08/01/2026
New article out on my Substack… but I’m posting the whole danged thing here too because, WHY NOT? (Also, when I said I would be posting less frequently because I’m Out Of Office? I somehow gave myself permission to sit down and write a whole thing that came to my brains while I was running beside the lake so … LIFE IS WEIRD.)
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I know a lot of folks use the summer to catch up on their professional development.
Which: yeah. Welcome to the Best-Laid-Plans Club, of which I am the President.
So, FROM MY TABLE IN A COTTAGE IN NORTHERN ONTARIO, here are a few thoughts about how to read voiceped texts (well, all texts, tbh… but, like, let’s keep it specific for now, mkay? ) critically.
And by critically, I do not mean:
BE MEAN.
FIND THE FLAWS.
MAKE A LIST OF EVERYTHING THE AUTHOR IS WRONG ABOUT.
I mean: pay attention to the assumptions underneath the information.
Notice the lens through which the text is written, so that you can interpret what it contains with intention and decide whether, how, for whom, and under what conditions that information might actually be useful TO YOU.
Because no educational text is simply a neutral collection of facts.
And voiceped texts? Perhaps especially not.
Because: We voice pros are a delightfully complicated little bunch: Not only do we tend to be highly trained and know a tremendous amount about singing and performing, we also often hold advanced degrees and have had impressive careers. (I mean, the way we can discuss the role of the aryepiglottic sphincter over lunch like it’s nothing? Truly wild.)
Buuuut: most of us were trained primarily as performers and artists, not as educators, educational researchers, curriculum designers, or scholars of teaching and learning.
Which means that we can be extremely knowledgeable without necessarily having been taught how to examine the assumptions underneath that knowledge… or underneath the ways we think it should be taught.
So, when we write educational texts, we often default to writing manuals.
Here is how the voice works.
Here is what you should listen for.
Here is what the student should do.
Here is how to fix the thing.
And -OF COURSE- manuals can be useful.
But knowing what to do (or what to tell a student to do - ahem) is not the same as understanding how to support learning.
Soooo… when voiceped authors make choices about what matters, what counts as a problem, what outcomes are desirable, what the teacher is responsible for, what the student is capable of, and what effective teaching is supposed to look like? Those choices often reflect some not-so-teaching-and-learning-based lenses that are kind of doing a LOT OF WORK in the background while pretending not to be there at all.
Ahem.
So: here are three lenses to watch for when/if you’re doing some summer (or any, tbh) professional development. Learning to notice them can help us become more intentional about what we take from the information we consume and what we might just choose to leave on the page.
1. The Moral High Ground Lens
There is an objectively correct, appropriate, good, beautiful, efficient, natural, or healthy way for a body or voice to function or sound and movement toward that ideal is inherently better.
This lens shows up when we use our expertise not to say, these choices may serve these outcomes, but to communicate which choice is best.
(Or, in some cases, to communicate that there is only one choice … oops!)
Textual clues that an author may be employing a Moral High Ground lens include words such as:
optimal
The optimal inhalation for singing is…
appropriate
Choose appropriate repertoire…
healthy
Especially in discussions about children, adolescents, belters, or any singer whose choices are being treated as particularly in need of -ahem- adult supervision.
must and should
Teachers must include…
Students should learn…
Also: correct, proper, ideal, natural, beautiful, good and, sometimes? efficient.
These words are not inherently suspicious, obvs.
But they are worth noticing - especially if an author has not clearly named the outcome against which something is supposedly optimal, appropriate, healthy, or efficient.
Other clues include:
Aesthetic preferences (hi there, “dropped jaw,” “open posture,” or particular tonal quality) being presented as physiological truths.
Genre-specific conventions (hi there, vibrato, tonal clarity, or a particular kind of onset) being treated as universal standards, OR as evidence of “optimal,” “healthy,” or “sustainable” singing.
Differences in tonal outcome, posture, movement, breathing, or coordination being described primarily as deficits, compensations, dysfunctions, or things to be corrected.
The student’s goals, identity, context, and desired artistic outcome being assumed. (Because, every singer has a matured or coordinated instrument. And every singer wants a clear sound. Or need to be able to read music. Or has the same relationship to effort, discipline, performance, and their own body.)
So.
Notice how this lens tells teachers what they are supposed to tell students… for their own good.
Notice how the information is presented not as a set of possible choices whose usefulness depends on the singer, the context, and the desired outcome, but as guidance about how teachers can (and should!) help singers make the RIGHT CHOICE.
Right.
Aaaand, once again: I am not saying that the information itself is not useful.
I am saying that when we employ information as if it represents the moral high ground, we miss the opportunity to support singers to understand their options, consider the possible outcomes, and make choices for themselves about what they want for their own voices.
2. The Knowledge Download Lens
The more knowledge the teacher possesses, and the more accurately they can transfer that knowledge to the student, the more effective the teaching will be.
This lens shows up when teaching is framed primarily as the movement of information from the person who knows to the person who does not.
The teacher knows the anatomy. The teacher knows the physiology. The teacher understands the acoustics. The teacher can hear what is happening. The teacher explains it clearly. The student receives the explanation.
ET VOILA: learning achieved.
Except… IS IT?
