We're entering school concert season and administrators, colleagues, families, and random strangers on the internet always seem to have a lot of opinions about school concerts. If you're attending a school performance in the near future, or are getting ready to comment or post online about school musical performances, here are some things to know from your friendly local music teacher.
1. The primary purpose of school concerts is for the student performers
Remember this is a school. Schools are for learning. The primary purpose of everything we do is ultimately for student learning- even when we do something fun, the reason we do fun things is to build community so students can learn better. Concerts and musical performances are no different. Students are learning how to perform. They are also learning musical skills and sharing those publicly. That means they may perform music you as an adult find boring or unappealing. There may be times that, especially at the elementary level, a student who may not have the same level of musical skill in a particular area compared to your own child will get a turn to perform. There may be parts of the performance that aren't performed perfectly, and there may be times when the teacher/ conductor/ director has to intervene to help the performers do something correctly. The performance may be at a time that's not very convenient for your work schedule, but is convenient for the performers (see the entire post I wrote explaining the educational benefits of daytime performances here). Before you criticize a teacher's choice, ask yourself what the students might be learning because of what happened.
2. Your job as an audience member is to support and encourage
When students are learning how to perform, they shouldn't have to overcome distractions or discouragement from the audience in order to do so. We want them to have positive experiences with performing to encourage them to continue their musical learning and foster confidence in public performances of any kind. No matter what you may actually think about the performance overall or your student/child's performance specifically, the only thing that should be coming out of your mouth to everyone involved is praise. Here are some examples of things you can say regardless of the performance:
- I loved watching you perform!
- You must have worked so hard! I loved it!
- I can't wait for the next one!
- I especially loved the part where you____.
- That was awesome! I'm so glad I got to see it!
There is literally never a time when it is helpful to criticize a school performance to the people involved in performing (students and teachers) unless you think there may be a discipline issue that you can help the director address. If you think your child/ student may have been misbehaving on stage, ask the teacher if it was unintentional distraction due to nerves or deliberate misbehavior and ask them how you can reinforce appropriate stage behavior going forward.
Other than that one rare exception, always praise.
3. Waving at or communicating with a student from the audience is distracting
I've had so many well-meaning parents and homeroom teachers try to get a student's attention to tell them to sing louder, remind them to smile, or just wave to let them know they are there. I appreciate the sentiment behind all of those efforts, but they hurt more than they help when it's during the performance. The priority is for the performers to be watching and taking their cues from the director, so let them handle those kinds of things during or after the show. If there is a time before or after their performance when they are waiting on stage, that's a great time to try to get their attention and let them know you're there by waving/ giving them a thumbs up/ remind them to smile/ etc. But never during the performance (even if they are not actively performing in that moment- they should be paying attention to the show, not you, so they don't miss their turn!).
4. Directors get way less praise than you think, so take a second to thank them
Colleagues, administrators, and family members very rarely actually tell the director they enjoyed the performance or thank them for all their hard work (it is always a lot of work to put yourself and your students out there publicly, no matter how simple or short the performance may seem), and it is incredibly demoralizing. Often, especially if a teacher has been at a school for a long time, you just don't think you need to say "good job" again when you already told them at the last concert. Or you just get busy and forget. Take a minute to give them a thumbs up from across the room on your way out, stop and tell them how much you appreciate their hard work, or send them a quick message (feel free to use the examples above).
Don't forget, right after the concert is not a time for any sort of critique, even in the form of questions, even if you are the director's evaluator or administrator. If you aren't the evaluating administrator, there is literally never a time when you should offer any negative feedback, constructive or otherwise. If you are, any negative feedback should be saved to discuss constructively at least several days, if not more, after the last performance is over and they have had a chance to recover from the stress and adrenaline of performing. Trying to offer constructive criticism, or offer suggestions for improvement, while the director is still coming down from the heightened emotions of performance, will never be productive.
I hope this helps anyone heading into a school concert to better support your child/ student in their musical and performance development! If you are a music teacher, feel free to pass this along to your colleagues/ families. If you are not, feel free to comment with any questions about "why did my music teacher do this", "what should I do in this situation", or any other questions about how to support your local school concerts and I'll do my best to help!
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