Creating Ourselves: Social Emotional Learning in the Music Classroom

Guest post from Dr. Philip Silvey, Associate Professor of Music at the Eastman School of Music, and contributing composer to the Voices in Harmony choral series published by Hal Leonard.

In summer, I teach a curriculum seminar to graduate students. In the class, we reflect deeply on what is taught in schools and why. We decided it would be fun to ask an online Chatbot “What are the most important subjects for people to study to become better adults?” In less than a second, these five areas appeared on-screen:

• critical thinking
• problem-solving
• communication
• finance
• personal development

I was struck by how well these align with the three main competencies of Social Emotional Learning (SEL):

• Identity (personal development)
• Belonging (communication, relating to others)
• Agency (critical thinking, problem-solving, finance)

Even artificial intelligence recognized the kinds of life skills real humans need!

I believe participating in the arts helps people live better lives. Pursuing the arts in school yields learning outcomes that echo SEL competencies. According to arts education scholars and advocates, studying the arts in schools helps students develop attributes they don’t learn elsewhere. These include:

• Agency – the realization of self-capacity
• Empathy – recognizing and understanding the feelings of another
• Interpretation – realizing that different understandings can be equally valid
• Respect – appreciation for others’ perspective
• Connection – arts manifest our shared humanity

(Davis, 2012, p. 13) Notably, four of these traits (empathy, interpretation, respect, and connection) relate to social-awareness and relationships with others. According to arts education scholar Elliot Eisner,

“Education . . . is the process of learning to create ourselves, and it is what the arts, both as a process and the fruits of that process, promote. Work in the arts is not only a way of creating performances and products; it is a way of creating our lives by expanding our consciousness, shaping our dispositions, satisfying our quest for meaning, establishing contact with others, and sharing a culture.”

(Eisner, 2002, p. 3)

Studies in the arts foster ways for learners to assert and build their identities, or as Eisner puts it, “create ourselves.” In the past, I have proposed that participation in the performing arts gives students important occupations or identities:

• something to do (activity)
• somewhere to be (belonging)
• someone to be (identity)
• something of their own (ownership)

(Silvey, 2013, p. 1093) Taken together, these values underscore what many choral music educators already sense. As a colleague of mine often says, “I like what singing does to people.” What choral singing “does” is bring people together to contribute to the greater good by unleashing a part of their artistic selves.

I composed The Art of Being (SATB or SSA voicings) for this series in celebration of the 100-year anniversary of the Eastman School of Music where I teach. The lyrics capture the sentiment I’ve been describing: When you’re being an artist, you learn the art of being.

In choral ensemble singing, you study and perform compositions that have a beginning, middle, and end. Knowing when and how to finish something you started requires self-awareness and self-management, both important life skills. Here’s an excerpt from one of the SEL learning experiences I wrote for students to try as they learn to perform the composition:

The French poet Paul Valéry is credited with writing, “a work is never truly completed—but abandoned.” Others have applied this sentiment to works of art, a sentiment that rings true for me. As I work through revisions, part of me wants to stay in that realm, rethinking or debating every change I make.
In the end, I ask myself if I accomplished what I set out to do, even if it wasn’t perfect. Did I stay true to my intentions? Did they help shape my decisions? To me, the creative process is simply cycling through a series of ideas and decisions. The ideas come from sources of inspiration and I base decisions on my original or evolving intentions. So how does an artist know the work is finished? It’s always a judgement call. For me, I ask whether the work is compelling, convincing, or moving. Does it say or contribute something meaningful?

What effect does this seem to have? Why might I have initially written it that way? Now for comparison, sing the ending as written. What impact does the louder ending have? Discuss the merits of each option, seeing if you can hypothesize why I might have decided to make the change.

By inviting students to explore the two contrasting ways I considered ending the same composition, teachers can help students think about their own intentions and subsequent actions when completing a creative project, or when determining they have finished any task.

When we reach a point of completion, we can trust ourselves to say we’ve met our own expectations—call it good and move on to other things. The life lesson of knowing when to stop can serve students well. The Voices in Harmony series provides guidelines for helping students learn this and many more lessons that relate to the quality of their lives. These competencies will serve them long after they leave school and continue to artfully “create themselves.”

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Davis, J. H. (2012). Why our schools need the arts. Teachers College Press.

Eisner, E. (2002). The Arts and the Creation of Mind, In Chapter 4, What the Arts Teach and How It Shows. (pp. 70-92). Yale University Press.

Silvey, P. E. (2013). Imagination, play, and the role of performing arts in the well-being of children.

In A. Ben-Arieh, F. Casas, I. Frones, & J. E. Korbin (Eds.), Handbook of Child Well-Being: Theories, Methods

More works from the Voices in Harmony series

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Philip Silvey is Associate Professor of Music Education at the Eastman School of Music where he teaches the Treble Chorus, Choral Arranging, and other courses in music education. He has served as clinician and adjudicator in numerous states and directed state honors choruses in Maryland, Virginia, New York, and New Jersey.