Emprendimiento

The high school choral program has different challenges for the teacher than the middle school program. The rapid hormone changes and the accompanying turmoil are less pronounced during the high school years, and the voices are beginning to settle into their new, adult ranges.

SATB music can generally be used, and most students enrolled in choir are there because they want to be. This no doubt sounds as if high school teaching is easier than middle school teaching. This may be true, but as we learn, everything has its challenges!

Age Proximity

One challenge is that college students and first year teachers are some-what close in age to high school students. The age proximity often causes the high school students to test the authority of the young teacher, and the teacher may feel less confident asserting that authority with older (and often larger!) students. In the field experience it is to the new teacher’s advantage to learn and strictly follow the regular teacher’s classroom procedures, rules, and consequences, whether he or

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she agrees with them or not, to establish consistency for the sake of the student–teacher relationship.

Another related issue is the infatuation that some high school stu-dents may feel toward a music teacher who is close in age. It is the teacher who must refrain from any behavior that could potentially be misunderstood by a student as mutual admiration. One safeguard is to avoid being alone with any student, ever. The loss of a teaching license for life is the usual result of inappropriate teacher–student behavior, and that is always a tragedy after all the years devoted to the profes-sional goal of becoming a music teacher.

Recruitment

Another challenge is simply attracting enough males to the choral pro-gram. Students have many options for curricular and extra-curricular activities in high school, and time conflicts naturally arise between choir and other commitments. If there is a strong choral feeder pro-gram at the middle school and especially if a relationship has been established between the middle and high school programs to assist in recruiting to the next level, then the high school director is fortunate.

Without that, it can take patience and a few years to establish a strong and valued choral program comprised of multiple levels of choral ensembles with balanced vocal parts.

The high school choral director needs to be an active recruiter for the choral program, especially in the early years. There are many stu-dents who wouldn’t consider joining choir without an invitation from the teacher or from other students. It is important to consider some of the reasons why high school students may choose not to sing in the choir (Tipps, 2003), and approach recruitment with these reasons in mind:

• Time conflicts

• Friends not involved in music

• Music not considered important to adulthood

• Vocal insecurity

• Inability to read music

• Stage fright

• Dislike of classical music.

The suggestions given in the previous chapter for recruiting middle school singers are applicable to the high school levels as well (con-tacting the guidance counselor, drama teacher, local piano teachers, church choir directors, and parents; giving prizes to current students to recruit new members; and designing a curricular “wheel” of choir electives). Other recruitment strategies (Horne, 2007) include:

• writing personal letters or making phone calls of invitation to students;

• providing choral role models that inspire students to join;

• creating student-centered musical experiences, including the selection of authentic and suitable repertoire;

• promoting the choir’s concerts through advertising;

• including innovative and special performances for peers and parents;

• advertising choir trips, tours, festivals, contests, and concerts.

There will always be students whose priority it is to join the choir, and these tend to be students who have had the following experiences:

• Previous positive school music experiences.

• Previous private instrumental instruction, particularly the piano.

• Parents and peers who value and participate in music (Siebenaler, 2006).

In fact, these are the same singers who often enjoy a lifelong commit-ment to music and continue to sing in choirs as adults (Bell, 2004;

Darrough, 1990).

This long-term commitment is the goal of every music teacher—to plant a seed, nurture it, and watch it blossom during the school years so that singers will have rich and satisfying musical lives. Thus, the music teacher would be wise to actively invite and welcome all students into the choral program and place them in the most appropriate choir for their skills, abilities, and interests. These musical experiences may provide the only opportunities for students to acquire the skills, know-ledge, and attitudes that will allow them to participate in meaningful music experiences during their lifetime.

A startling result of the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) was that only 35% of 8th graders were able to sing

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America with tonal accuracy, and less than 25% sang with an appro-priate tone quality ( Jellison, 2000). There is much work to be done by choral music teachers to help our nation’s people learn to sing, and it begins with effective recruiting and auditioning.