S1: E17 Part-Singing with Georgia Newlin

Part-Singing with Georgia Newlin
Season 1: Episode 17

Georgia Newlin Bio

Georgia A Newlin, DMA is an independent Music Education Consultant. She has taught in early childhood and public school music positions for fifteen years and at the collegiate level for sixteen. Currently, Georgia is called upon as a conductor for choral festivals, as a clinician for choral workshops, reading sessions, and intermediate grade methodology, as well as a consultant for curriculum planning. She teaches musicianship, conducting, and ensemble in Kodály programs at Indiana University, University of Hawai’i, and James Madison University.

Georgia is Past President of the Organization of American Kodály Educators and is a member of The VoiceCare Network. She has been a presenter for numerous music associations and conferences at local, state, national and international levels. She has had articles published in the Choral Journal, Orff Echo, Kodály Envoy, and Southwestern Musician, among others. She served for three years on the Music Educators Journal Advisory Committee for the National Association for Music Education.

Music Is Elementary has published her book, One Accord: Developing Part-Singing Skills in School-Age Musicians, as well as her lesson plans for teaching music literacy through choral singing in The Crooked River Choral Project. Georgia is also published with the Ruth Dwyer Choral Series from Colla Voce. Georgia holds a Doctor of Musical Arts in Pedagogy from the Hartt School at the University of Hartford, a Master of Music in Music Education with Kodály Emphasis from Holy Names University, and a Bachelor of Science in Music Education from West Chester University. 

She considers herself most fortunate in that, through her vocation, she has spent her life making music with others.

You can view Georgia’s current schedule at sites.google.com/view/georgianewlin.

TRANSCRIPT FROM THE SHOW

Jessica: Georgia, thank you so much for talking with us today.

Georgia:  My pleasure.  I'm glad to be here.

Jessica:  So glad to have you.  I would love to know what your path to becoming a music educator was like.

Georgia: Well, interesting enough, I grew up in a really large extended family. and we all sang and played at all of our family gatherings - you know, Christmas Eve, 4th of July, picnics, reunions, funerals, weddings, like you name it.  My dad played banjo.  His brothers played guitar, bass, piano, organ.  All of my siblings, all of my cousins sang.  And then eventually we all started playing instruments and singing. And so it was just kind of in my blood.  I went to Westchester University in Pennsylvania as a tuba major and a string bass minor, believe it or not.

Then I taught elementary for a few years, but I knew that something was missing because I just kept teaching from like holiday to holiday with not really much content other than songs.  And so then I took an Orff/Kodály graduate class during the summer with Jane Pippart Brown.  She encouraged me to go study at Holy Names University, which I did.  You know, I went there in 1987 and completely changed my life like usually it does for most people.  I studied with Sister Mary Alice Hein, with Rita Klinger, with Ed Bolkovac, Ildikó Herboly-Koscar,  Lenke Igo. I sang in choirs with Eva Vendrai and Gabi Thesz.  And I even took two summer workshops with Mrs. Erzsébet Hegyi so I just ended up really being steeped in the Hungarian philosophy and musicianship.

Then I taught for another 4 years in California and another 8 years in Pennsylvania.  And then I went to the Hartt School at University of Hartford to study with John Feierabend and Clark Sanders and so, that's about as in a nutshell as I can do.

Jessica:  That is very concise!  How did you go from tuba and string bass to elementary music?

Georgia: Well, interestingly, when I first got out of college I applied for high school marching band jobs because that's what I really wanted to do.  But at the time in 1984, I couldn't get hired as a woman who wanted to teach marching band, but I wasn't totally broken hearted because stepping back from that, when I did myself students teaching, my first student teaching was in high school marching band and I had a great time and I really, really liked it.  And then I went to elementary school and the first week I was like, "Ohh..." but then by the end I was like, "Hey this is really where the stuff happens!

Jessica: Yes!

Georgia: Like if you're really going to teach, this is the place.  And so after being turned down for a couple of high school jobs,  I was like, 'I'm going to try elementary' and I got hired right away. And the rest is history!  Although I will say out of my 16 years of public school teaching, 8 of those I was an assistant marching band director so I did both.

Jessica:  You did both.  That's so neat.  What an amazing group of educators you got to study with and learn from.

Georgia:  Yes.

