Interviewer: Matthew Tabor

Interviewee: Steve Grussendorf (steve_grussendorf@natronaschools.org)

Date: 11/29/21

How do you choose repertoire and curriculum for your class? How do you plan content

with your students in mind?

● Mr. Grussendorf wants to ensure that he is planning for all music education.

● He doesn’t want to program for just one year, but more often for four years so that

students can get experience from Baroque music, Classical, Romantic, Renaissance, etc.

● He also wants to choose pieces based off of his students. Hide what their weaknesses are

while showcasing their strengths.

I believe a lot of the answers given here are fairly strong. Trying to give students

exposure to many eras is very important. During my time in this class, I know it was difficult to

absorb a lot about specific information, but even now there are still things I learned in the class

that I remember.

How do you create a welcoming environment for students? What strategies do you use to

connect students to each other and yourself? How do you keep students coming back to

your program?

● In terms of recruiting, he feels that he doesn’t need to do very much at all. Kids hear

excellence when his groups sing or hear about stuff that they are doing and they want to

join.

● Talk to students. “They don’t care about what you know until they know how much you

care.” Which gets thrown around all the time but only because it’s true.
 ● Students will organize get-togethers with their groups so they can hang out and watch

movies. This builds a lot of friendships between members.

Recruiting is something that will almost certainly be difficult my first few years at a

school, unless the previous teacher left a very strong department. Even then, that will mean that I

have big shoes to fill, and if the old students do not like my new way of teaching, I may be out

recruiting anyway. Probably the biggest thing to remember is to try to not get discouraged if

student numbers drop. Determining whether the problem is the teacher, the engagement, the

music, or any other number of things is going to be something that will have to be figured out

by-case. I remember the get-togethers he talked about. In the highest choir we organized them

usually once a semester, sometimes more, sometimes less. It was nice because in a choir of

twenty there were enough people to find your smaller group but overall it was easy to feel apart

of something bigger.

What are your biggest ‘stressors’ related to teaching? What strategies do you use to

manage the stress of teaching each day?

● When teaching the non-audition choirs, discipline is extremely important. You need to be

the entertainer and the fun one to keep their engagement at all.

● The biggest one for other groups is just ensuring that groups are prepared for the next

concert. Sitting down and going through “I need this, this and this ready for December so

I’ll do that, that and that in these next rehearsals.”

● Discipline in higher choirs is often dealt with by the older students telling newer/younger

students to knock off the talking, or just reading the room.

I definitely think my own stressors would lie getting in front of class each day and saying

something that is relevant to the music that we are learning that can also be helpful and sensitive
to other issues students may have. Preparation for concerts is important, and it is definitely

stressful as it is what your employers may evaluate, but it should not be the end-all-be-all of your

music. Working to gain respect is also something I will need to work towards.

How do you structure curriculum around learning pieces for a concert throughout the

year?

● Similar to the last question, needing to have everything ready on time.

● It also deals with going into the curriculum and what’s inside of it. This includes tone

control, register control, and many more elements beyond this.

I perhaps should have grilled him a little harder on this question, as he never really

answered the first half of the question. I believe what he was trying to say was that curriculum is

a very diverse thing and many things need to be taken into account. In terms of piece

preparation, he believes repetition is a big player, which in some ways I disagree with.

What are your strategies for teaching a new piece of music to a beginning level group? How

is this different/the same with Intermediate and Advanced groups?

● With a beginning group, when you’re doing a big piece of music, the voice leading will

be much more traditional.

● Intermediate and Advanced gets much more complex with the voice leading.

● In a straight hymn you may be switching from chord to chord to chord, whereas in jazz,

you’ll be adding in “flat fives to passing chords” or other similar things.

● Plus, you’re obviously selecting pieces based on the general expected skill level of each

class but also the skill level of that specific group. If you have a weaker section then you

may try to pick easier pieces for that section, but you still have to push them to improve.

Bend, don’t break.

 Learning music in a non-audition choir is very weird. It’s been over half a decade since

the last time I was in only a non-audition choir, but we learned almost everything by rote my first

year of high school, and half the time I wasn’t entirely certain if I was singing the correct part. At

the same time, no one would have really cared if I wasn’t because few others were either.

How do you foster 'community' within your ensemble/classroom? What are some of your

favorite team building activities?

● For instance, he had a lot of new girls in the all-girls choir this year, and they probably

weren’t very confident yet. For this reason, he picked a fairly easy song to start the year

with, and they had the song down essentially instantly. After that, he moved onto much

harder pieces, and, at least in part due to their newfound confidence, they had zero doubts

and did very well learning the pieces.

● There’s a struggle between inclusive and exclusive concerts. Inclusive concerts allow

many singers of all skill levels to sing together to make a fairly high quality product.

● Exclusive separates singers into higher skill groups in order to refine a product even

further.

I believe this strategy of confidence-building is one he uses often. There were many times

that I can recall having one or two songs that were so easy they were almost boring in jazz, but

then turn around and have songs that were so difficult that even all these years later they would

probably be at least fairly challenging to learn. Elitism in choir is a very difficult problem to deal

with. It existed during my time in Mr. Grussendorf’s class, and it exists today at CSU. However,

being aware of this divide and trying to minimize it can be very important for the overall choral

community.

