People First

I got very lucky. I have the best wife. She’s an amazing person, and one of the places it really shows is in her work. For the last several years she has been an elementary school music teacher in some really tough schools, and she’s amazing at it. She literally changes lives every day, and on top of all of that, she has no idea how good she really is, so she just keeps working harder and being humble and finding ways to get better.

Before she taught music, she worked as a behavioral interventionist at a child autism center in Colorado. That’s what she was doing when we met. (How do you not fall in love with someone who loves the same whiskey you do and tells you with a half smile that they make young children with autism cry for a living?) We talked a lot about her job, and one of the things that she was very passionate about (and still is) was people-first language.

In her line of work, the idea was that when we define a person by their disability–an autistic person– we put the focus on the autism rather than on the person. The preferred language would be a person with autism. We can still acknowledge that autism plays a role in the life of the person, but as an accompanying factor, not one that negates or alters what it is to inherently be a person. (More information HERE and HERE)

Back to the world of choir, how often would things be better if we practiced people-first ideas in our rehearsals and our classroom? I’ve seen conductors launch vicious personal attacks at singers in rehearsal for missing notes. I’m sure I’ve even done it once or twice. But would it make sense to launch those same personal attacks at people who were singing? I mean, come on… it’s only music! If they’re singers, then their job is to sing, and if they fail, then they are failures. But if they’re people who sing, then their job is to be people, and being a person requires a certain amount of struggle and failure. It’s inherent in the human condition! When we dehumanize people into just singers, and attack them for being bad at singing, they don’t actually stop being people. What’s worse is that a singer who is a singer and not a person becomes an object that is ours to utilize however we want to chase our own musical goals. We work so hard in society to break that exact pattern when it comes to race, sex, gender… we can’t afford to let it take root in what should be the most sacred and safe of spaces: our choirs. I’ve tried to make it a habit to check in every once in a while and make sure the people in my choir are people first, and it’s made a huge difference! I’d encourage you to do the same and check in now and then.

Edit: Click HERE for some ideas on how to keep people first in rehearsal.

Have ideas about people-first language? Experiences of feeling dehumanized in a choir, or feeling like your person-hood was celebrated in a way that built you up? Please share below!