Did you return from summer holiday with a fresh voice, ready for the new academic year ahead, and then wonder why, a mere few weeks later, your voice hurt? Does a tired voice add to a sense of gloom when you get home from school? Are you wondering if this is a permanent state of being so long as you are a teacher?
I’d like to offer some solutions to these voice problems that teachers face, and point you towards a healthier voice. The good news is that many of the solutions bring better mental health as well, besides the obvious benefit of being able to speak to your loved ones without pain and worry.
Challenges that teachers face
Anyone who has done even a small amount of teaching knows what a heavy vocal load teachers have to cope with: we do lots of talking, full stop. When we factor in that we do lots of talking over the sound of a class of pupils, and subsequently try to give instructions over a noisy rehearsal room where children continue to toot on their instruments, the challenge can feel permanent.
Often we must work in environments which aren’t conducive to good vocal health, like a dusty room, with boomy acoustics, picking up every virus the pupils bring.
At AOTOS, we see people struggling with these challenges all the time, and believe that an evidence-based approach to understanding the voice and its function can not only heal and prevent more harm, but also strengthen our fragile instrument’s system and increase stamina. These lessons can be applied to singing pupils, or to any voice user who would like to improve their vocal health.
It is worth remembering a few fundamental points about the voice in order to understand what is happening to us, and where things can go awry.
The voice is a wind instrument
The voice is a wind instrument: to play it, we blow air up a pipe. Therefore, every utterance of ours, whether spoken or sung, is a sweep of air.
If we were to blow air through an oboe and then crush the sides of the oboe, the sound we make wouldn’t be optimal. In the same way, if we squeeze our voice’s pipe while we try to play it, we won’t make our optimal sounds. Yet the stresses of the job encourage us to do just that, tightening our throat muscles.
Sometimes in an effort to be heard, we may try to pitch our speaking voices higher than we might naturally do. When we sing or speak higher in pitch, we stretch our vocal folds longer and thinner. This action is natural, but if done continually over the course of a long day or week, it can be exhausting for the little muscles in charge of the stretching.
But the good news is that all these long exhales that we blow up our pipes activate the parasympathetic nervous system, which lowers blood pressure and slows down the heart rate – the very opposite of the ‘fight, flight or freeze’ state of the sympathetic nervous system that our post-lockdown bodies may be feeling.
Many singing teachers will now offer the use of semi-occluded vocal tract sounds (SOVTS) as a tool for creating more efficiency in our breath patterns, but these sounds have also been shown to reduce swelling on the vocal folds, making them great for both warm-ups and cool-downs. Try exhaling on a low, breathy, hummed (v) sound, and notice how your breath is flowing.
Take the first step
As in Alexander Technique and many types of counselling, the best way to create a new habit is to notice what your current habits are.
- Notice yourself. Are you in a rush all day? Do you ever have a moment to lower your shoulders, or remove your tongue from the roof of your mouth?
- Notice your pitch. Do you speak at a high pitch, or low in your voice? When Year 5 continually chat, do you drop your volume to get their attention, or end up trying to compete?
- Notice what position you are in at your desk or piano. When doing the bulk of your talking, are you twisting in your chair to face the pupils?
- Notice your environment. Do you teach in a dusty room? Do you have access to water throughout the day?
- What are the acoustics like in your classroom? If it’s boomy like a bathroom, does that makes things better or worse? Is there a noisy fan running while you teach? Do you have noisy neighbours in the next classroom?
Once we notice what our habits are, a simple regimen of breathing and stretching can form the basis for going back to voice use as Mother Nature intended. As we would hope for our pupils, we can be kind to ourselves.
