Why Are My Students in Chorus? Here's What They Had to Say

Earlier this year, I found myself engrossed in a Choral Journal article on the meaning of the middle school choral experience. Written by composer and conductor Dr. Andrea Ramsey, it asked the following question: why do my students join and then come back to chorus, semester after semester? My automatic response was two-fold: they enjoy singing and/or they don’t want to be in whatever classes are offered during the same period as chorus.

Curious to see if I was right, I decided to survey my students with the same prompt that Dr. Ramsey posed in her study: “Choir is…” In the Google Classrooms for my grade-level curricular choruses and my district-wide extracurricular select chorus, I explained to my students that I was offering one extra credit point to anyone who was willing to take the time to complete that sentence starter. Any answer was acceptable.

Many of my students receive Google Classroom alerts on their smartphones, and despite posting the question on a Friday night, answers started appearing within minutes. As of Sunday afternoon, I had received 64 responses. I had vastly underestimated my middle school students. Their answers were personal, honest, insightful, and utterly reflective of the middle school experience. I admit to getting slightly teary-eyed as I read them. Here are just a few sentences (three from each grade level) that I feel are representative of those submitted by most students:

• “Chorus is… a way to meet new people and make friends!” (6 ^th grader)
• “Chorus is… never boring. The songs are always fun to sing!” (6 ^th grader)
• “Chorus is… an amazing time!!!!” (6 ^th grader)
• “Chorus is… a time for singing IN SCHOOL, which is really just a dream come true for me.” (7 ^th grader)
• “Chorus is… the ability to sing inside a large group and just let your voice be free.” (7 ^th grader)
• “Chorus is… a good way to free your mind during the school day.” (7 ^th grader)
• “Chorus is… a fun time where I get a break from some of my other classes.” (8 ^th grader)
• “Chorus is… a place where I feel the most comfortable. I am allowed to express myself through the music I am singing.” (8 ^th grader)
• “Chorus is… a place where different kinds of people can freely express themselves through their voices, as an entire group or as an individual. It helps them connect and relate to each other, and sometimes even helps them get to know themselves better.” (8 ^th grader)

The 64 responses were almost equally split between motivations of expression, enjoyment, and friendship. According to the survey results, many of my students view chorus as an opportunity to relax and relieve some of the stress of the school day by doing something fun (singing) with their friends. As one of the students in Dr. Ramsey’s original results said, “Choir is a time to be free of everything that’s troubling you.”

Many of the 7th and 8th grade responses dealt with self-awareness and expression. They love to lose themselves in the music. This isn’t surprising, considering the intense physical, social, and emotional development that takes place during the adolescent years. Emotional development and self-exploration are subjects that I find myself giving more and more attention to when selecting repertoire, planning rehearsals, and programming concerts. Will my students find themselves in this music? Are my teaching methods helping them to do so? Am I being proactive about making time for those meaningful moments to occur?

I aim to include a “Homeward Bound” moment in every concert. (If you’ve never programmed this meaningful contemporary folk song by Marta Keen and Jay Althouse, plan to do so soon. Your middle school students will thank you.) As choral educators, we are fortunate to have the academic flexibility to make meaningful choices about our course content and to work with a medium that so wholeheartedly encourages personal expression and growth. I will leave you with a quote from the brilliant resource Growing Musicians by Dr. Bridget Sweet: “Making music is not a competition... It is not race to the top… It is a unique chance to work together, feel together, emote together, create together, and more.”