What are your 'go to' classroom management strategies?

 ● At this point in his career, he believes things kind of take care of themselves.

● The older students teach younger students ‘this is how this is.’ Even today, he was

rehearsing with a group with freshmen and seniors. The freshmen were being somewhat

loud and the seniors walked over and told them ‘Hey, you need to stop talking.’

● When you demand respect, and separate ‘this is our time for work, and this is our time to

play’. As a consequence though, that does mean you have to give them time to play.

● The one thing he will do when he wants to talk is to sit quietly in his chair, lips pursed, at

which point the class knows it’s time to stop talking and quiet down as soon as people

notice it.

I was hoping for a little more I think, because I have not hit the same point in my career

as he has. I will be walking into my first middle school teaching experience tomorrow morning

and I’m very nervous at how I will deal with the kids. I will try to demand respect, and I think

my lesson plan incorporates both work and play, but I’ll have to wait till tomorrow to see for

sure.

What goes into planning trips (visits to another school, festivals, competitions, tours, etc.)?

● Time needs to be given to kids to get the money. If they don’t have the money, they need

to have an opportunity to raise the money.

● You must always be very transparent with the kids and the parents about the money,

where it’s going, where it is right now, and more.

● Communicate with everybody involved to know what is going on.

● Money deadlines he usually sets for a week before his own deadline, but he knows some

teachers who will do two weeks.

 ● In Mr. Grussendorf’s class a Class Treasurer is elected to write receipts for students

turning in money, to break bills, and to put money away in the money box. This helps

him work on other things, but he said that they do not handle the full amounts of money.

A lot of what we talked about here was financial, and I think that makes sense. Money is

such a difficult thing to acquire for your school program, as there are so many departments

fighting for funding. Fundraising isn’t always ideal, but it often has to be done to give kids an

opportunity for a wider musical experience, so I believe they are worth it.

What are your strategies for handling a student who is 'struggling' in your class (apathetic,

poor attendance, rarely participates, etc)?

● Encouragement is a big deal. Saying “I noticed you, and I noticed your performance. I

know you can do better and I’d love to see it.”

● Attendance is more of the same. Walking up to a student and going “Gah! I really missed

seeing you yesterday, man. It makes a big difference when you’re there so I wanna see

you.” As soon as a student feels valued, loved and accepted.

I absolutely adore the attendance method. Making students feel, perhaps a little

guilty, but mostly feel as though they need to be here learning music and working on stuff

because if they don’t then “Mr. G will have a tough time without me.” is so simple but

absolutely brilliant. I definitely think kids would feel valued and important from this.

What are your thoughts on and strategies for building a more diverse, inclusive, and

equitable music classroom?

● Mr. Grussendorf always gets notes for special needs students with notes saying things

like ‘This is what they need, this is what you need to do for them.” His policy is to try to

treat them like anyone else in his class. He won’t do things special for them. That said,
 when it comes time for grading, he will absolutely give grade leniency to the child with

Downs Syndrome that can’t match pitch or the girl who is unable to vocalize effectively.

But he believes that overall treating them no differently will work a lot better for

increasing their enjoyment.

● He doesn’t feel that he needs to treat this student like this because of this. He feels that he

should treat all kids the same so that the kids feel that they are all equal.

● Kids will still come to you all the time and mention ‘Well, you have favorites.’ And he

admits that this is certainly going to be true. Every teacher is going to have favorites, but

trying to minimize the impact of this is important. He also mentioned that it’s not

uncommon that when kids come up to him and say this, the kid mentioned isn’t

necessarily his favorite, which is fairly funny. It’s also, hopefully, a good sign that he is

doing a fair job of treating people equally.

I can absolutely understand this philosophy. Getting treated like any other kid can make

such a difference in someone’s life, no matter why they might not be. There are instances in

which you need to help people out, but that is nothing abnormal and it doesn’t detract from the

ideal. As for favorites, I definitely think there are probably some favorites that I knew about that

I personally feel are right on the money, but I have never told him about. Perhaps if the others

like me who didn’t want to tell him we think we know his favorites had all told him, this idea

might change. But I have no idea for sure.

I believe there is a lot I can learn from Mr. Grussendorf. He was my first choir teacher

and I spent over half of my musical career with him. He absolutely changed my view of music

and made me excited to learn more about it. However, I believe that it is important to know that
he is not perfect as a teacher. In retrospect, I believe that we focused on performance and the end

result way more than we ever should have.

The information challenges a few things that I have learned since graduating from high

school. A lot of the things he said I agree with, but some things I feel as though he doesn’t

always execute in the classroom. It’s not easy to do both, but working hard to ensure that you are

is deathly important in my opinion.

My main takeaways are that a lot of this is very excellent advice. I’m glad that I will have

this saved to go back and look at later. I still believe that there are things that should be improved

upon in both my craft and his, but that is going to be true of anyone.