Jessica: Yeah...just a...wow... amazing.  And a couple years ago, you created a resource called One Accord that is for part-singing.  And so I wondered what brought about that particular interest in creating that resource for educators?

Georgia: Originally it started out of desperation.  So when I first started teaching, I'd have my choir and I'd try to teach half the choir the melody and try to get the other half to be quiet.  Or do a worksheet.  Then I'd try to teach the second half the harmony and try to get the first half to be quiet or do a worksheet.  And then the melody people could sing the melody and the harmony people could sing the harmony, but as soon as I tried to put it together, basically they all just sang the melody or worse, they all sang the harmony and then you didn't even really have a song.

And so, really as a young teacher I really started to try to figure out 'what is it that I'm not doing right with these choir students?'  And it took me a couple years to realize it wasn't about my fifth and sixth grade choirs.  It was what I was doing in Kindergarten that had to lead to what they were able to do in fourth and fifth grade choirs.  So I literally spent, you know, 13 out of my 15 years trying to figure this out.  And by the time I was done teaching public school, I felt pretty strongly that I knew what I was doing.  And then I went to the Hartt School to do my doctorate and you have to have a dissertation and everybody is like, 'you have to choose something that you love, that you're gonna be able to live with, um, and this was the thing I had really been thinking about for a long time.  So it just, you know, culminated.  The dissertation was really the culmination of the 15 years of work that I had been doing with young singers, so...

And then it just took me another 15 years to get it all together and into paper and find a publisher and get it to really say what I wanted it to say.

Jessica: I love this resource.  It's one that I use.  I think a lot of times resources and new educational materials come from desperation and from our struggles to figure out how things work and going 'I need something for this.' And going 'well, I guess I'll figure it out.' You know?

Georgia:  Right, right.

Jessica:  I'd love to talk a little bit about part-singing.  And I love that you went back and really realized that it starts in kindergarten.  That it's not just going to automatically be there with our older students.  We have to build that knowledge over, over the years.  In order to teach children to sing, we need to decide what tools we're going to use with them to support their learning of reading music.  And what are some of the tools you use for teaching musical literacy?

Georgia: So for me it starts with movable do, solfege with la minor because I want students to not only be able to sightread, but to hear harmonic function and I think that works best for young people. Beat function, rhythm syllables.  So to be honest I don't use traditional 'ta' and 'ti-ti' syllables.  I use something that Betty Bertaux and Lauradella Foulkes-Levy  created when they were at the Children's Chorus of Maryland.  And it's a cross between the Gordon idea and the Kodály idea.  And 'ta' is always the beat. 'Ti' is always the beat division.  'Ki' is always the subdivision.  So it's beat function not visual function.  I think that young students should learn to sing probably in German and in Latin when they're pretty young.  And I think that you can do that with easy canons, beautifully composed pieces of music for children.  And then definitely folk songs in the language of the students that are in your schools.  So I would say those are the four biggest sets of tools that I use.

Jessica:  And I'm curious.  What is it about the German and Latin languages?

Georgia:  For me, it's that they can sing the vowels like with the Latin, it teaches them to sing the pure vowels.  And so we can do that through colors like the, instead singing "Ewww," but "Ooo."  And we can use the word 'blue' and we say it very properly and then they get the 'oo' sound coming out. So I think it's really vowels work, that I love those languages.

Jessica:  In your book, you talk about part-work and part-singing because they really are two different things.  So what is the difference between part-work and part-singing?

Georgia:  Sure.  Part-work is the ability to perform and maintain your own part in music while something else is being performed simultaneously.  And it could be other instruments or it could be hand signs or it could be body percussion.  Or it could be something rhythmic or something melodic from someone else.  Or even vocal.

Whereas part-singing is the ability to sing and maintain your own part while another vocal part is being performed.  Like two-part music to multi-division music.  So part-singing is a type of part-work.  It's just really more specific to what we try to do as choral educators.

Jessica: How does part-work prepare students for part-singing?

Georgia: Part-work is the basis of good musicianship whether or not... maybe you teach through second grade or only fourth grade or you don't have the opportunities to have choir.  I think it doesn't matter.  I think the part-work is the good musicianship foundation.  From keeping the beat, the beat division, performing the rhythm, combining those three elements in multiple ways, to doing things like adding rhythmic or melodic ostinati or rhythmic canon.  Those things are a great foundation.

