Concert season is approaching (or maybe it's already here for you). In this episode we'll help elementary music teachers navigate through the challenges of concert season. Today's episode will focus specifically on 3 strategies for managing your concert season. Here's a sneak peak

1. Don't be afraid to ask for help. Concert season can be overwhelming, but you don't have to do everything alone.

• Consider reaching out to colleagues or parent-teacher organizations for support.
• Utilize stage hands. Stage hands can help with set up, moving equipment, and making sure everything runs smoothly during the performance.
• Recruiting parent volunteers. Parents can help with costumes, makeup, and assisting with set up and tear down.
• Assign a student to help with program creation. This not only gives the student a leadership role but also helps with time management for the teacher.

Bonus tip - encourage your choir to memorize their words. Consistent practice and repetition are key. Encourage students to practice at home, during class, and in small groups.

We hope these strategies help you navigate through your concert season with ease.

Be sure to download your Concert Season Playbook for more great tips & strategies to help you through the concert season crazies.

This podcast is a proud member of the teach better Podcast Network. Better today. Better tomorrow, and the podcast to get you there. Explore More podcast at WWW dot teach better podcast network.com. Let's get on to the episode,

concert season is fast approaching. And that means you have tons of challenges coming up. I'd like to help you with that. I've developed the concert season playbook, especially for you. It's everything you need to know to survive concert season. What do you need to do to get it? Just go to stories that sing dotnet forward slash concert playbook?

