Engaging in the Music Classroom Part One: Making Connections with Your Students

With each passing year, a new crop of students walk through the doors of schools across the country, each one coming with their own unique characteristics, their own challenges, and their own hopes and dreams. Pile fifty of them into a room together, give them musical noise makers, and we teach them to make music together. It’s arguably one of the most challenging but one of the most rewarding careers that exists.

As performance-based instructors, our yearly concerts reflect our teaching capabilities, just as tests and other assessments reflect classroom/academic teachers. So, it’s understandable to have a need to get down to business, begin sight-reading exercises, fill in the achievement gaps, drill those scales, or start studying that concert repertoire. Particularly now in the aftermath of COVID-19, teachers are scrambling to make up for lost instructional time.

But my question to you is: “Why rush?” Remember: our ensemble students walk a fine line between being required and wanting to be there . Have you ever wondered what you would do if your ensemble wasn’t required? Do your students have an absolute love for their instrument that they would crawl to the ends of the earth to get to their lesson with you? Do they go out of their way to wave at you in the hallway or come back years later to visit you and say hello? Spending invaluable time getting to know your kids and developing trusting relationships with them helps strengthen their love of music and boosts their confidence.

I spend a great deal of time learning about my students, from their siblings I’ve had in the past, to the sports or extracurricular activities they love and enjoy. As a child, I can vividly recall those teachers who enthusiastically greeted me, who asked me how I was doing, and who complimented me on my haircut. Maybe they dropped a joke here and there and made me giggle or veered from the curriculum every now and then and allowed for something different to happen. I adored those teachers and their classes and wanted to do anything and everything to get better (yes, even in my non-music classes).

Ask yourself about the connections you have with your students. Are they strong and genuine? Great teachers make strides to learn and develop their craft, and that goes for developing a trusting rapport with students. If there’s one thing I’ve learned in teaching, it’s that you should never stop learning how to be better.

How to Build Basic Connections

Learn your students’ names, and not just the one listed on the generic spreadsheet you have, but the one they love and want to be called. If it’s a nickname, make sure you get their permission to call them that.

What gender pronoun do your students use? Awareness of this issue has become more widespread in recent years; it is extremely important to keep this in mind. Looking back, I assumed gender pronouns many times based on what was printed in the gender column of my roster (male/female) and the name that the child was assigned. But have you noticed the recent trend of non gender-specific names? We need to respect students and their choices. With older students, take the time to ask each student their preferred pronouns. You could take the time to ask each child which pronouns they like, and that might be easier with older students. For the younger ones, you could defer to non-gender specific pronouns. My favorites are “My friend,” “Musician,” or the tried-and-true method of just calling them by their first name.

When it comes to addressing full groups, the antiquated boys and girls or ladies and gentlemen simply don’t fly anymore. We can’t assume that all students identify with those genders. I recommend you go for the non-gender specific plural pronouns: “Okay, musicians, let’s go to rest position.” “Violas, great job on the rhythm in measures 19-25.” “My friends, let’s discuss concert attire for tomorrow.” Speaking of concert attire, if your music program has a department handbook, eliminate/rewrite anything about concert dress for boys/girls. Instead, give students several options to choose from, and allow students to dress in a way that makes them comfortable but still feel like a member of the group. If you teach choir, allow students to sing in sections according to their voice type and not their gender.

Fostering Student-Centered Classrooms

Is your classroom teacher-centered or student-centered? Student-centered classrooms are loud, collaborative, and engaging to watch and be a part of. The kids have the time of their lives and are eager to learn. Sure, you have to let go of the rope a little bit and allow for some unstructured chaos, but it’s worth it. Don’t get me wrong, there’s still a strong line between teacher and student, and you have to set that divide yourself. Classroom management still exists, but it looks very different from when I went to school in the 90s.

Making Connections Through Storytelling

Once you’ve established basic connections and committed to a student-centered classroom, try this to take things a step further: Stop rehearsal when something interesting happens and say to the kids, “Oh, that reminds me of a story. Go to rest position.” Sit down on your chair and have them lean into you like you’re at a campfire. I also often give my kids time to tell a funny (appropriate) joke, and then I usually end up telling one of my “corny” dad jokes. Occasional moments like these build a community of learners and an environment that is happy, healthy, and fun.

It’s even better when you can relate one of your stories to what you’re doing. I told a funny story about how I ignored the key signature during an opera I was playing viola in. I played an E-natural instead of an E-flat. The mezzo-soprano on the stage took my E-natural and started her aria (in E Major). When the rest of the orchestra came in (in the key of E-flat major), everyone sounded very out of tune. The moral was that after this incident, I always looked at and annotated my key signature. When I told this story to one of my middle school ensembles, one of my bass players raised his hand and said, “Mr. Granata always finds a way to make his stories educational.”

With Kindest Regards,

Anthony Granata

Read Part 2: Running Rehearsals in a Student-Centered Classroom