Elementary Choral Festival

22 of our 44 traditional Elementary School Choirs performed in our one-day event, a 5-concert session festival celebrating our Elementary Choirs, supported by the teachers from the other 22 elementary schools and student volunteers from 2 of 6 traditional high schools. They are adjudicated and receive clinics by directors from 7 out of 11 traditional middle schools and 4 out of 6 traditional high schools. The performance brought in thousands of community members, filling our 930-person auditorium at all 5 concert sessions. Additionally, the event is televised.

1. To provide helpful and useful feedback to our elementary choir students and directors.
2. To give students from around our large district the opportunity to hear other ensembles they wouldn’t otherwise hear.
3. To bring the community together to celebrate the work of our elementary students and directors.
4. To celebrate the long-standing tradition of excellence in music education across our community.

There are many opportunities for our community to come together to watch and listen to our middle school and high school choirs, bands, and orchestras, but not as many opportunities to see where it really starts. Anytime a school district starts thinking about cuts, it can be easy for them to cut elementary music as an “extra,” but we’ve really worked to embed our elementary music and elementary choir as an important part of our community.

August: Identify performing ensembles and reach out to directors; Reserve space

September: Create a performance schedule, considering that each concert session should include a mix of schools from different feeder areas

October: Communicate schedule information to performing staff

November-January: Collect concert information from each performing ensemble, including song titles/composers/arrangers, group size, sound needs, and digital files of pre-recorded music; Organize Middle School and High School Adjudicators

January-February: Communicate with Stage Techs and Capitol Community Media (TV station); Organize High School Volunteers

March: Finalize Details; Event Set-Up, Event Day

Planning Committee (Approximately 10-20 hours per month, plus 14 hours on the day of the event): Program Associate for Music and Drama, Elementary Music Teacher

Execution (2-14 hours, depending on role)

Volunteer Committee: Elementary Music Teachers who volunteered additional hours

Adjudicators/Clinicians: All Elementary Music Teachers, Assorted Middle School and High School Teachers

High School and College Student Volunteers

Capitol Community Media (recording and televising); Social Media/Canva for Advertising; Transportation via School Bus to event; South Salem High School’s Rose Auditorium/lobby; Consistent Communication with Families across the district (pre-written information letters and permission slips); Information sent home in English and Spanish; Spanish Translation available during event; Sign-Language Interpreter; Parent Communication via ParentSquare

Clear and Consistent Parent Communication through Multiple Means, Facebook Posts leading up to the event with Pictures from prior years’ festivals, and Pictures of Choirs rehearsing for this year

• Secondary Choir Directors paid hourly for Clinician Services ($675)
• Elementary Choral Festival Chair paid $400 as per contract
• Food/Water for Staff and Volunteers ($350)
• Custodian Fees for Use of District Building on a Weekend: $400

Location Availability: Our original date had to be adjusted by one week due to location availability. The new date happened in the middle of a long weekend, so many students were unavailable, and teachers were unhappy that they had to work a long weekend. We suggested that teachers communicate about the event, communicate early and often with their families to avoid students missing the event, and we encouraged teachers to use one of the days off leading up to the event for a fun retreat to gain extra rehearsal time with their students. We also pushed out the date earlier on social media to encourage more of the community to set the date aside on their calendars. While we know that many people were unable to attend, we still managed to fill the space and are looking at moving to a larger space next year.

Yes! With one of the main goals being community exposure for our elementary choir programs, filling the audience at every concert session is a good sign that we have reached our community. An addition we added this year was to stream a live-feed of the concert (video and sound) into the lobby for families with young children and late arrivers, and we found that extremely helpful to our overflow audience members, as well. It was wonderful to have a strong showing of district-level leadership in attendance, as well as the Governor of Oregon.

Feedback from our community members is highly positive, with performing families bummed that they only get to perform every other year, and non-performing families excited to come back to perform this coming year. District-level admin share time and time again that they really appreciate getting to see the great things kids in our district are doing. The overall feeling surrounding the event is that, in a time where there is so much negative talk about education, we are able to bring something beautiful and positive into the conversation.

When this Festival was just a concept, teachers were wary to participate – they were worried about committing the time to another event, and feeling judged by their colleagues. Now that we are a few years into this event, teachers look forward to it – they enjoy getting feedback they can share with their students to help improve their practice and their students’ product; they love getting to hear how other teachers approach a song they’ve done before, and hear all new pieces they haven’t yet tried.

• The value of this project far outweighs the hardships.
• Find a large enough space to fit your audience.
• Find a couple of staff who are willing to do the behind-the-scenes work.
• Let teachers focus on their choirs/students.