Usually when I write a blog post, I feel like I have something helpful to say. While I never have all the answers, I have learned something that works for me that might be helpful to someone else. That’s not the case today. Today I’m writing because I don’t have the answers. I’m stuck. I’m at a complete loss. I don’t know what to do, so I figured if I write about it, maybe I’ll come up with some ideas.
My problem? Getting students to commit and show up.
It’s a constant struggle. I tell the students the concert dates for the entire year at the beginning of the school year. I remind them about those dates constantly. We talk about it as a class. The students and parents get emails and reminder texts from me multiple times over the course of weeks and months. And yet, the day of the concert comes and I always have students who suddenly can’t come.
“Sorry Ms. Thorup, I have to work.”
“My driver’s ed range got rescheduled and I can’t miss it.”
“I have a basketball game/swim meet/track meet/soccer practice/any other sporting event.”
I’ve heard so many different excuses, all valid to some degree, but concerts are a big deal. We spend months working on the music and the skills to play that music. Each student is an important, contributing member of the group. If students don’t show up, the performance of the entire group suffers. How can I teach my students the importance of commitment and showing up for the group?
I know a lot of music teachers who will fail students for not coming to the concert, no exceptions. I can’t do that. My teaching philosophy doesn’t allow for that kind of punitive grading. I believe that students’ grades should mainly reflect the skills they’ve learned throughout the term, not their attendance at one night’s performance. Yes, I want them to come to the concert, but if they show up to class every day and learn all the music, that should count more than the one concert. Besides, I’ve found that many students aren’t motivated by grades. If they don’t get an A, that’s fine for them. They just don’t care.
(To be clear, I do include the concert on the grade but it’s not a large part of the grade. If students do everything else well, they can still get an A.)
My approach to increasing student commitment has changed through the years. For the first few years of my teaching career, I took the stricter approach. If a student didn’t show up, they would have to live with a lower grade. That created a lot of conflict. I found myself arguing with angry parents and taking things to the administration to settle. It caused me more stress than it was worth.
At that point, I tried to compromise. I allowed students to miss concerts, but they had to give me at least two weeks’ notice and do a makeup performance outside of class time where they dressed up and got other students from class to perform with them. I wanted to make it possible to make up points from a concert, but difficult and undesirable. While the number of students missing concerts stayed about the same, I didn’t have as many angry emails to answer.
With COVID uncertainties this year, my policies have become even more lax. Students can make up a concert simply by writing a self-reflection and evaluation of the group’s performance. While we did have a few more students miss concerts this year, quarantines and illness played a big part of it.
Maybe I need to just accept the fact that I’ll always have some students missing concerts and be okay with that. It’s more than just missed concerts, though. I feel like I’m missing the opportunity to teach my students about commitment and what that means. If you’re part of a group, the group depends on you. Breaking that commitment affects the whole group. If you have to back out, you need to give as much notice as possible. Learning to commit and keep commitments is an important life skill.
So where do I go from here? I don’t know. I’ll probably keep doing a lot of what I’ve been doing. I’ll continue to give my students plenty of notice so they can plan around performances. We’ll talk about what commitments mean and discuss priorities and how to decide what to do when a conflict comes up. I’ll teach my students the process of what I expect from them if they do need to miss a concert.
In the end, I’ll try to remember that while concerts mean the world to me, they may not mean as much to my students. Their priorities will be different from mine, and that’s okay. If I can teach them how to handle commitments more responsibly, then I’ve done all I can do.