Choral Clinician Q&A: Get to Know Anna Wentlent

Educator, music editor, author, clinician, and accompanist Anna Wentlent is hitting the road this summer as part of our Celebration of Song! Summer Choral Reading Sessions. Learn about how she got started in music, how she discovered her love of teaching, her advice for new teachers, and how she motivates students.

How did you get your start in music?

I owe my start to my mom. She probably wouldn't call herself a musician, but she has the most beautiful alto voice and sang all day long: in the car, in the kitchen, etc. Even though I grew up in upstate New York, my mom was from Georgia and her repertoire consisted of southern folk songs, camp songs, and Methodist hymns.

She and my dad were also very frugal, and they refused to pay for cable. So instead of watching television, my siblings and I watched old movie musicals that my grandma had recorded onto VHS tapes and mailed to us. Some of my childhood favorites were On the Town , Take Me Out to the Ball Game , Guys and Dolls , Holiday Inn , The Slipper and the Rose , and of course, The Sound of Music .

What do you remember about your very first lesson?

Even though I sang a lot at home and started learning to play the piano with the help of my mom's old piano method books, I didn't actually take lessons until I was in middle school. By that point, I had taught myself to read music and sight read fairly well, although my technique was awful.

I can't remember who told me that I really should be taking lessons (my school choral director, maybe?), but I ended up rotating through a few teachers in town before settling in with Joan Smith, a dynamic older woman who owned a restored baby grand that originally been played on a river boat. Joan taught me discipline, forced me to practice my scales, introduced me to the classical repertoire, and fashioned me into an incredible sight-reader and accompanist in her own model. We started every lesson by sight-reading a new four-hand piano duet.

When did you know you wanted to teach?

In middle school home economics, one of our projects involved identifying and researching a future career. I did mine on being a music teacher. That's the first time that I remember clearly articulating a career goal other than "performer." As part of the project, I interviewed my own school choral director, Margaret Smith (no relation to Joan). I was in awe of her vocal skill and commanding presence in rehearsal.

Thinking back on it now, I see a beautiful pattern of confident, supportive, and warm (but demanding) women who showed me a model of what it meant to be a practicing adult musician and artist: my mom, my childhood dance teacher, my piano teacher, my middle school/high school choral director, my private voice teacher, my collegiate choral directors at the Crane School of Music, the incredible master teacher with whom I student taught... Basically, I wanted to be one of those women when I grew up.

Do you have any advice for a new teacher, or what is something you wish you knew when you started teaching?

I graduated from college in December and started my first teaching job two weeks later. I was the mid-year replacement for a departing choral director at a small K-12 school in upstate New York. I was overwhelmed by the number of different classes I've been given to teach, exhausted by the long drive through the country and hours spent prepping each night, and truly intimidated by the seniors who were only four years younger than me. What would I say to my younger self? Be patient! Please, be patient with yourself. You don't know everything yet, you're brand new at this, and you are expected to make mistakes. Talk to your principal, watch your colleagues work, read (and then re-read) The First Days of School by Harry Wong, and most of all, ASK FOR HELP WHEN YOU NEED IT! Coming into your own as a teacher is going to take time.

How do you motivate students?

Student engagement and motivation is incredibly important to my work as a middle school choral director and general music teacher. First of all, middle schoolers are consumed by social concerns. They desperately want to belong! So I work hard to create a sense of belonging and community in my classroom. I believe two elements need to be in place for that to happen. First, a supportive environment in which vulnerability, risk-taking, and positive collaboration is rewarded, and judgmental behavior and otherwise stand-offish behavior is addressed head-on. This lays the foundation for deep, emotional work to take place. That leads me to the second element: for true engagement, my kids need to see themselves in the music that I select for study and performing. In general music, that means studying popular music and then tracing back its roots through the mosaic of American immigrants, slaves, and Native Americans who have contributed to the formation of American popular culture over the last four centuries. In the choral rehearsal, that means paying close attention to lyrics. Does the prosody feel comfortable or awkward in the mouth of a twelve-year-old? Is the subject matter relevant and important to their lives, or is it more appropriate to a child or an adult? Will my students feel like their true selves singing these words? These are some of the questions that I ask myself when programming for middle school students.