Are you an elementary music teacher who's frustrated and overwhelmed? I'm Jeanette Shorey, a happy music teacher who loves teaching every day. But it wasn't long ago, I was in your shoes. Join me Wednesdays to help you find happy in your music classroom. I had this amazing idea I was going to do the world's best concert. It was going to be so amazing. I was using the amazing song waving flags. And if you don't know that song, look it up. It is phenomenal. And I had like flags waving in the background. And this was actually not this part was not my idea. This was another music teacher. No, I'm sorry. That's not correct, either. This was a classroom teacher, first grade classroom teacher that I worked with who came up with just the most incredible ideas. And so we had that going on. And I had decided that my guitar players were going to play because I have a guitar class after school. And they were going to play the chords. And I decided that my drummers because I had this drum group. And the drummers were going to play during this beautiful piece of music and it was going to be the best concert ever. And I'm going to tell you a little secret, it ended up being one of my best concerts ever. But it was a crazy, crazy time for me, because you know how it goes, you've got all these challenges as a music teacher, especially an elementary music teacher. And so I had like, the guitar players weren't playing their chords in the right place. And the drummers weren't keeping the beat correctly. And the flag wavers couldn't figure out how to wave their flags correctly. And it was like, I'm telling you the biggest dumpster fire ever. So that was like one of the most challenging concerts I ever did. And what I realized after that concert is that I really needed to rethink the way I was doing that. So you know, concert season is approaching and probably, you've already kind of put some things into place a put a lot of things into place, really because figure, we are pushing towards the end of April, and your concert is probably precariously close. I have some tips for you because logistics and details, the planning the execution, concerts are a lot, especially if you're doing grade level performances. So it's a full time job all by itself. And then you have to add your other full time job in there. There's no extra planning time. You usually have to figure out what you're doing with your students while you're rehearsing because God forbid you get a substitute from your admin while you're rehearsing. Right. So you've got that class while you're rehearsing. Today, I've got some tips to help you navigate through three of the very tricky situations you'll handle during this super challenging, but also very fulfilling heartwarming time of year. Challenge number one, Bryson Tarbut. That music teacher likes to say that we are on music teacher Island, and that is legit. We don't get very much support from the other teachers from the staff. We're kind of a one person show and it is such a tough place to be in. Especially because we've already got this crazy schedule. So let me give you some possible fixes for not having enough help. Try to recruit some staff members to help you out. So I happen to be blessed with a part time choreographer on my staff. And there is also a guy who is a choir director at his church on my staff and You may have an actor, I used to have an actor on my staff. So I, when I first got to that school, I emailed the staff and I was like, Okay, I'm gonna need some help. Because, you know, I had been teaching like 13 years at that point. So I knew enough to know. And so to know what I needed, so I emailed the staff, and I said, I'm going to be looking for help. If you are willing or able to help, these are the things I'm going to need help with. And I would so love for a little bit of your time. So that may not work there. You may not find anybody that's willing to help. But if you ask at the beginning of the year, send out an email, then you are probably going to get somebody that says, Yeah, I'll help. Now, you're probably thinking to yourself, but Jeanette, it's not the beginning of the year, it's like almost the end of the year, what do I do so I still think it's okay to just send out an email and say, These are the things that I need some help with. And I am really struggling hard, and it would be so great. If you could give me a little bit of your time. And then again, remember to give details about exactly what you need. Another thing you can do is try getting help from parent helpers or volunteers. Parents are usually super excited to help with anything, especially where they get to see their kiddos. So if you send out an email to either your room mom coordinator, or your PTO president, or if you're talking about your choir, you could send out just a email to your choir parents and just be like, Okay, this is what I need help with. I love to use my parents for costume design, props, set design, anything like that. Now, if you're in a school where you don't have a lot of parental help and support, then my next suggestion would be talked to your high school choir director, talk to your high school drama coach, and see if there's some students who are willing to help out. I don't know about an Alabama but I can tell you in Florida, those kiddos those high school kiddos needed volunteer hours, and a lot of them were really excited to help out in the music program. So that was pretty cool. I even had a kid one time who like came in and tuned all my drums. So pretty cool. So some counties are going to have students that are needing volunteer hours. So it's a win win, it's a win for you, it's a win for them. You can also delegate some responsibilities to your students. So I love to use my fifth graders as setup and cleanup crew, I love to use them as stage crew, they get to dress up in all black. And they get to help out with props and scene changes if you're doing something like that. I've also had students design my program. One year, I did a beautiful like backdrop of a presentation because I can't remember it was some kind of weather or something. And we did a presentation and I had a student design that so it's good to have your students help out as well. And they get really excited about that. So that is kind of a cool and fun thing that you can do. So another thing that gets a little tricky is like my story from the beginning of the episode, balancing different skill levels. So students may have varying levels of musical ability. In fact, when I was in the midst of this particular crunch time, we were rehearsing and we were actually all the way in the high school, I hadn't had a chance to get my students together too much totally my fault, like I didn't go and set up a good schedule and that is something you want to do at the beginning of the year. That's not going to help you now, but that is something you want to do at the beginning of the year. So I had not done a good job of setting up a schedule and so I ran out of time and so we were putting everything together one of the days of the rehearsal in the high school and I had a kiddo who could not keep the beat. And so my son happened to be helping at that time and he gave that student a different beat. So there's lots of ways that you can balance skill