A choir teacher helps students learn to sing in an ensemble setting, and must be certified by the state. They may teach all students or only those who elect to take choir, and may teach at multiple schools. The teacher helps students warm up, learn techniques, and perform in public concerts. They may also give private voice lessons and coach students in school musicals.
A choir teacher is a music teacher who specializes in helping students learn to use their voices in an ensemble setting. This involves learning information about music and reading music, skills to manage the sound produced, and skills to interact with the other singers in the choir. Although children sing in a group in early grades, they are unlikely to be in a class called a choir class and therefore have a choir teacher until they are in elementary school, if not high school.
Like other teachers, choir teachers in public schools must be certified by the state in which they teach. To qualify for certification, they generally must successfully complete an education and music course at the undergraduate or graduate level and pass at least one exam. Choir teachers often have other skills in the music field, such as singing or playing an instrument.
In some schools, all students participate in a choir class, while in others, choir is an elective. This means that the choir teacher may be teaching different types of students depending on which setting is in effect. In the first case, it is likely that many of the students have no special training or special interest in the class. In the second case, students may have a knack for singing and an interest in taking the time to learn how to do it better. Schools with large numbers of students may have a choir as a level one class, leading to a higher level choir class. The choir teacher usually teaches a large number of lessons in one day and can see each group of students no more than three times a week.
In the choir class, the choir teacher helps students warm up their voices, learn singing techniques, and learn specific pieces of repertoire he or she has chosen as appropriate for the available voices. Students learn to listen to each other as they sing, and older students learn to sing in appropriate parts within the range of their voices, as the choir teacher determines. Often, the choir class performs in a public concert once or twice a semester.
Sometimes a music position is not offered as a full-time position at a single school. In this case, a choir teacher may teach at multiple schools in a district or across multiple districts. In addition to teaching choir lessons, the choir teacher may give private voice lessons during the school day as an elective or outside of school. Coaching students who have a lead role in a school musical and rehearsing choir singers is another role that may fall to the choir teacher.
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