By Spencer Wiley, High School Mixed Choir R&R Chair
Incorporating Social-Emotional Learning in Choral Rehearsals:
Is There Enough Time?
By Spencer Wiley, High School Mixed Choir R&R Chair
If you’re anything like me, you know that even though you may have the perfect rehearsal plan, there will be some things that will need to be pushed to the next day because you’re probably going to run out of time. Early on in my teaching career, I was not a firm believer in incorporating team-building and social-emotional learning activities into my rehearsals because I thought they were a waste of time. My rehearsals were focused solely on teaching my students everything they needed to know about the music in their hands. That was until I had a particularly challenging year with a group of young men in my tenor-bass choir who struggled with treating each other with respect.
Before we could get anything done, we had to have a class discussion on leaving issues that have nothing to do with choir at the door. This was something that needed to be done every single day, or else the students would not be able to focus. After attending several musical and non-musical professional development sessions over the years, I’ve come to realize that those “man-to-man talks,” as I called them, were social-emotional learning activities where they practiced self-awareness and responsible decision-making skills. Over time, our rehearsals became much more enjoyable for everyone in the room. The behavior issues all but vanished, and the students were able to sing together as an ensemble because we took the time to build a foundation of mutual respect for each other.
The Collaborative for Academic, Social, and Emotional Learning (CASEL) defines social-emotional learning as “the process through which all young adults acquire and apply the knowledge, skills, and attitudes to develop healthy identities, manage emotions and achieve personal and collective goals, feel and show empathy for others, establish and maintain supportive relationships, and make responsible and caring decisions.” 1 We must teach our students these skills so they can be successful at auditions, concerts, and performances while they are in school. This also fosters the development of skills which help with their pursuit of success in their careers and life goals after graduation.
I believe that most teachers understand the importance of social-emotional learning in the classroom and want to implement it in their rehearsals, but they do not feel like they know enough about it for activities to be effective. I believe that one does not need a certification in social-emotional learning in order to teach a child how to work collaboratively with others, to develop communication skills, and to treat themselves and others with respect. The choral rehearsal is the perfect place to hone these skills while providing an excellent music education to our students.
There are several different educational resources available that focus on how to implement social-emotional learning in the classroom. We are currently implementing the Capturing Kids Hearts initiative developed by Flip Flippen in our rehearsals. One of the hallmarks of Capturing Kids Hearts is the development of the social contract.
A social contract is a binding agreement formulated by the students in which they outline components that govern what social interaction in the classroom should look like. 2 To be efficiently used in the choral classroom, this activity should be structured as a class discussion occurring during the first ten minutes of class for five consecutive days. The premise behind the activity is that each day, students get the chance to learn how to articulate components of healthy social interaction amongst their peers and those in authority. Students also get the chance to brainstorm how to frame and overcome conflicting points of view before issues become a problem in rehearsal. During the development of the social contract, the following questions are discussed as a class:
As the student, how do I want my choir director to treat me?
How do I think my choir director wants to be treated by me, the student?
How do I want to be treated by my student peers?
If conflict arises, how should it be handled?
As the students come up with words that describe what each of the interactions above should look like, the teacher then records them on the board so that they can come back to them during the next day’s discussion. With each day’s discussion, students begin to realize that many of the words that describe what interaction should look like are the same, regardless of whether the interaction is with an adult or a peer. At the conclusion of the week, once the four questions have been answered and all responses have been discussed, a final draft of the collection of all of the words that outline healthy social interaction is posted at the front of the room. To complete the social contract process, everyone in the class, directors included, must sign the poster. When students write their name on the poster, they are making a commitment to adhering to the principles that they created to guide social interactions throughout the year.
Like many new rehearsal techniques or teaching strategies, in order for the social contract to work, it must be utilized and referred to often in the classroom. Whenever there is an issue in rehearsal where a student is not adhering to the guidelines agreed upon by the class, the teacher can then redirect the behavior by referring to the social contract. As those social interaction guidelines are frequently highlighted and modeled in rehearsal by the teacher, the students will begin drawing attention to the use and sometimes misuse of the social contract. You’ll know that the implementation of the social contract is working when you start to hear students hold themselves accountable to use the guidelines in their informal conversation before and after rehearsal. The whole point of creating the social contract is to get students to come up with a framework of principles that teaches them how to communicate and collaborate with others in an environment that fosters creativity, accountability, and mutual respect.
The hope is that if they can learn how to use those principles in our choir rooms, students will be able to employ those same principles in their everyday lives outside of the classroom. Incorporating social-emotional learning activities like the development of a social contract into your rehearsals can have a long-lasting, positive impact on your students for years to come. Keep in mind that like any learned behavior, it may take time to start to see results in every student. Some students will take to it immediately. Some students will take longer to buy-in to these types of activities. Just like learning how to sing, every student begins the process learning how to work with others at various stages of natural ability. Using a little bit of rehearsal time to teach our students how to foster healthy relationships with others and how to navigate through conflict empowers them with the skills they can use for the rest of their lives.
NOTES
1 “What is social and emotional learning?” CASEL Guide to Schoolwide SEL, https://schoolguide.casel.org/whatis-sel/what-is-sel/. Accessed 25 November 2024.
2 Nail, Caroline Mildred. The Effects of “Capturing Kids Hearts” and Teacher Job Satisfaction in an Arkansas Elementary School Setting. 2021. Arkansas Tech University, Doctoral dissertation.
