Students at Hamburg that have participated in the Concert Choir for multiple years have experienced major changes. Due to the growing numbers of choir members, the choir went from the Choir room to the auditorium, since 100 people could not comfortably fit and learn to sing in one smaller room. With the larger room, people have found it is harder to learn the new choir material. However, with the second semester, the choir officers and leaders have come up with new organized ways to teach such a large group without losing necessary time. Instead of purely teaching one voice part while the other two rest, the choir officers came up with the idea of having stations, where people learn the notes in one station, the rhythm is taught in another, and the dynamics are taught in the last station.
During one of the virtual days, these leaders met after choir to discuss what would benefit the choir. One of the many things discussed was the phone usage, and how it is keeping the choir from focusing; along with the misuse of time, leading the choir to be bored. Landon Poulios says “on day 5, we are going to learn how to read music so Mrs. Jackson can focus on one group while the other learns on their own,” allowing the choir to use their time better than they are.
Twighla Keppley, the tenth grade representative of choir, says that one of choir’s major struggles is “people keep talking while they are supposed to sing or listen to Mrs. Jackson.” She also mentioned the importance of only using phones to check the time, not play games or text friends. She said that the choir learned more of their songs in the first quarter because “it took the choir a quarter to get to know everyone and the environment, so everyone was rather shy and focused on singing.” She hopes that the song Baba Yetu by Christopher Tin turns out better than Veni Veni Emmanuel did, since both are in another language and have changing rhythms. She also hopes the choir has a mix of station and group time, since some of the choir learns better one-on-one, and others learn better with the entire choir.
