Challenge Accepted

Today is the last day of school for my students in the Portland Public School District. It's been a wild year for me teaching at two high schools, taking maternity leave, traveling with one of my groups for the first time, and being mom to two small ones. I've been meditating a lot on what I've gained from this challenging school year and I've had some real epiphanies.

I've been working to get a music class started for the International Baccalaureate program at Lincoln High School this last year. I was discussing some of the arrangements for it next year with the coordinator and was saying how difficult the coursework is. Her response was that perhaps it was good that it was so hard because sometimes those are the circumstances that students learn the most from. And I realized that she was right.

I've always chased the path of most resistance because I know it makes me better. Sometimes it comes at a price. More than once I've found myself dealing with self-doubt, fear of failure, and emotional and physical fatigue because of what I commit myself to. Sometimes it really isn't worth it. But I've found that most of the time I can't imagine how I would have gone without the experience.

Lately I've been working on singing some rather challenging literature with Resonance Ensemble. When I jumped in to the first rehearsal I felt like I was in over my head. I hoped that perhaps it was just because I was sight-reading 20th century atonal craziness, but I kept feeling that way. I practiced and practiced hoping to somehow get this crazy music to stick into my head and I just kept feeling like it was beyond me. Even so I kept at it. Last night at rehearsal I finally felt like I was really getting it down! There is nothing that matches the feeling of satisfaction the comes from overcoming what feels like an insurmountable obstacle. If I could bottle that feeling and sell it I'd be rich!

As I regroup from this school year and start planning for the next I have to think about what obstacles I will put in front of my students and in front of myself. I held an audition for my advanced choir for the first time at Lincoln and was surprised at how many students showed up! It's just more proof of how much more worthwhile it is to pursue a good challenge. I'm so grateful to have a profession and a passion that allows me to always have something to look forward to because there is never an end to what I can teach and learn from a good challenge.

Being Yourself Inc.

These last couple of weeks I've been doing a lot of soul searching about who I am as a professional. I've written before about professionalism and how much it matters in the field of singing. What kept entering into my thought process was more about personality and how this matters in your chosen profession.

It doesn't take very long for anyone that meets me to figure this out that I like to make jokes and laugh. I love to enjoy life and I have a difficult time taking things very seriously half of the time. I do care very passionately about what I do however and I often wear my heart on my sleeve. My family, friends,  and students know I care about them. But does caring make someone appear incompetent?

I spent most of the first day of school attempting to recruit students in their study hall class to join choir. I was able to observe the football coach engage with his classes and I realized that he earns their respect by taking himself seriously. They way they responded to him made me realize that even though I am a nice person, first impressions go a long way.

We live in a highly competitive world. The impression someone gets of you, once formed, can be very difficult to overcome and you never know when it's going to come back to haunt you. But I don't believe this means that you have to be someone else to be successful. Lately I've been reading the book "Give and Take" by Adam Grant at the recommendation of the business teacher. I love books like this because I think principles in business apply to so many more things than just business. I'm only a few chapters in but I feel pretty hopeful about my role as a professional after reading what he has to say. I highly recommend checking this book out!

Perhaps I'm not the most conventional person when it comes to my career. I've pursued a teaching job that you'd have to be insane to keep at. I have kept working at my singing when so many people urged me to pursue other avenues. I don't regret it, not for a second. I may be the soprano giggling at a dirty joke or making silly faces to make my accompanist crack up during a rehearsal, but I put out a good product and I'm proud of how hard I work.

Forever the optimist I believe there's room for everyone to do what they love if they're willing to work for it. I think it's people like me - the wierd, the silly, the unconventional - and even the people who aren't like me that make the differences in their field. Great people in our history were not typical. I hope no one can ever accuse me of being typical either.

Positivity

This last weekend I had the opportunity to attend the all-northwest division conference for music educators. I went to reading sessions, workshops, and concerts. After several months of what I feel is a hard year so far, I went in feeling like I really needed a boost.