It also includes - part-work also includes the activities that allow young musicians to practice audiation, such songs as echo songs, dialogue songs, and call and response songs, as well as performing songs in phrases through like antiphonal phrases or chain phrases allows young singers to participate in a song, but not have to sing the entire thing.  So it gives them down time to hear and to process, but then they have their turn by just singing fragments of songs.

Jessica: This one's kind of a tricky one to answer, I think.  Because you have to really know your students.  How do we...how do we know students are ready for part-work and then how do we know from there, if students are ready for part-singing?

Georgia:   So I think just making sure the fundamental skills are in place.  And having children demonstrate that by describing things to you, whether they use musical skills or not, but just in their own words, demonstrating through in movement, doing comparatives: fast/slow, high/low, loud/soft, whether they can keep the beat for you.  And whether you can keep the division in two and the division in three and at the same time they're keeping the beat.  And I think really specifically - most specifically through most of those activities - having the children be able to distinguish things that are  the same, things that are different, and things that are similar.  Same's really easy. We sing a little tune:

We sing a little tune:  Do do do (mi-re-do)

And we do it again:  Do do do (mi-re-do)

And they can tell you that it is the same.  Then if we do:

Do Do do (mi-re-do)

Do do so (mi-fa-la)

They know that that is totally different.

But if we do:

Do do do (mi re do)

Do do do (re mi do)

And it's so similar, that's the tough part for students. And I think we need to spend more time on having them identify similar things because once they're ready and call tell you or show you - same, different, similar - then they're really ready to do part-singing probably.  I think the other is that they really have to demonstrate that they can use their voice for singing and speaking and to understand that it's a muscle that has to be exercised.  And the third thing would be that they have to be able to sing beautifully in unison and sing beautiful in unison, and sing beautiful in unison.  I think a lot people skip away from that way too fast.  They have "oh my kids have been singing in unison" and they do an entire concert totally in parts.  And I think it's unfair to students and it's unfair to the audience.  Because they, in a certain sense, really miss the true gorgeous sound of whatever age those children are, so...

It's really the demonstration and the unison that is the foundation for part-singing.

Jessica: And I think sometimes pressure on educators to have all this part-singing out there and using constant challenging music when there's such a beautiful simplicity in unison singing.  And unison singing is not necessarily easy!  In One Accord, you share this really wonderful four part sequence that leads students toward being ready and able to part-sing.  And I would love to talk about those four modules.  Um - you've got the readiness, the singing, the part-work, and the part-singing. Um - and we can talk a little bit more about those. So - um - can you share more about the readiness module; about comparatives and voice and singing and speaking.

Georgia:  Sure.  For me, comparatives really starts with the babies and mostly it's them demonstrating with their body.  So, for example, if I want them to demonstrate fast and slow, I don't go into theory, I don't use big words or anything like that.  I just tell my students something like:

"I'm going to put on a piece of music.  It's written by a composer named Mr. Rimsky-Korsakov.  And it's about a bumblebee.  And when you hear the bumblebee flying, you make your body like a bumblebee and you move around the room like a bumblebee without touching anyone or anything else.  You just put on the music.  You let them move."  When they stop, you ask them for words to describe what just happened. Most of the time they're going to tell you fast because they've basically been running - ha!  I mean you gave them permission so why wouldn't they?!

Instantaneously, as soon as we discover that tempo in their body, I will put on something like Kabalevsky's Pantomime from 'The Comedians' which is very slow.  And I have them move around the room like a troll and they have to take giant steps.  And then when the music stops, they talk to me about the troll - and it was low and it was loud and it was slow.  And then we can talk about how the bumblebee was fast and the troll was slow.

