Week 10 Lesson Review

After the observation on Monday I had every intention of taping 6th grade choir this week and talking about implementation of some of the things you suggested. However, neither of those things happened. I will discuss what occurred on Tuesday. The class started out normal enough with warmups and sight singing. I was trying the use of percentages that you had suggested as the choir was far less responsive and involved than they had been the day before, even on simple tasks like singing up the scale in solfege. I was getting a little frustrated, but moreso disappointed as we went through the exercise. It was a somewhat dificult exercise and I anticipated some problems, but not that level of indifference. I tried my best to be excited and encouraging, but also demanding with expectations. Even with that, little response, so we didn't even get through it before Mr. Suzelis stepped in and had a long talk with the choir about attitude. We didn't finsih the exercise, nor did we even sing that day as they got a long lecture on attitude and then had them all answer 5 basic questions about what was affecting them personally and the choir as a whole. One student gave him a slight attitude during the class and by then he was pretty upset, so he yelled at her and she got written up. It certainly got their attention, though he admitted after class he may have "blown his top" a little too much there.

We discussed things after class and decided that it would be best for him to take the choir back over, rather than the gradual transition we had originally planned. The next day had been planned for him to do warm-ups anyway, but now he has taken back over the full-time role as director and I am halping as needed singing with the students and doing anything to help get bthings going. We also discussed ways to get the students "on board" so with the song Siyahamba, we are using the drums left over from 8th grade general music and having the students play the suggested parts on them. It has helped a little. Mr. Suzelis also did a sight singing exercise that was hardly sight reading, but more singing with the piano. He explained his reasoning in building confidence there rather than actually sight reading.

I could feel like a failure, but I don't. When he said it may be better for him to take it back over immediately to get rid of the bad attitude, I told him it was his choir and he needed to do what he felt necessary and that I would help where needed. I was worried he was possibly blaming me for some of the attitude, but the only thing he said was that he felt they needed to get things going at a "quicker pace." The 3 other choirs I have been working with (I am still primarily working with 5th grade choir) are thankfully not suffering from the same attitude problems and this experience has given me a lot of ideas on how to deal with such an occurrence.