choral
Trust the Seeds Shawn Gudmunsen, WMEA State Chair, Choral
After this year, there is no doubt the land- scape of music ed- ucation will most definitely change. Questions revolve around a whole host of content delivery, the appropriateness of some literature,
performances, and the list goes on. One thing that needs to be addressed is the health and mental well-being of our stu- dents and how music can be a catalyst to help with many students’ mental health. As we continue to cultivate young sing- ers to embrace a passion that we have all come to love, a big part of their attachment to singing is the emotional connection
students feel to a poet’s words, a moving melodic line, rich harmonies and the like. With a mental health focus in choral pro- gramming, there can be many advantages to address this topic with our students. One strategy is allowing students to express themselves in a way that they themselves identify their needs to become better students. It is in this vein that we look at a choral work by Elizabeth Alexander, “Trust the Seeds.”
Written in 1995, Alexander’s words could not be any more poignant than they are today. Students will need our support now more than ever. What we can rely on is music to help guide us and our students along the most challenging of years ahead. This year’s theme in our programming was
chosen by our students; “Self-Love.” We had the students identify themes of mental health in which they would like to focus on in our spring repertoire. While in our third year of mental health initiative on music, we have discovered that students are comfortable identifying and outwardly sharing their own needs to continue to be successful in and out of the classroom. Ideas of acceptance, appreciation, con- fidence, growth, happiness, kindness and perseverance are from the students’ short list. The final theme chosen was an all-encompassing idea that if we love ourselves, we can accomplish our lifelong pursuits, whatever they may be. Students have identified their immediate needs. We need to listen.
Wisconsin School Music Association
Virtual Solo & Ensemble Festival Encourage your students to participate in the WSMA Virtual Solo & Ensemble Festival!
• Participants receive adjudicator feedback by safely and securely submitting videos of their performances through the new WSMA Festival App
• Both ratings and comment-only options are available
• Official awards can be purchased directly from
store.wsmamusic.org
Go to
wsmamusic.org/virtualfestival for all details. 32
Students are under a lot more pressure to perform in all areas of their lives. Some become very successful and some struggle while others fail. As educators, the best identifier becomes not the planting of ‘the seed’ but how it will grow. With the right soil (music), water (best practice) and sun (positivity for all) every seed develops in its own time, all the while understanding that not every seed germinates at the same pace. Herein lies the tapestry of where choral music educators can captivate our students’ education. Alexander also accents this in her piece. At the bottom of the copy, Alexander wrote about how her parents speculated as to what she and her siblings might become as they grew older. The result, when prompted to an- swer, was...
“What happened was that you all went out and did different things; things that were more wonderful than what we had imagined.”
We, as music teachers, hope for the same outcome. While most teachers outside of music education have certain benchmarks to reach throughout the year, our bench- marks are much deeper and more con- nected to human needs and wants. Music
April 2021
Page 1 |
Page 2 |
Page 3 |
Page 4 |
Page 5 |
Page 6 |
Page 7 |
Page 8 |
Page 9 |
Page 10 |
Page 11 |
Page 12 |
Page 13 |
Page 14 |
Page 15 |
Page 16 |
Page 17 |
Page 18 |
Page 19 |
Page 20 |
Page 21 |
Page 22 |
Page 23 |
Page 24 |
Page 25 |
Page 26 |
Page 27 |
Page 28 |
Page 29 |
Page 30 |
Page 31 |
Page 32 |
Page 33 |
Page 34 |
Page 35 |
Page 36 |
Page 37 |
Page 38 |
Page 39 |
Page 40 |
Page 41 |
Page 42 |
Page 43 |
Page 44 |
Page 45 |
Page 46 |
Page 47 |
Page 48 |
Page 49 |
Page 50 |
Page 51 |
Page 52 |
Page 53 |
Page 54 |
Page 55 |
Page 56 |
Page 57 |
Page 58 |
Page 59 |
Page 60 |
Page 61 |
Page 62 |
Page 63 |
Page 64