I've seen a lot of student teachers make mistakes - I observed this.  My student teacher was playing a Sousa march as some first grade students walked in the room.  And they did a beautiful job.  They filed in line and they sat down where they were supposed to be. They marched until it was time to start marching.  And the student teacher said to the first graders, "Boys and girls, was that fast or slow?"  And of course the answer is...well, it all depends!  Right, because if I play Flight of the Bumblebee that Sousa march is slow.  If I play The Pantomime, that Sousa march is fast.  You must always do both comparatives whether it's high or low.  Both in the same day.  Both right after each other.  If it's fast and slow, both in the same day, both right after each other.  So I think that's the most important thing about comparatives.  And I think they shouldn't always have to sing.  I'll use Garage Band and do something fun like put Jingle Bells on and then I'll do a hyped up speed of Jingle Bells. And we're doing Jingle Bells and it's fast.  Then I do ah, you know, augmented speed of Jingle Bells and we do a Jingle Bells super slow.  Same song, but we're doing fast and slow.  And to do comparatives that way.

Jessica: Let's talk about the singing module.  What are some of the things that you would use within that singing aspect?

Georgia:  So unison singing is probably best to start with all the cute, adorable, little songs that have three notes or four notes or five notes and just have them singing beautifully together.  And sometimes unison singing can be everybody in the class singing unison, but sometimes unison singing can be half of the class singing in unison and the other half of the class listening to whether or not they are singing in unison.  And it's possible that when you're trying to have half the class singing in unison some of the discussion might be, 'so-and-so's voice is lower than everyone else's voice.'  Or 'so-and-so is using a speaking voice and isn't singing.'  And I think those kinds of conversations are really important to have and not, not telling a child they're wrong or bad, but simply, 'Yes, you're using a speaking voice.  Let's see if we can get you to use a singing voice.  Or you're singing lower, let's see if we can just move it higher.  Even with unison singing, it's got all kinds of levels of depth of discussion.

For things like echo singing, you know, there's all kinds of - oh gosh - there's lots and lots of echo songs.  Johnny on the Woodpile is probably one of my favorites for the little ones.  And just to get students hear you first and take a breath, and then sing is tough for some students.  Because they're not used to just being quiet and then listening.  And then, you know, being expected to do what they heard. So... As you could tell, or pull out of this, a lot of the foundation is really listening.  Good singing is at least 50% good listening.  And so we have to put the good listening in.The use of the voice - how to sing in unison, how to sing beautifully, how to breathe. And combine those two and then that'll lead to good singing and good part-singing.

Jessica: For the part-work module, there's really kind of the two elements: the rhythmic and melodic part-work.  Can you share about that?

Georgia:  Sure.  Most people who are/have done their Kodály levels will be very familiar with the rhythmic part.  I went all the way back to the beginning on purpose in case people weren't really aware that there is a sequence for teaching beat and beat-division.  And so, really the rhythmic part-work starts with keeping the beat.  Uh- doing things while you're sitting still and then the beat by walking around and then the beat through moving parts of your body.  And then having students sing a song or say a rhyme and keep the beat division.  Whether it's divided in two or three.   And then you can have half the class keep the beat and half the class keep the beat division.  And then switch.  Then adding a rhythm.  And when I'm talking about rhythm, to start with, I'm talking about children clapping the way the words go, not necessarily rhythm names.  I hope eventually that heads into rhythm names, but just working on clapping the way the words go.  And one of the things that I found is I had students.  Um - I, of course, stole this from somebody in a workshop, but I apologize I don't know who to credit because it's been so long ago.

But have the children put their hands literally right in front of their mouth and gently catch the way the words go as they're coming out of their mouth really made a huge difference for me than children trying to clap down in front of their body.  But just catch those sounds that come out of their mouth.  It really improved students clapping rhythm for me.

Jessica:  Interesting.  Almost like the closeness of the hand being right here and that visualization.

Georgia: Yes. And that way they only have to move one hand because the one hand is underneath their mouth like holding on and then the other hand.  So it actually helps them in terms of physically clapping.  From that then, we add ostinato that are rhythmic.  We add multiple rhythmic ostinatos, rhythm canons, body canons.  So what's interesting is you can start with the beat in kindergarten or first grade.  It depends how often you see them a week and go all the way through rhythm body canons through your 4th and 5th graders.

Or if you do those things like you have middle schoolers, you might just be able to rip through all that stuff in a month because of their cognitive thinking.  This is a just a fun challenge for them and you just want them to experience so that you as the teacher can name it for them.  And then high schools - my spouse teaches high school.  And she does all of these things with her ninth grade women's choir and her ninth grade men's choir.  Even though they've, a lot of them have been in choirs in elementary and middle school, but it's just a quick review and it's putting the vocabulary really specifically, cognitively, into, um, literally in their faces so that they use the vocabulary the older they get.

