Reflections on my First Choir Season

Choir is an extra curricular in my district at the Elementary age.  Because I was an inherent teacher last year I did not have a school of my own/a choir of my own.  So!!! Now that I am at just one school this year I inherited the fabulous choir program the teacher there before me worked hard to build.  She was moving on to teach choir at the junior high level.  Coming in replacing a seasoned choir director was no pressure, especially with my zero experience in the subject ;) I just dove in and learned as I went, and dare I say it was a pretty good time!  

Here are some reflections from this first year:

1. Music K8 is your friend!!! 

Aside from providing wonderful arranged music with awesome accompaniments, (I am not a piano player at all!) this company makes your life so music easier with ideas and resources to teach and perform the piece.  There are so many things they provide you with such as, instrument parts, movement ideas, prop and set suggestions, scripts, part tracks, and various videos to help.  This is about $100 bucks to subscribe for a year but sooo worth it when you are not exactly sure what you are doing! 

2. Plan Your Rep for the Season Before it Even Starts

I did not get the chance to plan ahead for choir this first year because I didn't know what to expect.  I needed to get to know the students and what I was working with first.  Now that I have that first season over with I am definitely going to use the lovely summer to plan rep for next year.  There were so many evenings staying at school, sifting through music k8 magazines, the silver burdett series, and online, searching for the perfect song for tomorrow.... It's not fun looking for stuff as you go because there are so many factors that play into being prepared and ready for the performance aside from just finding the music.  Have a list of potential songs that you have access to so at least you don't have to worry about that in the heat of the choir season! 

3. Delegate and Student Leadership

Giving students some responsibility can make you happy and your students happy!  I have a section leader or two for each row of students in my choir (about 8 students).  I make them fancy section leader name tags with the name of their row on it.  I hope it makes them feel important because they are in helping the choir run smoothly!  They helped me so much with things like taking attendance for their section, holding other students accountable for their posture (they do this by just giving a tap on the shoulder and we talked about this is just a friendly reminder to fix it), locking my door after the late cut off, manning the computer, and holding the sections box of lunches when going on a field trip.  They helped immensely!  I never even had to touch a attendance sheet! 

4. Warm Ups can be Repeated

I got soooooooo many different choir resource books the summer before school started!  At first I focused on trying different warm ups out and while that was nice to keep it fresh the students got frustrated because there was no familiarity and sometime we would spend so much of our time learning the new warm up that we didn't get to the songs.  

Repeating a warm up routine is okay!  I don't know why I stressed myself out so much trying three new warm ups each time.  Not only did they have to learn it but I needed to too and sometimes that was hard to learn all ahead of time in order to teach the students.  I burnt myself out and the last part of the season we did the same exact routine every time.  

Next year, I plan to strike a balance.  We will keep the same core routine but each week add a new one and slowly cycle out the old.  I think both the students and myself will be very happy with this :) 

5. Learn as Much as you Can from the Masters

Warm ups: 

Method/How to Teach: 

(This book is out of print but if you can find it used it is very much worth it!) 

A Book I Want to Try:  

( I saw this guy present at Ohio's Music Educators Conference and he was fabulous!)