Vulnerability & Girl Power!

The following is part of a series of journal entries of my experiences and reflections using LearningMethods in my private voice teaching. The two students followed are “Emilie” age 14 and “Courtney” age 13. Both students began lessons with me September 18th 2018, and the journal entries continue until December 4th 2018. All lessons were audio-recorded for the purpose of these reflective journals.

In today's lesson, Courtney and I explored going past her comfort level by singing in lessons the way she sings when she's home alone. I will be laying this conversation out like a script with additional comments as to why I chose the words/steps that I did in order for Courtney to feel safe in our learning space.

Today Courtney came into lessons and shared that she was feeling overwhelmed with the amount of school work she had to do, so we decided to make today’s lesson about having fun and forgetting about school work for half an hour!

After some warm-ups and singing through the song once, I asked Courtney for her thoughts singing it through and the first thing she said was, “I thought I was singing nice.” Then we high five'd because she got all of her entrances without any help!

I felt so happy when the first thing Courtney said, "I thought I was singing nice." Originally, she would always began comments with negative things she noticed and it's great to see her recognizing her successes without my prompt.

Me: How are you feeling about her progress with the low notes.

Courtney: Sometimes when I practice them not here I can get them, but then here I can’t. But then I think that’s just, shyness maybe? Because at home I’ll just belt out whatever I have in my mind…

I think it's incredible that Courtney was willing to share that with me, especially in terms of struggling with shyness.

Me: I definitely get that, I’m the same way when I’m in my car. Let’s try going from the second verse… And what I want you to do is face a wall or something, don’t pay attention to me, pretend you’re singing at home, and let’s just see what happens!

We sang through it once and then without giving any comments, I asked her if she wanted to try it again in order to allow her to get comfortable in an unfamiliar and somewhat vulnerable singing situation which she said yes. After the second time through...

Me: Did you do the experiment? Did you sing it like the way you sing it at home?

Courtney: Kind of. I didn’t sing super loud like I do when I’m home alone…

Me: You sing louder when you’re home?

Courtney: I sing very loud when I’m alone.

Me: Alright well then let’s go again, I wanna hear louder!

Sang again.

Me: Was that more like how you do it when you’re at home?

Courtney: Yeah, sometimes I’ll just do random stuff with it. Like, some other song I’ll just sing it differently.

Me: “Do you want to try singing this song differently?

Courtney: Uhh… Not right now.

Me: That’s ok! How did it feel singing it like the way you sing at home?

Courtney: I thought, for the most part, it sounded better.

Me: On a comfort scale of 1-10 how was it singing for you the way you do at home?

Courtney: I thought it was fine, well, when I sing at home I’ll sing quietly when I’m around people but when I’m home alone I’ll belt it but I don’t want to do that here because I’ll be really embarrassed.

Me: Why would you be embarrassed if you did it here? That’s not meant as a criticism, I’m actually curious.

Courtney: I think because sometimes when I belt I have voice cracks and then I would just be embarrassed people hearing me. Like, I’m fine with my instructor but like people outside… I don’t like random people hearing me.

Me: Luckily here the doors are pretty sound-proof that we can play around with stud and people won’t be able to listen. But I totally get that because I have similar experiences from time-to-time. I actually read that it’s more of a thing in girls, because the way we’re brought up we’re more hyper-aware of ourselves than boys. So I feel like I can relate to that on a girl-level. I live with three guys and they like to play drums/instruments in the living room all the time and that would impress me because I never felt comfortable to just do that in the living room where everyone could hear. And then I read a bunch of papers on gender in the music classroom and I thought, that makes so much sense that boys are less afraid of making music than girls are. So, first of all just know that’s a common thing, and that if you ever feel anxious or embarrassed about voice cracks then that’s totally normal.

Courtney: I totally can see that, it sounds pretty similar to what goes on with the boys in my music class. That's kind of cool to hear.