Teacher William Woods has been teaching choir at Crown Point High School for 10 years. While teaching here, Woods has to help prepare choir students for a variety of concerts and musical shows. During the Winter season, Woods helps out with the Christmas Spectacular and the musical, and in this year’s case, Woods is helping with the Wizard of Oz musical.
To help prepare the students for both of these, Woods makes sure he adequately warms up with the choir students. Woods also makes sure that everything is going smoothly and the basics are in place so that it goes well.
“In the choirs we’re rehearsing, we’re warming up every day, we’re making sure that the mechanics of what we do are working, the body is ready, the tension is away, singing every day to make sure our voice is ready to go. Learning to read music so that the music we put in front of them at a professional level, they learn faster because they can read it and see it, and they can hear it,” Woods said.
For the musical, Woods focused on the singing part of it and did not have to spend too long preparing choir students for it. Woods spent the short amount of time needed, then went in and refined things about a month later.
“In the musical, one of the first things we do is start with vocals right away. So everything they do after that, they’re always singing. We only did four days of vocal rehearsals at the end of August, once we cast. Then we started moving through the show. I didn’t see them again for another month, and then I’ll go in and fix things and rehearse things,” Woods said.
To help prepare students all around for them to get the choir position they want or the role in the musical, Woods makes sure his students know the basics. Woods makes sure the students will be well-rounded so they can measure up to the position or role they want.
“What I teach them in choir is kind of the basis for what they need. When it comes to the musical, we post recordings and things online for them. When they come in for an audition, it’s what they have prepared, and it’s what they have developed character-wise,” Woods said.
To adequately prepare the students for the musical and Christmas Spectacular, successfully collaborating with the other fine arts teachers helps. Being able to smoothly
“We meet as a PLC, all of the other [fine arts] teachers do, because I’m the only one that teaches choir, Sletto’s the only one that teaches band, Zemelko is the only one that teaches orchestra, and Flue is the only theatre teacher. But we know that all of our groups interact with each other. We like to work together. We know that the more we work together and the more the kids work together, the better we’re going to be as an overall department,” Woods said.
Collaborating with other teachers also makes the productions much less stressful. Communicating with teachers and students and making sure everyone has sufficiently prepared helps the performances run smoothly.
“This is my 65th show between the schools I’ve been at Michigan City, Munster, and here. Munster and Michigan City used to do two musicals a year, plus two other plays. So this is much less stressful than those places. Plus, I did community theatre for 17 years. I mean, the stress is there, but if you prepare and you’re consistently preparing well, then once you get to showtime, it just automatically runs itself,” Woods said
Between preparing the students and talking with the other fine arts teachers to make sure the Christmas Spectacular and the Wizard of Oz go well, Woods is able to do it all, and well. Woods is able to make sure his choir students know the basics in class for the musical so they can succeed, and practices everyday for the choir performances. To be able to do this also affects how much stress Woods has; preparing well leads the Christmas Spectacular and Wizard of Oz to run effortlessly.
