Strategies for Reducing Student Anxiety During In-Class Solo Performances

Performing alone in class commonly occurs in secondary music classrooms across the country. While some students seek out and thrive on performing alone for their peers and teachers, others find the task daunting. Those students are commonly overwhelmed by nervousness regardless of their performance abilities. Reasons for students’ anxiety when playing alone in class may include the fear of negative reactions by their classmates, the terror of making a mistake, or the lack of personal and musical confidence.

As music educators, it is our responsibility to create a safe learning atmosphere where our students feel comfortable playing alone in class. A solo performance in class should function as an educational opportunity for both the performer and the class members who serve as the audience. The soloist can receive both positive feedback and constructive criticism about the performance. At the same time, other class members learn to stay engaged in the rehearsal by using their understanding of pedagogy and the music to provide accurate feedback and suggestions for improvement to the performer.

To create an environment where students feel confident when performing alone, teachers must first build trust in the classroom. A mutual trust between the teacher and all students in the class is imperative to cultivating an environment where students feel safe and comfortable playing alone for each other. Students must believe that everyone in the classroom has their best interest in mind. They must also believe their peers want them to succeed and know the purpose of appropriately delivered feedback is to help them improve.

In my experience with both middle and high school students, the strategies below were successful in creating a safe learning environment where my students could take musical risks. These strategies helped my students feel comfortable when playing alone in class. More importantly, my students learned to support in class so they ensemble could reach its musical potential. Many of these techniques can be used in combination with each other, and I am hopeful these tips will help ease your students’ apprehension about playing alone.

Create a Supportive Culture

The most important component of getting students to alone in class without fear is creating a supportive environment where all students know they can perform individually without experiencing a negative reaction from their peers. To build a positive classroom culture where students feel safe, teachers must establish a clear set of behavior and social expectations. Ensemble members who are not performing should understand how act, listen to, and respond to their peers’ in-class performances. They should know how to provide positive feedback and constructive criticism that the performer can use to improve future performances. Students must also understand that body language and the delivery of their feedback is just as important as their words.

While teachers can authoritatively formulate these expectations, I suggest letting your students create the expectations. If students create the expectations, they will hold each other accountable because they built the ensemble’s social culture. By letting the students be involved the process, you are also teaching them more than music. You are teaching your students how to build a safe and supportive community that will help everyone in the class thrive.

Find the Good in Every Performance

Once behavior and social expectations are set for the audience members in your classroom, focus on making the experience of playing alone in class positive. As a teacher who has listened to thousands of in-class performances during my career, I know how easy it is to only point out the negative aspects of watch you witnessed. To remind myself to stay upbeat, I taped a notecard to my stand that said, “Find the Positive in Every Performance.” While I know this can be very challenging for some performances, it is extremely important. To help you do this, focus on providing more positive feedback than negative (4:1 ratio). Identifying more positive characteristics of the performance than negative will motivate the student to play alone again in class. Only providing one negative comment also informs the student about the aspect of performance that needs the most improvement for their next in-class performance.

Start Playing Alone Early On

For students to become comfortable with playing alone in class, they must play solos in front of their classmates during their first year of instruction. Students need to know that playing in front of their peers is a normal occurrence in music classes. If students do not play alone throughout their first year in a music class, they will panic and become anxious when forced to do this in subsequent years. I spent a considerable amount of time allowing my beginning students to play alone in class. Beginning students want to please their teacher, and I was not above using that to my advantage. Ask for volunteers to play for the class and encourage all students to participate. As playing alone in class becomes popular in your classroom, more and more students will want to participate. To ease the fears of students who are too nervous to play alone, let them perform in pairs until they built up enough confidence to play alone.

Make the Solo Experience Special

I also make solo performances special by saving time at the end of class on a regular basis for mini concerts. What middle school student does not look forward to a “special” event? In addition to increasing my students’ confidence, I find that students practice more when I incorporate mini concerts into my class. To make the mini concerts even more special, invite other teachers, school staff, and administrators to attend. I also use mini concerts when other faculty members randomly stop by my room as an opportunity for students to perform a solo. I routinely ask if anyone wants to show off for our visitor, and I always have multiple students volunteer. It becomes extra special and competitive for my students if their favorite teacher unexpectedly stops by my room. Not only do these mini concerts encourage my students, they help build community between myself and other adults in my school.

Use Students as Performance Models

Modeling serves as one of the most impactful instructional strategies for music teachers. While it is important for teachers to musically model for their students, I find the most impactful demonstrations in my classroom where those performed by students. Instead of personally modeling a passage for the class, I have my students demonstrate for the class. I choose students who can play the passage with the specific characteristics that I want the others to emulate. While I understand it is convenient to pick your best players, make an effort to identify and select students who do not normally play for the class. This will help all students in your ensemble become more comfortable when playing alone. More importantly, it will infuse a sense of community in the ensemble. I find that my students became cheerleaders and would do anything to help their classmates succeed. A vital step for this strategy is telling students that you picked them to model for a good reason. Before having a student demonstrate for the class, make sure the individual student and ensemble members know why you chose that person to demonstrate for the class and what you want the class to emulate in the individual’s performance.

Do Not Use Solos in a Negative Manner

Gone are the days when ensemble directors used fear to motivate students to practice. If in-class solo performances are used in a negative manner to zap off-task student behavior or pick on students who are underperforming, students will naturally panic if selected to play alone. The implementation of solo performances in those cases creates a destructive learning environment where students are afraid to play because they know a negative reaction is coming from their teacher. While all teachers have made mistakes in their careers that they would change, I know many experienced teachers who regret using this teaching strategy early on in their careers. It emphasizes the music more important than the person, and many experienced teachers know that is not the recipe for success for a music program.