Making the choral experience a holistic and participatory process requires creativity, openness, and flexibility. For many choral directors, engaging students in the process of musicmaking and learning involves a different way of thinking about the structuring of learning environments and music-making experiences. This article is intended to provide a framework forstructuring learning environments and rehearsal approaches by which one can more actively enlist students in music-making and the learning process. There are fundamental principles inthis framework: choral music educators must 1) teach music through authentic musical processes such as those articulated in the National Standards; 2) reach all students of varying interests, abilities, and dispositions through various means of engagement-visual, aural, kinesthetic, affective; and 3) guide students toward being more sentient by providing musical opportunities that encourage students to think, feel, share, and imagine.
(From the Choral Journal article “Making Music Meaningful in the Choral Classroom,” by Sandra Frey Stegman)
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