Jessica:  The last module is part-singing so the polyphony, the homophony...

Georgia:  Part-singing is where, sort-of, all the hard stuff happens, but I tried to layer it so that it wouldn't be so painful for the students or the teachers.  In the book, there's a part that's marked Canonic Singing and then there's something called Canon, and then there's something called Catch and then there's something called Round.  And in the large sense of the word there'll all the same things.  It's basically the same skill.  But canonic singing is to start with your young ones.  Your first graders can do this.  They can do this with like Snail, Snail or Goodnight, Sleep Tight or something like that.  So it's not a true canon, but they get half way through the song and then you sing canonically and they understand it.

Then when you get to canon, those are probably true composed canons whether easier or harder.  A catch is a canon that has words from one sentence that catch words with another sentence to form, uh,  another meaning.  Usually double entendre.  Um, and then, rounds, while technically polyphonic because all rounds are canons.  We perceive rounds homophonically because rounds are specific to a particular harmonic progression.  So they sound different to us even though technically they're in the same family.  So just to go through those as an example.

I think when we do things like partner songs, again I'll harken back to my student teachers.  Or any of these.  People try to sing the song and then the skill in the same day.  Or if there's two songs they try to teach both in the same day and so the hard part - probably the hardest part for the teacher about this sequence is - you want to spend time so that the students know the song.  And it can just be an easy folk song that you've sung as a warm-up if you're doing it in say middle school or high school choir.  Or with your little ones it's just a song or a game that you play in class. And then once they can perform it without you, then you want to add in like singing a partner song with it.  Like they know Hot Cross Buns really, really, really well and so you sing Lucy Locket at the same time.  And then you teach them Lucy Locket.  And then a couple weeks after they've sung it a couple of times they can do half the class vs. half the class and put them together.

Some of the things like descants or countermelodies don't have to be sung if you have all young singers you can use your recorders or whatever instrument you play.  I often have my fifth or sixth grade recorder players come down and uh meet up with my second graders or third graders and do that exactly.  Play recorder descants or if they're playing clarinet or flute or something like that, play a countermelody on their instruments with the students. So it doesn't always have to be singing even though it's called the part-singing module.

And then homophony.  If you take it a little at a time works really well.  If you just add.  If you sing a whole song like Rocky Mountain and then only on the very last note of the song you sing two pitches instead of one pitch.  And it's glorious to them even though the children have sung the whole song in unison and you just add that second pitch it makes it so different.  So if you start homophony like that, you'll be in good shape.

The other thing, harkening back to when I was talking about earlier, when I first started teaching.  I was like, 'Oh! People say I should do these songs with parallel thirds because they're thirds and they're, you know, it should be easy because one is low and one's high.  And of course we know from research and just from personal life that parallel thirds for young people are really difficult to sing.  So the more that you can do.

Because similar is the hardest.  Right?  If you can do the same like canon they're doing the same just at different times or different like partner songs or descants or countermelodies.  But that's similar.  That parallel thirds.  Those kinds of things are hard so just really lead your way into homophony.  So for me, even thought harmonic endings which is what I was just talking about, about adding that extra note at the end, is all the way in the part-singing module, I do that in second grade.  So you just have to keep circling around and then we add more and more notes til we get to like chord root singing by third/late-third grade.  And then we can do by the time I had my students in fifth and particularly in sixth grade then they could do true vocal chording with three or four parts at a time, but that is because I learned to start in kindergarten so that I could get my fifth and sixth graders to do it.

Jessica:  Not rushing it is a great tip.  Taking it slower.  Really making sure they're secure on it before building.

Georgia:  Yes.  And always using vocabulary so that you can talk about this is, we're singing in canon.  This is canonic singing.  When you're in first grade and second grade, third grade.  When you have your choir and you're singing like Ruth Dwyer's J'entend le Moulin then you can say to them 'this part is in unison.  This second part will you please look and tell me if this is like a partner song or if it's like canonic singing.  And they'll look at it and they'll be able to tell you that it looks like canonic singing because one part starts later than the next but they're singing the same thing.  Right.  So we continually use the vocabulary with the students, they'll then be able to do self-analysis much better because they'll have the words to tell you what things really are.

