Choral Festival with Defense

As a follow up to my post pertaining to concentration and focus, I would like to share a story from early in my teaching career.

It was about the year 2000, if memory serves (yeah, right).  I was in my 3rd or 4th year of teaching and Choral Festival was to be held at the West Ottawa HS Performing Arts Center, a short 8 mile bus ride from our school.  I was particularly proud of how my 8th grade choir was sounding that year and really looked forward to our experience and was somewhat confident that we would receive a First Division (I) rating, if we had a good performance.

Choral Festival is an adjudicated event and in Michigan, choirs perform two contrasting pieces from a required list, and also sight read a selection of music.  The judges scores are combined into an overall rating of I, II, III or IV (representing Excellent, Good, Fair and Poor, respectively).  Although some folks may view events like this as a form of "competition," there isn't a "defense."  In other words, there isn't supposed to be another choir trying to "block" you from scoring your best.

I will never forget what happened shortly after our performance began, and continued throughout.  As, I looked to certain sections of the choir to give cues, I immediately noticed many of the kids were not watching me, but rather, their eyes were going past me, into the audience.  EVEN GOOD KIDS!!  I couldn't believe this was happening, as we had worked so hard for the past nine weeks and we had talked about focus, concentration and eyes on the director!  A LOT!

Between our two numbers, I walked closer to the group than a director normally would and emphatically expressed to them that they needed to keep their eyes on me.  "But Mr. Costello, one of them mustered up the courage to say, they are staring at us and talking about us!"

Many directors require their students to sit in the auditorium and observe a few performances by other groups at events such as this.

At this point, I turned around to see a choir of about 50 kids, sitting in the first four or five rows of the auditorium.  Because the judges sit in the house and need to see to write, the house lights are rarely brought down at these events.  Therefore, the performers can easily see the audience, especially the faces of those in the first few rows of seats.  Well... what do most middle school kids do while watching other middle school kids from different schools?  Why, they point at them and whisper to each other, of course!!  They size them up.  They comment on their uniforms, their hair, their makeup, etc. etc. etc.  Some of them may even comment on their sound, but I doubt that's very many.

The actions of the kids in the first few rows had a profound impact on the concentration and focus of the choir performing on stage.  Because middle school aged kids are, by nature, incredibly self-conscious, they all automatically assumed the other kids were "talking trash."  One can hardly blame the kids for being distracted, but this is one of the many things we talk about in class when discussing FOCUS.

Needless to say, we ended up with an overall Second Division (II) rating that day and we chalked it up as a learning experience.  I mentioned the issue to a few other directors, including the ones running the event, but I'm not sure there was ever a rule instituted stating that choir members shouldn't sit in the first few rows, as that turns it into...

Choral Festival with Defense!