We are rapidly approaching one of the peak seasons of the school year for concerts and performances. Depending on your school you could be in the midst of it already. It’s a thing of beauty to have a school filled with the sounds of young musicians creating music, some of them for the first time, and performing in ways that truly brings out the best in them.
Maybe you’ve been to many of these concerts, or maybe school concerts are fairly new to you. If you’ve been to many, perhaps this is your first time as a parent, or your first time attending as a school administrator or some other new role within a school. Imagine, you’re sitting in a school auditorium (or gymnasium or cafeteria) listening to a group of young people, many of whom you know, and they are making music that touches you. You find yourself in a moment of admiration – for the student musicians, and for their teachers who collaborated with them and facilitated this moment of beauty. What you say to these people, teachers and students alike, in this moment can be delivered with the best of intentions, but can often times reinforce an understanding of music as a nicety, as simply something that is entertaining, or as something that shouldn’t be pursued by all.
Before I look at some ways to go about complimenting the musicians in your school, let me give you two of my least favorite things to hear:
What you do with the kids is magic!
Those kids are SO talented!
Here’s how miriam-webster.com defines magic:
1 a : the use of means (such as charms or spells) believed to have supernatural power over natural forces
b : magic rites or incantations
2 a : an extraordinary power or influence seemingly from a supernatural source
b : something that seems to cast a spell : ENCHANTMENT
3 : the art of producing illusions by sleight of hand
When you tell a music teacher that what they are doing is magic, you are telling them that they are doing something supernatural: something that regular, normal people just can’t do. If you’re not telling them that, then what you are telling them is that what they are doing with children is a trick. It’s merely sleight of hand.
Commenting on the students’ talents has a similar feel to the first definition of magic, in that it implies that the children who just produced a fantastic concert did it because deep down inside they are different than other kids. If the students didn’t have this talent inside them, then the concert wouldn’t have been successful. The natural progression of this thought could also be that if the concert wasn’t successful, the students must not have been talented.
Both of these statements miss the mark in one extremely important way: What the students and teacher have done required a lot of hard work. A beautiful musical performance is not about magic and talent, but about time, dedication to a craft, and a skilled, systematic approach to working with young people. Any compliment given to a teacher of musicians should recognize that and not minimize it. Comments about talent or magic reinforce the notion that some people have it, while others do not.
If you’re familiar with the concept of a Growth Mindset, and the work of Carol Dweck, you will also note the harm that such comments can have on young, developing musicians. In short, comments focused on talent, or that reinforce the notion that we’re born with particular skills, are characteristic of a fixed mindset. Dweck notes that when we reinforce fixed mindset notions, we hamper our ability to grow and improve. This is especially true of comments praising someone for a particular success. When we focus on outcomes only, instead of praising the process taken to get to the outcome, we reinforce a fixed mindset.
Focus on the process
So what should you say? Consider the objectives of a school performance and the processes involved in getting there. If you’re not exactly sure what these are, I would recommend reviewing the National Core Arts Standards (NCAS). These standards identify 4 key artistic processes that all students should be focused on, one of which is Presenting/Performing/Producing.
Within the area of Presenting/Performing/Producing we identify 3 specific Anchor Standards:
- Select, analyze and interpret artistic work for presentation.
- Develop and refine artistic techniques and work for presentation.
- Convey meaning through the presentation of artistic work.
These standards can provide an excellent place to start with providing feedback to students and teachers after a school performance. Rephrase these standards into questions for yourself to consider as you listen to a concert:
- Did you enjoy the selection of music? Why? Did the selection of music resonate with you in a particular way? Was it evident that students were involved in the selection of the music to be presented?
- Did you enjoy the interpretation of the music? If you were familiar with the piece before hand, was this performance different in some way that made it stand out to you?
- Have you seen growth in performance from one point in time to the next – from the beginning of the school year to this concert, or from a previous concert to this one? Be specific – what was better? Praise the performer on the WORK that was put in to improving.
- Did the performers convey meaning to you in their performance? Was the meaning and message that was conveyed relevant to you in a particular way? Did the performance allow you to gain more understanding about the lives or world view of the performers?
Most importantly, recognize that what performing artists do is hard work, and that work deserves to be praised.
Bradley Morrison 