Jessica:  I'm wondering - do the modules progress.  Do you go from a readiness stage to a singing to a part-work to part-singing and then do you go back again?  You start one piece and you flow and then you bring in a new concept and go through those modules again.

Georgia:  Yeah.  Correct.  It's actually both of those so overall it's kind of a hierarchy.  You know from readiness to literally multi-part homophonic and polyphonic music that hopefully our high schoolers are doing.  But at the same time... let's take an example of something like Twinkle Little Star.  We could use Twinkle Little Star for our unison singing and talk about how we all have to sing the same thing at the same time.  And then we could move into the part-work module and they keep the beat while they're singing Twinkle Little Star.  And then a week or two later they can keep the beat division while they're singing Twinkle Little Star.  And then maybe in second grade we'll add some rhythmic ostinato to Twinkle Little Star.  And then maybe at third grade we'll do a rhythm body canon with Twinkle Little Star by having them do the rhythm with stomping and snapping their fingers um... and half the class is singing and the other half is doing their body in canon.

And then we can move.  We could add a descant to it.  We can sing it in two-part harmony.  We could sing it in four-part harmony.  We could, um, realize it in the style of Bach and sing it in a polyphonic way.  So individually that song will move through the whole gamut of, you know, the entire sequence.  And yet, maybe while you're doing the third grade where you're doing the body canon with Twinkle Little Star you might just be starting like canons.  Or layered songs.  And so they sort of progress on their own and yet they also progress as a block.

Jessica:  It's kind of both. (laughs)

Georgia:  It is.  Unfortunately that's the answer.  The hard part about writing a book is in the book it has to be linear because you just turn from page to page.  And so one of the things, if people have the book, I really want to encourage everybody to read the first eleven pages because you don't actually teach in the order that it's laid out in the book.  You know, you want to mix rhythm and melody together in each lesson.  And you could go in order of the book, but then you would do some like really elemental songs with older concepts or older students.  Whereas if you're mixing them back and forth then it will be more interesting for the students. So.  Just as no matter how well I describe it to you and how good of a reader you are and you do what I say on the pages.  Until you do this for a couple of years, you just kind of have to work it out yourself which is the point of the book.  It's not for me to tell you this is what to do, but to say these are how you can do things and then you work it out how it's going to work best for you and your students.

Jessica:  I have two kind of questions about singing in general for students.  And I know these are things I've experienced as a teacher and that I've heard other colleagues talk about as well.  So I'd love your, um, ideas for it.  And for younger students I don't find their apprehension to be there, but I have found students who struggle to feel their singing voice and to hear their singing voice - who struggle to sing in-tune.  What are some ideas for how to help students who struggle to feel their singing voice being able to, to learn that?

Georgia:  Yeah.  So This.  You know you could do a whole podcast just on this topic alone or probably more than one, right.  Um...I think for me, it's giving opportunities for short solo singing as young as possible.  And be sure to instruct the students on how they use their voice.  Like we said before, "Oh Johnny, you used a speaking voice.  Let's see if we can move that into a singing voice."  "Suzie your voice is way higher."  You know I've had children drone and it's been up like two octaves higher than everybody else and you can just relax that and bring it down.  And to be very specific, not 'oh that was good' or 'that wasn't good' or whatever, but just to say, 'yes, you sang in unison with everybody.'  'Yes, you used the right words but you were speaking instead of singing'... etcetera.

I think we need to be truthful.  Math teachers are truthful.  And language teachers, spelling teachers are truthful when a child doesn't get it right.  And right, science teachers are truthful when a child doesn't get it right.  And we have a hard time being truthful.  Not because we want to lie to our students, but we don't want to break their hearts or make them feel bad.  And we just need to learn to speak to children in a way that simply says 'you did it or you didn't do it.'  Not in a way that hurts them.  So sorry - that's a whole soapbox in and of itself.  I think one of the other things we can help our students with their singing voice is to play recordings of gorgeous singing and ask those students who struggle with singing to specifically describe what they hear because often you'll find that those struggling singers sometimes just don't have their ears developed yet.  And they can't actually tell you what they've heard.  And until they can tell you what they've heard, they don't know what they're listening for.

