Raise Your Voice: First Steps for the Choir Year

This is the third post in a monthly series. https://choralnet.org/archives/660007

Happy August, Choral Directors!

If you’re a school teacher or following a similar schedule, you are gearing up for the opening of choir season! 

Not gearing up too hard, though. We have a few weeks.

As you’re starting to gently think about your season, maybe you’re ready to incorporate some change-making into your music-making. In this post, I’ll lay out what you need to prepare for beginning Solutionary work with your choir.

Here again is the definition of Solutionary, as coined by the Institute for Humane Education:

Noun: a person [or group] who identifies inhumane, unsustainable, and unjust systems and then develops solutions that are healthy and equitable for people, animals, and the environment.

Adjective: pertaining to or characterized by solving problems in a strategic, systemic way that does the most good and least harm to people, animals, and the environment. 

Your first step, right about now, should be to reach out to your administration or board to float the idea of having your choir choose a cause for the year. If you work in a school, your administrator may have certain parameters that you need to work within. For example, as a middle school teacher, there are a few topics that are off limits according to my administration, such as sex trafficking and abortion. If you direct a community choir, the board may want your efforts to be locally focused. 

In either situation, make sure that your board or administration knows that the topic would be chosen by the choir members. This is especially important to note in a school setting, because we as teachers do not want to be perceived as “pushing an agenda”. Also make sure that they know this is an optional portion of the curriculum, which students/parents can opt out of without sacrificing the choral experience.

If you have an adult choir and are sending out your “It’s almost choir time!” emails, now would be a good time to float the idea of supporting a cause. You don’t need to say a lot about it, just plant the seed so it can start germinating. 

The rest of your preparations can wait until the beginning of the choir season.

If you work in a school, as you get into your Professional Development/Teacher Prep days, see if any of your Social Studies or Science teachers have a change-making part of their curriculum, such as the UN Global Goals https://www.globalgoals.org/goals/. If so, you may wish to team up at some point, depending on if your chosen topics end up being similar.

Also, during your PD days, reach out to parents of students on your roster with your welcome email. After going through your usual concert and festival dates, include a message about your Solutionary work. Here’s mine:

In addition [to other choral events], I offer an optional “Raise Your Voice” project, and there’s an extra concert at the end of the year associated with that. That date is ____. For this project, students can choose a cause that they care about in our community or the world, and work towards finding solutions around that issue. Then they will offer a fundraising concert that raises money for an organization of their choosing that supports their cause. I will let you know what the students choose, which will probably happen the last week of September.

Then, as your choir meetings begin, for the first couple of weeks just continue to float the idea of choosing a cause. Often at the beginning of the year, depending on your choir format, you may have new members slowly joining or still have people returning from their vacations. You don’t want to move forward with choosing a cause until everyone has had a chance to join or rejoin the choir. 

Around your third week, or when your choir numbers seem to have stabilized, ask your members to share their ideas for their cause. I put all of the ideas on the whiteboard; you can choose your favorite medium. Some members may want to “campaign” by sharing with the group why their choice of cause is important to them. 

Once the ideas have been gathered, it’s time to vote. I found it easiest to make a survey. I used Google Forms, because our school uses the Google Suite. As students voted, it made a handy pie chart of the results for me to see, which made it easy for me to find the winner. If you make a survey, make sure everyone knows the deadline for submitting it, so that everyone has the opportunity to vote. For my students, I made it a required assignment (for those who hadn’t opted out) so that I would make sure to have everyone’s input.

Then you’ll have your cause! This whole process will likely take at least until the end of September. 

Please feel free to reach out to me in the comments with questions, for resources, or to let me know about your Solutionary work!

Enjoy the rest of your summer!