Inside my classroom.... Fall 2019
I looked at my last post and realized it was on the first day of school. Here we are in December and I feel like I blinked and it was Thursday before Winter Break and everything was chaos.
We’ve done some pretty special things this fall and I want a chance to share a couple of the more unique events. With that in mind, the highlight reel includes….
20 songs learned by 4 ensembles. Languages studied: Tahitian, English, French, Latin and Hebrew.
Fall Performances :
Art Crawl and Festival with Concert and Chamber
1st Annual Urban Youth Choral Festival with Dr. André Thomas at ACDA-MN
December Winter Concert with all four choirs
Choral Exchange with Bella Voce and Sabathani Vintage Voices
Caroling at HiWay Credit Union (3rd year in a row!) with Chamber Choir
Caroling to teachers right before the break (3/4 choirs)
Our FABULOUS student teacher, Paulo Gladney, who is possibly the kindest and more positive person I have met in my entire life.
Learning a series of Tahitian pieces I learned this summer with Dr. Howard at UST and adding “Apa Rima”, Tahitian hand dancing.
SURVIVED DECEMBER AS A MUSICIAN. I feel like that deserves a badge, tbh.
Critically reflected on my values as an educator and the kind of repertoire, narratives and work I do with students.
As we wrap up this fall, I want to share some of the cool things we did in my classroom…
Positive Classroom Culture
choir posters
If there’s one thing I love in life, it’s touchy feely choir conversations. There’s something about sitting in a circle with kids and dialoguing that is energizing and empowering. We started the year by learning some Justice Choir Songbook music and creating a motto that would represent and reflect our choir.
Our end goal is to create a large poster that is hung up all year so that students can walk in and immediately see their work on a wall and feel welcome. The posters, of course, are all over the spectrum in terms of effort….
Chamber Choir making their poster.
Passion Words
I follow @whathappensinchoir on Instagram and she is a source of creative lesson plans and great ideas for materials to use with students. She’s shared her “Passion Words” project for the past two years. The gist: students brainstorm a word or short phrase that will motivate them for the entire year. We spoke about the power of repetition and how things we tell ourselves over and over become true.
This was a fun way of starting off the week! I haven’t done much with them, but my goal is to come back to them after the new semester and see how we’ve accomplished our word or … something. More to come.
(Personal favorite: “Pencil”. The band director and I got a good laugh out of that one.)
Community Outreach
celebrate you, celebrate me art crawl
Mississippi Creative Arts is an elementary school in our district that holds a community art and music festival every fall for their students and families. We were invited to come sing and it was a wonderful opportunity for Paulo, our student teacher, to teach and prepare Concert Choir and Chamber Choir for a performance. We had such a wonderful time! Concert Choir, a new ensemble this year, had their debut performance and rocked it. The two groups of students joined forces for “This Is Me” and then we all had a chance to walk around, enjoy delicious food and sing some Karaoke.
I’m working hard to make sure the students in Concert Choir don’t feel like they failed and “ended up” in Concert vs Chamber Choir. I have some spectacular seniors who have made it such a welcoming environment and it hasn’t even been a concern.
Vintage Voices + Bella Voce
I love when students get a chance to make connections with members of a broader community. Rob Graham, the Program Manager for Learning and Engagement at VocalEssence and a wonderful colleague, directs the “Sabathani Vintage Voices”, a community choir of older adults. On December 17th, he brought his singers over to Harding where we had a chance to gather and learn some music. Bella Voce had a chance to mix in among the older singers and we taught them a song we love (Liberty and Justice for All from the Justice Choir Songbook) and then had a chance to hear them sing. We ended the morning with cookies and conversation and the adults seemed thrilled to have a chance to connect with young people.
Click here to hear “Love Has Broken Down The Wall” from our morning together.
Urban Youth Choral Festival at ACDA-MN
I’ve heard of Dr. André Thomas for years and always admired the way that Dr. Armstrong would speak about him and his skills as an educator. I was OVER THE MOON when my friend and colleague G. Phillip Schoultz invited me to bring a group of students to the 1st Annual Urban Youth Choral Festival through VocalEssence and ACDA-MN under the direction of Dr. Thomas.
I was able to select a small group of students to attend the festival and we had such a wonderful time. Dr. Thomas is hilarious and engaging and connected with individual students in a way I’d never seen a clinician do. At one point in the first rehearsal, he pointed to one of my students and said “young man, what’s your name?” I slunk in my seat wondering if my student had been on his phone and had been caught. Instead, Dr. Thomas said “Look at this young man - he is sitting from the waist up. Can we all follow his example?” I practically jumped out of my chair shouting “THAT’S MY STUDENT!!!!!” and was so happy to see that student sitting tall and glowing the rest of rehearsal. Students L O V E D working with him, they told me how funny he was and how good of a singer he was. At the end of the day, it was very special to see a choir of urban youth students standing in front of my ACDA colleagues at the Midwinter Clinic. I’m lucky that I get to work at Harding and have such wonderful, kind, talented students and I was bursting with pride to have a group of them up on stage representing us.
Harding students with Dr. André Thomas!!!
What’s next?
We’re gearing up for our two Midwinter Collaboration Concerts. Concert Choir and Chamber Choir are part of an MPR Class Notes Residency with Border CrosSing, a professional choir that I work for! Students have expressed an interest in sharing their identities so I’ve created a repertoire selection project for students to research and suggest music for us to perform. They’ll be helping me program the concert and one of the goal is to write original music as one of the pieces. I am way outside my comfort zone here….AND will be hosting 2 St. Olaf interns for a month long practicum, so we’ll see how this goes. I’m excited (and nervous.)
Helios Chorum, Bella Voce and the Harding Orchestra are partnering with Minneapolis South High School’s Treble Choir and Orchestra for a massive performance on February 27th WHICH WILL BE ON LOCAL NEWS. I applied and won a grant from HiWay Federal Credit Union to cover the buses and a meal for every student and we’re excited to offer this opportunity for all students and family members for free!! Laurie Meyers (South Choir) and Sophia Butler (South Orchestra) met with Jennifer Greupner (Harding Band/Orch) and I this summer, and we spoke about wanting students to have a chance to make a connection with a peer from across the river. We brainstormed ways to engage students and came up with a pen pal system. Every student was assigned a pen pal and we’re exchanging a couple of hand written letters before we meet each other the day of the concert. We started them last week and it resulted in some hilarious student comments:
“We have to write these BY HAND?”
“Wait, my pen pal is a girl? I have to talk to a girl?!?!”
“Do I have to put their name on the paper?”
“Can I ask if they’re single?” (“No.”)
2 DAYS UNTIL BREAK!