And again, it's not going to be musical terms.  But, you know, just some way to describe it.  I think for students who really have a hard time to use some of those flexitubes and have them sing to themselves.  And I think most importantly to just keep saying to your students that singing is a learned skill, it's a muscle that has to exercise, and everyone has to practice.  So let's continue to practice.

Jessica:  And what about for older students who are more apprehensive about singing or even more so, I think they develop - by the time they're in middle school they either believe they're a singer or they're not a singer.  How do you recommend that we reach those older students and help them with that?

Georgia:  Yeah.  What's interesting is when I first started teaching, like when dinosaurs roamed the earth, everybody basically sang.  I mean, they just sort of did.  And I have just seen over the years is that it's younger and younger and younger than kids say, 'I can't sing.  I don't know how to sing.  My dad says I can't sing,' etc..  And I find that heartbreaking.  And part of that is from our entertainment. You know, we have shows on tv about singing.  And everybody on the shows are fabulous singers, but there can only be one winner.  And that's, I think, disgraceful in terms of how we treat people.  You know, and I think it's pretty oriented towards Americans more than a lot of other places in the world.  I think we have to talk to them, like I said earlier, singing is an acquired skill.  It's a muscle that has to be exercised, not an inborn talent and I have a friend who teaches and they do muscle movers at the beginning of choir every single day and it's literally the stuff from their sports teams.  They do jumping jacks and they do the swimming stretches and they do the softball leg lifts and all of those kinds of things.  And she makes them get all warmed up and then she says, 'Now we're gonna do the muscle in our voice.  And so the boys just keep going and the girls keep going.  And the warm up is this muscle because it's going with all the other muscles in their body.  Which I find really impressive.  She teachers middle school so exactly what you're talking about.

I think one of the hard parts about us, as teachers, is if children are uncomfortable or unskilled in singing, a lot of times it's because somebody didn't do their job when they were younger.  Right?  Singing is a skill that must be taught and some music teachers, somehow, all failed them.  In other words, every time everybody sang, the teacher just said, 'Great!' or 'Good!' but there was no correction of singing.  There was no discussion about 'are we all singing the same thing at the same time?'  And we have to just bite the bullet and we have to say these kinds of things to our students.

What we have to do with older students is take the pressure off of them for failure because that's what they feel if they feel like they can't sing.  They feel like a failure.  And now very carefully we have to say, 'Somehow, for some reason, you missed the skill of singing when you were younger.  Let me help you with the skill of singing that you actually can do. Without saying, 'gosh your elementary school teacher is terrible never taught' - you don't want to do that to your colleagues.  And we never know what's going on in anyone else's classroom.  That might be the least of somebody's worries in some really difficult schools to teach in.  And so, uh, no judgement there.  But I think with older students, just continually talk to them about somehow they missed the skills; let's help you with those skills.  You'll see some of the students here have the skills.  Some are building the skills.  Uh, let's all get in the same place and just keep relating the muscle of our voice to muscles in our bodies, the muscle of our brain.  Make it...this'll make a lot of music teachers mad...make it not special.  It's just another muscle that we have to learn to use.

Jessica:  I know you had said earlier about one of the biggest things for us is to be truthful.  That science teachers are truthful and math teachers are truthful.  That's interesting because it is so much that we're passionate about music and we want them to love it, but we do not want to hurt them or squash their interest in it.  And by being so generic in our comments, we're really doing them a disservice...

Georgia:  Correct.

Jessica: ...compared to being honest and, um, something I find with my students too, is just that relationship with the older students is key to helping them be comfortable with singing in the classroom because if they feel they're going to be taunted or teased then they're not going to open up.

I would love to steer the topics a little differently because I know you've had a lot of influence in the Kodaly, um, approach.  It's a completely loaded question and probably not one that it is easily answered but I'd love to know, um, if there's a way for you to somewhat summarize the Kodaly approach and share your experience with it or just tell us what you see that it provides for us as educators.

Georgia:  My interpretation of Kodaly's vision and philosophy, and this is exceedingly personal - I'm not generalizing for anyone else, is that beyond the musical elements and the prepare and present and practice and etc..., I really think that what Kodály was saying to us is that music is a distinctive form of human expression and that all societies interact within and outside of themselves through musical engagement.  And that through learning and understanding music deeply, people come to know themselves and they come to know others in a very meaningful way.  And I think to really paraphrase Kodály: the real goal of music education is to teach not only music literacy, but the whole individual in order to educate the soul.

