I teach at an international boarding school.  Our students come from over 43 different countries and only 5% of my students call English their first language.  Many of our students come only for the one year experience of being in an American school.  Partly becasue of this, I have only a 5% to 10% retention in my choirs from year to year.  On top of that, my concert choir is only a semester long.  Every January I start the second semester with a majority of brand new students.

 

The easy solution would be to make concert choir a year long course but that will not happen at my school.  I have tried for 6 years and the administration insists on keeping things as they are.  I was able to get my show choir to a year format but every year I get a little pressure from the administration to change that back to a semester course.  Because we are a small school, students often can only fit choir into their schedule once because they need time to take other classes which they need for graduation requirements.

 

I feel like I stat from scratch every 18 weeks.  I have high school singers who do not speak English, do not read music and the majority of them have never been in a choir before.  Our school does not have a middle school music program so I have no feeder program.  I try to teach great vowels, phrasing...musicality!  However, when I have a room filled with students who are 17 to 18 years old and can't  match pitch, I get a little frustrated.  (By the way, I have no problem getting boys in choir.  My boy to girl ratio is almost always 50/50.  However, in my experience, 17 year old boys with no training ALWAYS sound worse than girls of the same age.)

 

I started learning to read music and sing in parts in my 5th grade choir.  I had three strong years in my middle school choir and by the time I got to high school, I could sight read most of the music that was in my folder, as could the other students in the choir.  I don't have expectations of my concert choir singing Mozart's Requiem, but I am very open to new ideas on how to get high school students to match pitch, sing correct notes AND sing with musicality and put on a concert of literature that is more than just remedial.  I love the challenge.  I love this school.  I love these students!  I can't change my circumstances so what else can I change to make a fine choral program for myelf and my students???

 

A