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Bring A Dude To Choir Day

Last Thursday was bring a Dude to Choir Day. After one of my initial posts about Dude Choir back in the fall, someone commented and asked me if I allow students not in chorus to come to Dude Choir. This time in the morning has been reserved for guys in my classes, but this person gave me a great idea….why not invite other guys?

I told the boys a few weeks out that we would be doing this, and encouraged them to invite their friends that they thought might enjoy coming in. The incentive?

 

Donuts, of course.

 

The visiting guys were rewarded a donut for attending, as well as my own students for convincing their friends to come with them. I am not above a little well-intentioned bribery!

Goals

I knew when I was figuring out how to approach this that I wanted to accomplish a few things:

  1. Show guys not in our class that chorus isn’t scary, and that it can actually be fun

  2. Keep ‘em moving as much as possible

  3. Approach the lesson in a way that would not be intimidating, and provide easy successes for our guests.

  4. Teach a few “chorus basics”

  5. Acknowledge and thank our guests for showing up and hanging out with us at 7:20 on a Thursday morning.

  6. Ideally, get a few boys interested in signing up for chorus next year!

The Lesson Plan

I created this lesson around what my current students already know, because I wanted them to be confident models for the visiting students. If you want to know more about each activity, and I’ve already written about it in previous posts, I’ve added hyperlinks that will take you straight to those corresponding posts :)

 

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I videoed the entire experience! Unfortunately, YouTube didn't like it when I tried to upload everything all at once, so I've split it into 4 parts. Excuse any janky video editing, and feel free to watch if you want to know exactly what it was like!

What They Learned (Hopefully)

In just 30-ish minutes, we were able to teach our guests:

  • Singing posture

  • Steady beat

  • Listening and responding

  • Body movement and expression

  • Exploration of different vocal ranges

  • Three simple, easy to learn rote songs that can get stuck in your head all day (believe me, I know. I was editing this video to go on YouTube, and heard my husband humming Alfred the Alligator on the couch next to me)

  • Chorus is fun, and that it’s totally cool guys like them(fingers crossed!).

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