Jessica: Yes!  I love that.  Along with the Kodály approach, there's so many things it is known for or if someone says Kodály approach we immediately think of the Curwen hand signs.  Or 'ta' and 'ti-ti.'  Or solfege and so in talking about how it really is to be about the whole person and the soul of the person - what do you think or how do you think all of these elements of the Kodály approach work together to not only build not only musical experience and understanding then, but to really build the whole person?

Georgia:  So I think part of it is discipline of having to work hard, of having to figure out how to use that muscle of your voice.  How to use your brain.  How to use your - uh - kinesthetic expression to show elements of music.  At the same time, coming together with all of the musical elements, to understand to read music and to write music and to hear music and to describe music and all of that combined with the human element of singing together.  Singing for each other.  Singing with each other.  Singing as a group to other people and sharing and expression that has been around as long as man has been around.  And to me, that's where through learning each little thing day by day it just adds on and builds on.  It becomes cumulative in that through musical expression we come to care about others more.  And through caring for others we become more human ourselves.

Jessica:  There's a quote that you have.  I think it kind of ties into all of this, but when I read it, I was just like, 'I love this!'  And you, you said, 'Curiosity has always gotten me into trouble.  It has also led to some of the greatest moments of learning in my life.'  And I think that just goes hand in hand with all that the Kodály approach encapsulates.  So how can we keep ourselves and our students curious?

Georgia:  For me, it's observing others to teach, right?  Attending conferences.  Learning about trends and education outside the area of music.  Supporting all of the arts.  Attending concerts.  Going to museums.  Joining in with other musicians at festivals or community ensembles.  And reading non-fiction to learn how things come about.  And how ideas have changed over the years that have led me to think about changing it up with how I interact with my students as a musician.  I think we have to be careful that music isn't our only thing, but that music is THE thing through which we view probably the rest of the world, but not to ignore the rest of the world just because of music.

I remember when I - uh - first interviewed for a job I had principals ask me 'Oh - what's the most important subject in school?'  And I knew that I was supposed to say music because, you know, my college professor said you always say music.  But I didn't answer music because I don't believe that that's true.  And I wasn't learned enough at the time to know what I meant by that.  But I do now.  And that is our job as music teachers isn't to make music the most important subject for everybody in the school.  'Cause it's not true.  Music was the most important subject for me, but it wasn't for my brothers and sisters.  Right?  And it is for some students.  And it's hated by other students unfortunately, but that's just the truth.  What the most important thing that we have to teach is to help young people learn to navigate through the world in a way that they're not so self-obsessed.  And that they continually help each other grow and become really interactive, productive, intelligent members of society.  It's just that I am personally best able to do that through music.  And so I think those are really... you know people are trying to ask the same question, but I think they're really two different things.

Jessica:  How do we challenge ourselves so that we can bring the best to our students?

Georgia:  I think we all have to spend time listening whether that's to conversations or music or just  silence or nature.  I think we have to talk to colleagues, to friends, to people we really disagree with.  We need to read things that inspire us.  We need to read things that make us really angry and think about why they've made us really angry.  And we need to write whether you're - I don't mean you have to be a published person - but write down ideas and think about my lesson planning is usually written like this and it's not quite right so I'm gonna rewrite it in a different way and to keep growing that way.  And do all of those things in addition to our teaching and that's... I think those are plenty of challenges to, to take up.  To just make ourselves smarter as a whole person rather than only as a musician, or as an educator or whatever - sister, parent, brother, friend, etc..

Jessica:  Yeah.  I think it's easy to nourish ourselves sometimes as educators and forget that we're people too.  Sometimes filling your cup with the things outside of the teaching world is - is just as beneficial.

Georgia:  Yeah.

Final Questions

1) Tea, Coffee or Something else that suits your fancy - Hot Tea for breakfast, Iced Tea for lunch, festive beverage before dinner

2) Song Artist Genre - Rosemary Clooney and her contemporaries 

3) What you do every day (or try to do) - think every day... spend a little bit of quiet time and think about something seriously;  love my family and friends really hard

4) Get in touch with you - sites.google.com/view/georgianewlin