BABS Membership Development: Singing Courses: Pilot Training Day

Chorus Directors Certification Scheme - Teaching Day Pilot Course Report

The course was excellent & exceeded my expectations. Very well planned and presented.
Thank you very much. The whole day was so informative and entertaining.
A very valuable course. Excellent presentations – very able communicators held attention throughout
A fantastic course – very inspiring! A confidence booster.
Good involvement from everyone sharing ideas.
All outstanding!
Brilliant! All clear and helpful.
Wonderful tuition from superb teachers.
Thank you. This is a super course – exactly the kind of event needed.

So, what was it that attracted such glowing praise?

The Certification programme for Chorus Directors includes Teaching Skills as one of the areas of competence that need to be demonstrated as a Director advances through the system. On Saturday November 25th we ran a one day course in Coventry based on the Learn To Sing courses that have been used around the country.

The course was attended by 34 people from around the country and comprised 28 from BABS and 6 from LABBS. The Coaches for the day were Paula Williams, Mike Taylor and Neil Watkins and they were supported by Sue Loughran who handled bookings and logistics.

The day was primarily aimed at Chorus Directors and Assistant CD’s. The day started with some warm-ups and the attendees were then split into 6 groups for discussion and team work.

Following a general introduction the delegates went through a very condensed course on teaching. Led by Paula, this explored some ideas around: the qualities of effective teachers of adults; how to create a positive learning environment; the range of teaching strategies we might use to engage our singers in the learning process, and how to help our singers to retain the skills we are teaching.

Neil described briefly the content of the singing craft sessions to be delivered as part of the course, then Mike presented an example session, teaching the class about Resonance. We then broke for a well deserved lunch.

The six groups were paired up in three rooms with the task of preparing a 20 minute craft session that would be presented to the other group. Two presenters were chosen from each group to carry out the teaching task. The rest of the delegates were asked to note how the presenters used the planning and teaching strategies which had been taught in the morning during a 20 minute critique session. Then the other group presented their craft teaching and the process was repeated.

The course was concluded by a review of the day and a list of action points was made including the provision of notes on all aspects of the teaching and learn to Sing programme.

The course was highly appreciated by all attendees and they gave their thanks to all involved who had put in a great deal of time and effort on the presentations and the hand out’s.

The organising team agreed to put all their notes and programmes onto the Membership Development section of the education website at http://www.babs-education.info. This will include

Educators notes for presenters;
How to get people on the course and to keep them;
A week by week set of singing course notes for attendees at a Learn To Sing Course;
plus copies of all slides and notes made by each of the 6 discussion groups.
We will also be posting a list of suitable songs for Learn To Sing courses along with details of learning materials.

What next?

We plan to run similar one day events in the North and South of the UK in 2007. The delegates (who came from all over the UK) were asked if any of them might be available to help run such a course so as to spread the load. So, if you are a teacher reading this and might like to become involved in teaching how to teach then please contact Mike Lofthouse.

Thanks again to Paula, Neil, Mike and Sue who gave their time so willingly to help develop better teaching inside Barbershop. Thanks to Dyrck Lamble who provided excellent copies of the course material to give to the delegates.

Here are a couple of further comments from attendees

Mike

Thanks for arranging today’s course – absolutely superb, what an asset Paula and Mike are as trainers and Neil too with his long-standing knowledge.

Regards, Doug Powell Ocean Harmony

Hello Neil,

I really enjoyed the day yesterday. It was a lot to cram into one day really, but well structured and excellent content, a shame it wasn't better attended.

It is good to see BABS supporting some of the costs, given that the singing course is probably the single most effective way to recruit!

Thanks and cheers for now, Monica Funnell