For anyone who isn't already aware I have been teaching at Lincoln High School this school year. Every person in the choir community that I tell this to gives me this look of pity, hope, and surprise. "You're teaching choir at Lincoln? Wow. How is that going?" Lincoln has a long history of strong members of the choral and local community throwing support and money at it. It also has a history of district and union policy as well as administrator lack of support killing its choir programs. Many of my direct mentors have ben key contributors of the attempt to get the choir program off the ground there. And it just hasn't stuck.

When the new semester hit and I lost students instead of gaining any I started to panic. I tried sending call slips to every one of the 100+ students that had an excused period during my class (this was vetoed by the counseling office ta's). I just felt like all my effort was for nothing. It didn't help that my bills were mounting and I didn't know if I could even afford to drive to the school to teach let alone do it well.

I may have learned a few new ideas for problem solving in my choirs, but what I really walked away with is a new attitude. If I let the weight of this job get me down, how am I supposed to convince anyone that it's a good program, let alone one worthy of starting? It may not work out. I may be back to square one again next year. But if things work out and I've stayed positive the rest of this year, my choir program is going to grow that much faster and better. I just have to put my best work out.

There are so many people that I have felt jealous and bitter toward in my career so far because things always seem to work out in their favor. People who get jobs I wish I had. People who win contests or land auditions. But things don't work out for them because they're positive people. Things work out because of how they choose to see it. There are people that I'm sure would love to have the life I have. I have amazing students that I'm so proud of, I teach at great schools with great communities, I study with a great voice teacher and I get to sing with some of the best people I know. I can't let the uncertainty of the future taint the happiness that can be had today.

Happiness isn't something anyone can hand to you. It isn't having the job of your dreams, the life of your dreams, lots of money, or the perfect family. Those things don't exist. What does exist is your current circumstances and how you choose to be present in them. Today I chose to see the glass half full.

Lifelong Learning

It's almost a badge of honor when you announce to someone that you are a lifelong learner. It suggests humility and a strong character. It's noble. When you are fairly well-established in your profession and you claim yourself to be one of these learning types, people respect you. For those of us still trying to establish ourselves this mentality opens you up to criticism. I consider myself a lifelong learner and I am proud to be so. It's not always easy to take the criticism though. In fact, if you aren't already pretty good at what you do, being a life-long learner suggests mediocrity. It's like you are admitting that you aren't good at anything. 

Opening yourself up to criticism is a very soul-searching and difficult task. It requires an amount of self-confidence that isn't something that you can just command to exist. I sang the Met Audition last October and it was most unpleasant having my technique picked apart and my diction harshly critiqued by three very well-established career musicians. 

For most of us, harsh and uninhibited criticism would illicit a knee-jerk reaction. Sometimes it's self-defense. "They don't know me and what I can really do, so their opinions aren't that important". Sometimes it's self-loathing. "If they think I'm that bad, I must really be terrible." But life-long learners are fighters, not against other people, but for themselves. I had to really focus my energy the best way I could which meant taking their criticism to heart and working to sing so that next time someone of that caliber hears me they have less to say. 

I had to put this philosophy to the test in December. I sang for my voice teachers winter recital and was given the opportunity to rehearse with the accompanist beforehand. I kept second guessing myself on a piece that I'd learned new which had me second guessing myself on a piece I've been singing for months. I was missing entrances and not supporting the sound. I started making excuses. "I didn't get much sleep because of my toddler, I haven't eaten much so my focus is off, I'm not warmed up enough..." And I realized what I sounded like. I sounded like an amateur making excuses. When I was done rehearsing I went back to sit down and I decided I had two choices. I could let my bad rehearsal break me and just resolve myself to a bad performance or I could decide not to suck. 

I chose to learn from my experience by doing well, and it showed. I walked on stage with the attitude of "this is how its done". I got more genuine compliments after that recital than I've gotten in a long time. 

