspot.com).  Of course there is the big one, the “University of YouTube.”  Don’t we all love this one?  It’s amazing to me that you can find so much repertoire on Youtube and often times, your students find it before you. 

Here are some ways to effectively use technology:

6b. Use the digital recorder to test during class.  Instead of pulling kids out of the
ensemble and testing in groups, put the digital recorder in front of a few students. Listen later as a way to test or check progress.

June 11, 2008

Recruiting and engaging singers with a multi-cultural hook
by Justin Wisness, R&S Chair, Multi-cultural music

When I started teaching five years ago at Squalicum High School in Bellingham, I had the challenge of growing a choir program that consisted of 49 students in three choirs, with a grand total of nine male singers. Really it was a perfect job for someone coming out of college who was greener than green with little teaching experience. I made contact with as many good high school choir directors I could think of, tapping resources like former teachers of mine and going to the Washington ACDA Summer Institute and making contacts there. I got many ideas for starting the year out, and making the choir program become a success.

Success in my mind was getting to a point where the students not only enjoyed choral music and grew individually and together, but also to a point where the level of literature and performance would feed my soul musically. That is the only way I will continue in this profession for thirty plus years. Using multicultural music to recruit and engage singers is a fabulous tool in today's education. We must keep our programs as strong as possible to continue to advocate for the arts and elective programs.

When first started, I had many good ideas for recruiting. The first idea may not have been the best one; I was going to pay each male that signed up for choir $10 each. Fortunately for me, the principal said no. The most fiscally practical idea, and in many ways educationally practical idea, was to pick music that was catchy and easy to sing.

Multicultural music is a great choice in this situation. In many cases, the performance practice of multicultural music lends itself to rote teaching. Not many of my students at that time were musicians yet because they had not been introduced to reading music. So I wanted them to learn to sing before they learned to read. This is where a multicultural selection came into play.

The first day of class I got the students singing immediately, first vocalizes, and then I taught them Mungu Ni Pendo by rote. I had them from day one! To them, they sounded "good," and it created a buzz on the first day. Getting them to be successful made them believe in me, and helped me gain trust.

Once I had that trust, I could get them to believe that sight singing was essential in how we learn music. We added a spiritual to the program; Poor Man Lazrus by Jester Hairston, Dirait-on by Morten Lauridsen, and La la la je ne lose dire by Pierre Certon. We enjoy listening to the recording with the choirs to see how far we've come!

Now that the program is somewhat established, I still use multicultural music as a way to keep my vocal musicians engaged.  I often choose pieces that are catchy and good closers to the choir’s portion of a program. Sometimes they are very challenging and other times they are quick learns.  Either way, it is a great way to end rehearsal with a piece that will get “stuck” in the student’s heads all day. This creates a buzz about choir which helps recruit, and it keeps them coming back excited to sing. 

I've compiled a list of pieces that I've used that have been essential in over tripling the size of the choir program at Squalicum. Many are pieces you might've done before, but there could be a few that you haven't heard or performed. There are various levels of difficulty, but I think all of them are doable at the high school level. If you'd like more specific information about any of the songs, please don't hesitate to contact me.

Variable Voicing

Mungu Ni Pendo – Edward G. Robinson, arr. Robert Gower

Hashivenu - Hebrew - arr. Doreen Rao

Shalom Chaverim – arr. Patrick Liebergen

SA

Ae Fond Kiss - Lee Kesselman

Arirang – Sonja Poorman & Jonathan Lim

Dodi Li – Nira Chen, arr. Doreen Rao

Three Italian Songs of the Sea – arr. Henry Leck

Yo le canto todo el dia - David Brunner

SSA

Beau Soir - Claude Debussy, arr. Linda Spevacek

Dry Your Tears, Afrika – John Williams

Fa Una Canzona – Orazio Vecchi, arr. Russell Robinson

Hotaru Koi - Ro Ogura

Les Berceux – Gabriel Faure, arr. Alan Raines

Nani, raza mea de soare – Gabriel Dumitrescu

Oye - Jim Papoulis

Reuben, Reuben – arr. Vijay Singh

South African Suite – arr. Henry Leck

Vus Vet Zayn – arr. Henry Leck

SSAA

Ah! si mon moine voulait danser - Donald Patriquin

Go Where I Send Thee – Paul Caldwell & Sean Ivory

Niska Banja - arr. Nick Page

Wana Baraka - Shawn Kirchner

SAB

El Mambi – Romero-Lavilla, arr. Carlos Abril

Jamaican Market Place – Larry Farrow

SATB

An Irish Love Duet - arr. Bradley Nelson

Bogoroditse Devo - Rachmaninoff

Bonse Aba - Andrew Fisher

Chindia – Alexandru Pascanu

Cloudburst – Eric Whitacre

Daemon Irrepit Callidus -Gyorgy Orban

Der Gang Zum Liebchen - Brahms

Dirait on - Morten Lauridsen

Domaredansen – arr. Drew Collins

Dravidian Dithyramb – Victor Paranjoti

Dorven Dalai - Yongrub

Duerme Negrito – Emile Sole

El Grito – Carmen Cavallaro

Esto Les Digo – Kinley Lange

Five Hebrew Love Songs - Eric Whitacre

Freedom is in Your Hand – arr. Anders Nyberg

Gate Gate – Brian Tate

Hiney Ma Tov - Iris Levine

Horizons – Peter Louis von Dijk

I’m a Rollin’ – arr. Paul Rardin

Jabula Jesu - Stephen Hatfield

John the Revelator - Sean Ivory & Paul Caldwell

Kpanlongo - Derek Bermel

La Lluvia – Stephen Hatfield

Loch Lomond - arr. Jonathan Quick

Muie Rendera - C.A. Pinto Fonseca

My God is So High – arr. Moses Hogan

Natufurahi Siku Ya Leo – Boniface Mganga

O Sifuni Mungu – arr. Roger Emerson

Praise His Holy Name – Keith Hampton

Rain, Rain, Beautiful Rain - Joseph Shabalala, arr. Steve Everett

Salmo 150 – Ernani Aguiar

Ta Tikee Tei -Sid Robinovich

Tango to Evora -arr. Jon Washburn

Tres Cantos Nativos - arr. Marcos Leite

Two Japanese Proverbs – Gary Kent Walth

Son de Camaguey - Stephen Hatfield

Sigalagala – S.A. Otieno

TTBB

Tshosholoza - arr. Jeffrey Ames

With a Swag All on My Shoulder – arr. Vijay Singh

SATB + SSA

Hope For Resolution – Paul Caldwell & Sean Ivory