How to Ruin a Perfectly Good Sing-Along

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I love class sing-alongs. Or, more accurately, I love my idealized version of a class sing-along.

The song comes on. Everybody starts singing. And not because I told them to. They just do.

Look at that! They’re not mumbling, they’re SINGING! Kids are out of their seats. Acting out the lyrics! Some are standing on chairs. I'm not sure why Alex is rolling on the floor but he's having fun! And absolutely no one is worried about looking stupid. It is utterly magical, everything I had hoped teaching could be.

In my 10 years of teaching, what I just described happened exactly one time.

See? It can happen. Justin and friends singing along in ¿Puedo ir al baño?

And the problem is, once I experienced that bliss, I desperately wanted it to happen again.

So, I built singing into lessons. I encouraged it. No, that’s not quite accurate: I required it. And when their enthusiasm didn't match my preconceived notions of what fun should be, I countered by ramping up my own energy to absurd degrees, thinking I could force it. And that, of course, only made them want to sing even less.

The quieter they got, the more unhinged I became.

And let me tell you: there is a fine line between encouragement and bullying, and I’d be lying if I said I hadn't crossed it from time to time.

Because, yeah, somewhere along the way, I got it into my head that a student sing-along was evidence that everything was working.

They know the song! They’re engaged! They’re learning Spanish!

But here’s the thing: Singing is not proof of language acquisition.

It's easy to get hoodwinked by music. After all, there are so many things to love about a song that have nothing to do with language.

There’s the melody. The rhythm. The instrumentation. The voice. The beat. The artist. The production. All of those things can grab you before language even enters the picture.

Heck, even the words themselves can fool us.

There is something incredibly satisfying about a string of crisp little syllables that fit perfectly into the rhythm. We can learn those sounds. We can belt them out at exactly the right moment.

And we can absolutely have no idea what any of it means.

So while a student singing along enthusiastically is a beautiful thing, we have to be careful about the conclusions we draw.

Singing is engagement. And engagement is wonderful. But it is not the same thing as acquisition.

Engagement is that elusive unicorn that, if it actually appears, we need to drop everything to pursue it. Because, of course, finding engagement is hard. In fact, it is the hardest thing to attain, particularly at middle and high school.

So we can't shy away from trying to get engagement. It's simply that it can't stop there.

We need to harness engagement as a pathway toward acquisition, rather than treating engagement as proof that acquisition has already happened.

So, should students sing in Spanish class?

Abso-frickin-lutely. If they want to.

Which might sound strange coming from me, because since 2019, we’ve made karaoke versions of every major Señor Wooly music video. I love these things.

Check out the karaoke version of Feo. Just don’t make anybody sing.

These karaoke videos are weird. They’re funny. They have bouncing heads.

But I can think of few things I’d recommend less than turning your class into a mandatory karaoke competition.

Because the moment you require singing, you’ve drastically changed what's going on in your students' heads.

One kid is terrified, thinking: Oh no, am I gonna have to sing?

Another kid actually kind of wants to sing, but now he’s thinking: If I sing, are my friends going to make fun of me?

And suddenly all that wonderful engagement you were trying to harness has been replaced by something else entirely: utter terror.

But, I mean, we made the karaoke videos, right? There has to be a use case for them, right?!

How I’d use karaoke videos in Spanish class

Put one on during passing period.

Seriously. That’s my recommendation.

Students wander into the room. They’re talking to friends, looking at their phones, finishing homework. Meanwhile, the karaoke video is playing and you’re standing at the door greeting students.

Most notably, you are not standing next to the whiteboard saying, “HEY EVERYBODY, LOOK AT THE KARAOKE VIDEO.”

Now, before we get any further, I want to be clear: It’s very likely that nothing magical will happen here.

A few kids might start watching. Maybe they make fun of the bouncing heads. Maybe they half-watch while talking to each other. Some will do their homework. Some will ignore it entirely.

But you might get small groups of students standing around and actually giving this thing their attention. Taking it in. Silently watching. And that is enough. It gives them an opportunity to form classroom culture around the song independent of you.

Now, I hesitate to even say this, because I definitely don't want you getting your hopes up, but if you use this strategy, every once in a blue moon, you might get the thing you desperately wanted all along:

A sing-along.

Except this time, you didn’t make it happen.

They did.

Again, I need to be clear: Don’t get your hopes up. 99 out of 100 times, nobody is going to sing, okay? NO ONE IS GOING TO SING!

And that’s okay.

Because the goal was never to trick them into singing. It was to give them a chance to interact with the song and lyrics outside the boundaries of an assignment, on their own terms, away from you.

That’s the thing about engagement: you can create the conditions for it, but ultimately, it has to come from them.

And if they actually do start to sing?

For the love of God, don’t start singing with them.

Related: Don’t Click Play Yet, my argument for protecting a student’s first experience with a new Spanish video.