levels and one of the ways you can do that is give students apart based on their ability like I did with this or like I should say my son did with this one student you can also give students some extra help so you can meet with them before or after school haha like you have time right but So, if you if you are really inspired, or you do have a little bit of extra time, then you can do some, or you can pair them up with a student to help them. And that could work as well. Or you could work with your students in small groups, and try to give them a little more attention that way. So because this is kind of that time of the year, where you're like, oh, my gosh, this is not coming together the way I thought it was going to. And this is what I need to do in order to get this done. So that is something that is very important to another challenge you're going to run into is students who are afraid to get on stage, they're nervous, they're over excited. And they're they're just really like, you will sometimes have kids that at the last minute or like Missouri, I can't do this. And you're like, Well, why not? Well, and they're not going to be honest with you, they're not going to tell you, in fact, sometimes I'll have kiddos that just stop showing up. And that's usually a couple of different reasons. But one of the main reasons is that they're nervous to get on stage. So I like to address that right up front. Because even for me, one of the strategies that I've learned in the last couple of years is if I'm afraid of something, I will say out loud, I'm afraid of this, and this is why I'm afraid of it. And if I'm not sure why I'm afraid of it, then I'm going to you know, do some deep thinking on it and try to figure out why. And then say out loud to yourself, This is what I'm afraid of. And this is why I'm afraid of it. And believe it or not, that helps. So if you can give your students that opportunity to talk about it either with you, or with another student, or just, you know, do some self talk with themselves. And you know that that can really help. Something else you can do is provide your students with lots of opportunities to practice in front of people. So maybe go and you have your have your admin come in and have them perform in front of your admin, or maybe have them perform in front of another class or have them sing to their brothers or sisters in their house. So as many opportunities as they can have to perform in front of other people. The last thing is if you're really having a struggle with the student, it might be a good idea to refer them to the school counselor, or someone else who can help them if they're struggling with anxiety. So those are some good ways to combat working with students who are nervous. So those are three challenges you're going to have during concert crunch time, and a couple of tips on how to find a solution to them. I am going to give you a bonus tip. And that is this. It is almost concert time and my kiddos don't remember the lyrics. So this is a struggle that students have always, and at least for me, I mean, I can't speak to everybody, but I can tell you that my kiddos always have a struggle with learning the lyrics. So I've done many different things, one of the things I like to do is add movement that's going to help them remember the words, or the lyrics I should say. So for example, I might say, we have this one song that we're doing right now to we may let there be music and in part of it, it says in the quiet of the night in the pouring of the rain in the thunder from the sky. So what I had them do is I had them do like for the word quiet, they were putting their finger to their mouth. Now you don't want to do this with really littles because that's going to happen on the stage. But with your bigger kids, that may be a good way to do it. And I'm going to tell you exactly how I do it. So I have them do the movement first. So for example, they put their finger to their lips on the quiet of the night. And then the pouring of the rain. I have them with their fingers pouring the rain, and then thunder I have them just kind of use their hands above their heads and make it look like thunder. Not that thunder looks like anything but you get the idea. And then so we'll do that a couple of times. And then I will always when I'm directing them, I will use those motions and that will give them sort of a clue in. The other thing that I like to do is I use a Google Classroom. And in the Google Classroom, my students have access to the list. lyrics, and they have access to the rehearsal music. So that gives them an opportunity, that's not going to solve all your problems because some of your students are never going to get on that Google Classroom. But it's another good way to do it. Another thing I like to do is I like to do what I call chunking. So if we use that same example, in the quiet, I say, in the quiet, they say of the night, in the pouring, they say, of the rain, in the thunder from the sky. So they I say part of the phrase, they say the other part of the phrase, and then we change. So they say in the quiet, and then I say of the night in the pouring, and I say of the rain, etc. That is another good way to do it. Another way you could do that chunking activity is to have your students do it themselves. So for example, you would have part if you've got your kids split into parts, and even if you don't, you can split them into parts. In the quiet is part one of the night is part two in the pouring, part two gets of the rain, etc. So you get the idea. So that is another really good way to help them. Remember, there's those lyrics. The third way is if you truly cannot get them to learn the lyrics I have been known to like, put together a poster with just the first couple of words of each phrase that they're forgetting, because it's not usually the whole part, right, it's just a little bit. So I will put something together. And, or I'll put like, maybe just a picture, or one or two words on a couple of different pieces of of you know paper and show them that before I have done that I really have. So there are lots of ways to get them to learn the lyrics. But the thing I want to emphasize to you is that the issues you're having are issues that every single elementary school teacher has music teacher has so don't think that you're doing something wrong, because you're not. So let's go back and do a quick review. So if you have limited support, you're going to want to try to recruit staff members, or parent helpers, or volunteers from your high school or maybe even your middle school, or you're going to want to try and grab your kiddos from the fifth grade and try and get some help from them. Challenge number two balancing different skill levels. So make sure that you give your students some help offers some extra practice for them. Have them work in small groups. And challenge number three is nervous students. So give them opportunities to practice in front of others. Make sure you encourage them to talk to themselves in a positive way and to admit what they're afraid of. And if all else fails, work with a school counselor or another professional. Well, that's all I have for you today. But before I go, let me remind you, keep learning, keep growing and keep being fabulous. You