Effectively managing your choir… how to deal with unruly singers

Effectively managing your choir… how to deal with unruly singers

More reminders, more reprimands, and more referrals are not the answers. To put it simply, "words won't work."

Imagine using your voice only for instructing, helping, and encouraging choristers to excel in learning. Disciplinary words, confrontations, and wasted teaching time are absent from your classroom. You and your students work together in a democratic environment where everyone is treated with courtesy and respect regardless of their behavior. You maintain student attention and cooperation without verbal intervention. And, most importantly, you enjoy teaching everyday

To maximize teaching and minimize disciplining - three key components:
1. A silent method for communicating attentive and cooperative behavior.
2. A student-centered, student-managed process for maintaining accountability, and
3. A four-level resolution plan for repeated misbehavior.
First, with the use of five silent signals, removes those elements of communication that often trigger negative and disruptive behaviors from students. Along with learning to respond to signals, students learn how to help and alert each other to be attentive without disruptive words.

Second, in addition to using silent signals to communicate attentive behavior, Like the silent method for communicating attention, the disciplinary process accomplishes its purpose without words or disruption. Since students understand well the consequences and the disciplinary process, there is no reason to further explain or intervene. Without tricks or strategies to remember, you will simply use the silent signals and the time-out response slips as students quickly learn to self- correct and make responsible choices.


And third, for students with repeated misbehavior, assign the responsibility for problem resolution on the student rather than the teacher. Help the students realize the effects of their misbehavior and to develop their own plan for becoming cooperative and productive members of the class. Students recognize that it is their behavioral choices, not the teacher's, that place them in the more restrictive disciplinary levels and that better choices will make it possible for them to return to participate.