If you ask any adult about their history with music most will say they took some sort of music lesson as a kid. They will almost always follow with "I should have kept it up". No one ever regrets it when they tough it out and keep working on something. I don't regret that I'm nearing my 29th year and I am finally starting to figure out how to sing. 

Life-long learning isn't just about a mindset, it's about what you do. It's never too late to be better at something you wished you hadn't given up on. I'm proud to be a life-long learner because it means that no bad experience is going to prevent me from being better. It also means that someday my choosing to always learn and grow will make me an established and respected musician just like the people I admire today.  

The Value of Vision

Every performance requires a certain level of preparation. I'm sure that most everyone that has sung at one point or another has had an experience where they had to sing something on the spot and completely fell on their face. It's the dreaded public fail and it's in the back of every singers mind when they perform. With more preparation typically comes more confidence and thus more success in performance. Confidence tends to be the lynch pin in a successful singing performance.

The hardest thing I have encountered as a singer and a teacher is the mental aspect of confidence. Our natural fight or flight instincts don't help either. Everyone knows what being nervous feels like. We get butterflies in our stomach, we feel sick, we sweat, we cry, we fidget and fixate and try everything we can think of to try to make it stop. Sometimes we even give up before we try. When our bodies make us that uncomfortable it's no wonder we let our minds go with it. We start to doubt whether we practiced enough, if we are really any good at all. We imagine every possible negative outcome.

I was working with a student before an audition yesterday and everything she was saying to me came down to "I know I'm going to fail". It didn't matter what I said or how I said it. This girl was determined not to succeed.

For a long time I battled this probably more than some singers do when they're first starting out. I wanted so badly to be amazing, but I held myself back believing somewhere deep down that if I never actually put my best out there I could never truly be told that my best wasn't good enough. For as far as I've come from that first day I stepped foot in my first college voice teacher's studio, I still catch myself in this mental trap.

It was probably one of the hardest things I have ever done to allow myself to be so vulnerable as to put my best out there with the belief that my best was good enough. I think what makes it so difficult for singers and for teachers is that diagnosing this problem requires a singer to be deeply honest with themselves.

What makes this even more difficult is that it's not just limited to any given performance. It permeates every part of your singing. It's the willingness to try something out of your comfort zone. Its allowing yourself to be better than you believe you can be.

I was working with a student today and every time I work with her I can't help but picture what her ultimate success could look like. She just drips with talent and passion. I try to find this in all of my students as much as I can. This girl makes it easy. The classical radio station has a program on the weekends that features young musicians of exceptional talent. I have heard young girls sing on this program that I could not believe were only in high school. I can see this student being like that. She has the potential to be larger than life and the humility to make her irresistible. But she doesn't believe it. She doesn't picture herself the way I do.

I know that for me, developing this vision for myself took time and influence from many different mentors. It probably helped to have a few of them tell me to throw in the towel because it just wasn't going to work for me. I like a challenge. I can completely understand their frustration now. As a teacher I can only hope that my diligence and vision for my students is contagious enough that eventually they see and in themselves what I see and believe that they are not only capable but deserving of the level of performance that they could reach.

Fighting the Good Fight

One of my teaching philosophies is that teachers do more than educate about their subject. As a voice teacher I find that I do more than just teach my students to sing. I teach them responsibility, I coach them on how to meet their life goals, I listen to them when they are having troubles in school or in their social lives. I ask them about their families and their interests.

One of the lessons I find myself teaching over and over again is one about self value and expression and how it relates to those around them. Being a teenager doesn't make this easy to figure out. Even at 28 years old I continue to work on my own confidence and how I treat my competition.

It's not any surprise that high school age girls would find it challenging to feel confident among their peers. Their culture is steeped in competitive energy. With tv shows like the voice, x-factor, and american idol, they're constantly watching people their age take a very public verbal beating for being less than stellar.

