Choir as a Holistic Education: Providing Identity, Meaning, and Purpose

Why sign-up for chorus? This is a question that I found myself pondering earlier this year as I prepared my annual presentation for our middle school’s incoming sixth graders. Ask one of the students, and they would probably tell you they like to sing, they want to try something new, their friends are doing it, etc. Ask another music teacher, and they would probably talk to you about the beauty of music, about the meaningful musical moments they’ve experienced in their own lives.

As different as those answers are, they all speak to finding personal meaning in music. This is holistic education at its finest: finding “identity, meaning, and purpose” as a unique individual through connections to the community, the natural world, and humanitarian values such as compassion and kindness.

It is this consideration of our students as unique individuals that has come to form the center of my teaching philosophy over the last several years. I don’t mean that my curriculum is entirely student-determined or that I have abandoned traditional teaching and assessment methods. Rather, that within the context of a traditional music classroom, my decisions have come to be informed by the developing identities of my young students, and the content of my curriculum serves as the means to an end, rather than the end itself. As middle school music educator Bridget Sweet says in her incredible book Growing Musicians , “For me, music largely became a vehicle for unapologetic self-discovery and affirmation.”

Though I may dream about teaching at a holistic school that doesn’t assign grades or confine learning in separate content areas, I work in a typical public school district that still sends home report cards, deals with regular budget crises, teaches a diverse student population, and all of the rest. So, I’m making five small adjustments to my choral curriculum, as follows:

1. Performance Evaluations

Periodic voice checks are just that—checks, rather than graded assessments, and feedback is both personalized (to focus on individual successes) and centered around process, effort, and confidence—factors that typical middle schoolers can actually control, regardless of whether they’re going through puberty, taking private voice lessons, struggling through a social dilemma, etc.

2. Student Choice

I am a firm believer that students should have a say in the choral repertoire that is studied, performed, and evaluated. That doesn’t mean that you have to hand the reins over to your sixth graders and allow them to put together a concert program of Imagine Dragons and Billie Eilish. Instead, consider soliciting student suggestions for one song on each concert program and then either choosing your favorite or putting them up to the group for a vote. Or, assign an end-of-the-year project that requires students to craft a balanced, developmentally appropriate concert program, using the websites of music retailers as a resource. Commit to choosing one of the suggested songs on a concert the following year. For select group or musical auditions, set audition song criteria and then let students choose what they will sing, rather than assigning everyone the same song. Small measures of choice like this add up over the course of a ten-month school year, helping to make students the leaders of their own learning. And, it’s good practice for high school and community theater auditions in the future.

3. Class Rules

Rules are designed (and more importantly, enforced) to create a safe, predictable space for learning to occur. In my own classroom, I currently have one overarching rule: show respect for yourself, other students, and the teacher. What does that mean in practice? Try the best you can on any given day, support your peers with encouragement and constructive feedback, and don’t talk when the teacher is talking.

4. Meaningful Project-Work

Any project work in chorus should draw on students’ lives and interests in meaningful, introspective ways: the previously mentioned concert program, at-home listening logs, personal soundtracks, researching the folk songs and culture of an ancestor, etc. The possibilities for middle school are endless! That’s one of the reasons I enjoy teaching these students so much.

5. Parent/Teacher Communication

I know that unless I’m proactive about positive communication, I’ll default to only sending emails when there’s a problem to be addressed. So I make a point of sending at least one positive email a week. Something like the following: “Just a quick note to let you know that Lily had a fantastic solo audition today in Advanced Chorus! She’s so much more confident than she was last year. I’m so proud of her growth as a performer.” Increased communication of this type has led directly to a stronger choral program at my school. I have stronger relationships with my students and their families, they know exactly how much I value them, and they see a firm web of support and accountability measures between school and home. A small amount of positive communication goes a long way.

No matter the school environment in which you currently teach, you too can easily make any or all of these simple adjustments. In the end, aren’t we all looking for a way to help students find their own personal meaning in music?