Choral Music Education Essay

The idea of singing in the classroom can be a worrying concept for both teachers and students alike; teachers may not feel confident to sing in front of the students, and students may feel embarrassed to sing in front of their peers. Singing, however, can be one of the most useful teaching tools that a teacher can acquire, and similarly, for the student, singing allows for a great amount of learning and enjoyment to take place in the classroom. In many music classes, teachers and students use their voices for such things as solfa, or to sing important themes from musical works which are to be studied; however, it may be more difficult to motivate a class of students to sing than to hand them an instrument such as recorder which some students will use to mask their musical inhibitions. To explore the use of singing in the classroom in the context of performance …show more content…
These programmes have entered many schools both as subjects of the curriculum, and non-curricular subjects. As a teacher involved in one of these choral music education initiatives, I have noticed the lack of basic musicianship skills in students. I have worked with students who have not experienced music education to the level required in order to perform well, and as a result, often the tasks which musicians do not have to think about (i.e. pitching notes, or maintaining a steady pulse) seem impossible to the students. My responsibility, as their teacher, has been to build up the necessary level of musicianship required for performance, while valuing the learning involved in the development of these skills in and for itself. I tackled these obstacles primarily through singing, and after some months, there is a considerable difference. The students now understand the basic music concepts and they are able to sing songs musically and with