Singing competitions are a blessing and a curse in this regard. It's a great tool for a teacher to push their students towards and end goal. It's also great to get feedback from fellow voice teachers about how your students are doing. However, sometimes it brings out the claws. Unlike sports where competitive energy and adrenaline can be channeled into physical activity, singing is an individual sport with a somewhat subjective criteria for judging. What ends up happening is that you get girls that smile and chat with each other in person and plot each others demise behind closed doors. It's no wonder that they're afraid to sing in front of each other!

I remember my choir director telling us that personal success doesn't have to be at the expense of anyone else. I have found that girls don't always have anyone point this out to them. Confidence isn't the product of dominance, it's the product of hard work. The harder you work, the more you have to be proud of. If our society didn't put so much emphasis on "winning" this might actually be the case more of the time.

There's a lightbulb joke that goes:
Q: How many sopranos does it take to screw in a lightbulb?
A: One to do it, ten to say they could have done it better.

One of the things that I have learned and continue to learn is that my competition are also my colleagues and sportsmanship isn't just about shaping a good character. If I was to behave in a passive aggressive manner to every girl that got a solo when I didn't there wouldn't be many girls left for me to sing with. Being a diva does not get you very far in this business (or any other business either) in spite of what you might hear about opera singers.

It's my hope that when my students leave my voice studio they leave having come closer learning this lesson not just because they'll be better singers but because they'll be better people.

Committment?

When I was in college and someone showed up late to choir rehearsal, my director would stop rehearsal and address the late attendant in a less than flattering fashion. In other words, unless you wanted to withstand public ridicule, you were on time to choir. I am fortunate to sing with this same director these next couple of weeks for a concert with Resonance Ensemble. And I have to wonder, this lesson that I learned from him in my college days, is it a lesson my students need to learn now? Or another day?

http://resonancechoral.org/home.cfm

*shameless plug* 

I have sung in countless choir concerts some I was very proud of and some not so much. This concert is one that I will remember as a highlight in my choral singing career. The music is absolutely breathtaking and it's very satisfying if you like music with an abnormal tonal center! In other words, you should so come to this concert!

*shameless plug again*

The spring recital is at Classic Pianos on Powell Blvd on Sunday the 27th at 3pm 

*end of shameless plugs*

Anyway, I'm in the midst of very time consuming and meticulously orchestrated (accompanists/childcare/practicing/driving/meals/sleep?) rehearsals for both of these concerts. And I couldn't help but be rather upset by the number of students that cancelled their involvement days beforehand due to their parents suddenly deciding they had familial obligations. 

Now normally I'm not upset if a student can't participate in something I'm putting together for them if they let me know when I'm in the process of planning. And normally I would say your family takes priority - Lord knows my family has to trump my students sometimes. But I asked them and their families weeks ago if they were available for the recital date and I got a clean bill of no conflicts so I went ahead and booked the holiday weekend. 

I love my students. I go to great lengths to teach them every skill and tool I can to help them be as successful as they want to be with their singing. I think it's this passion that gets me so upset when their parents don't quite share my zeal for their talent. I try to be understanding of the fact that my students are teenagers and many of them are very busy and carry the burden of keeping their grades up and their social lives full. So at what point do I start to lose my patience? 

Perhaps I don't have the option of losing my patience. Part of being a good teacher is being supportive when your students (or their parents) don't deserve it. However, another part of being a teacher is preparing your students for the real world. And in the real world, my director would never hire me again if I ditched out on my concert days beforehand because my family was going on a trip or because I booked a doctors appointment for my daughter at the same time. 

Perhaps this is a lesson for my students, and their parents, to learn from another teacher another day.

For the five students that have been responsible for their commitments I am proud of their taking the opportunity to continue to improve their singing and performance skills. Even just the act of being there is the sign of a character trait that will serve them well not just in singing, but in every facet of their life. 

For any parents that read this, I hope you gain an appreciation for how much I want your kids to succeed, and perhaps in the future you might throw more support their way and bring the whole family reunion to their recital ; )