Textual clues that an author may be employing a Knowledge Download lens include phrases such as:
Teachers need to understand…
Students need to know…
Explain to the student that…
Teach the singer how to…
Once the student understands…
The teacher is responsible to educate the student about…
Again, none of these phrases are inherently problematic.
The question is whether the text treats the delivery of accurate information as if it is the same thing as learning.
Other clues include:
Increased subject-matter knowledge being presented as the primary (or only. ouch!) path to becoming a “better” teacher.
The clarity or accuracy of the teacher’s explanation being used as the main measure of whether teaching (and, therefore, learning) has occurred.
The student being positioned primarily as the recipient of the teacher’s expertise.
Very little attention being paid to what the student notices, interprets, tries, tests, rejects, adapts, remembers, or transfers into another context.
“Knowing about” singing being conflated with learning how to sing.
The teacher doing most of the explaining, identifying, evaluating, and deciding.
Activities being justified according to what the teacher intended to teach, rather than what the student is actually learning.
A great deal of attention being paid to the information itself, with almost no attention paid to what happens between hearing the information and being able to use it.
Notice how this lens tells teachers that the most important thing they can do is know more, and then communicate that knowledge more effectively.
Which: enormously flattering to those of us who enjoy knowing things. Tee hee.
But information is not pedagogy.
Information can inform our teaching. It can expand the possibilities available to us. It can help us ask better questions, notice more, and make more informed decisions.
But students do not receive our knowledge and automatically convert it into embodied skill.
There is a whole-ass learning process missing from that sequence.
And when that process isn’t referred to in any way, it’s really easy to mistake I explained it for they learned it.
Aaaand again: I am not saying students never benefit from information.
OF COURSE THEY DO.
I am saying that when we employ information as if the transfer of knowledge is the teaching, we miss the opportunity to attend to how students make meaning, develop awareness, test possibilities, build skills, assess their own progress, and learn to make decisions without us.
Because the goal is not for students to become increasingly dependent on our knowledge.
The goal is for them to become increasingly capable of using their own.
3. The Diagnose-and-Prescribe Lens
Effective teaching consists primarily of identifying what is wrong, determining its cause, and selecting the correct exercise, cue, or intervention to fix it.
This lens shows up when the central work of teaching is framed as “solving the singer.”
The student sings. The teacher listens. The teacher identifies the problem. The teacher determines what is causing it. The teacher chooses the tool that will correct it.
Aaaaand the better the teacher becomes at hearing, diagnosing, and prescribing? The more effective their teaching will be.
Textual clues that an author may be employing a Diagnose-and-Prescribe lens include phrases such as:
Listen for…
Identify the cause of…
Correct the problem by…
Use this exercise when you hear…
If the singer does X, have them do Y…
Develop better ears…
Build your toolbox…
Learn to troubleshoot…
Take the guesswork out of teaching…
Which: allll of my very favourite marketing language alll in one place right there. 🙃
Other clues include:
Teaching being presented as a predictable sequence of: problem, diagnosis, solution.
Vocal outcomes being treated primarily as evidence of something that is wrong rather than as possible choices.
Exercises being mapped directly onto perceived faults, as though a particular sound reliably reveals one cause and requires one intervention.
The teacher being positioned as the primary interpreter of the singer’s experience.
Success being measured mainly by whether the “undesirable” sound, behaviour, or coordination disappears.
Better listening being framed as synonymous with better teaching.
Uncertainty being treated as a failure of teacher expertise rather than a normal condition of working with complex humans.
Very little attention being paid to the student’s own observations, hypotheses, choices, or assessment of what changed.
Very little attention being paid to whether the singer can reproduce, adapt, or transfer the learning without the teacher diagnosing the next problem for them.
Notice how this lens tells teachers that their value lies in being the person who can hear what is wrong and know what to do about it.
And listen (see what I did there?): diagnostic skill IS useful.
The ability to notice, interpret, hypothesize, and draw on our understanding of vocal function can absolutely inform our teaching decisions.
Buuuut information about what may be happening does not, by itself, tell us how to support learning.
And a system that helps us move more efficiently from perceived problem to prescribed solution is still a system of prescription; not necessarily a system of pedagogy.
Once again: I am not saying that we should never identify a problem, offer an exercise, suggest a strategy, or use our expertise to narrow the field of possibilities.
I am saying that when diagnose-and-prescribe becomes our primary teaching model, we miss the opportunity to help singers develop their own attention, awareness, experimentation, assessment, and decision-making.
We can be really good at “solving the singer” while completely missing “supporting the singer” in front of us.
So, what do we do with all of this?
To be clear (and as I have now said approximately one hundred thousand and three times): I am not arguing that everything written through one of these lenses is wrong, useless, or morally suspect.
That would, in fact, be a rather Moral-High-Groundy way to read an article about the Moral High Ground Lens.
(Which: I love me a little thematic consistency but perhaps not quiiiiite that much. lol)
I am saying that information NEVER arrives through a completely neutral lens.
And when we are not aware of the lens through which a text is written (or the lenses through which we ourselves are teaching) we are far more likely to adopt them without choosing them.
We begin to treat one outcome as inherently better.
We mistake explaining for teaching.
We confuse diagnosing and prescribing with supporting learning.
And because these ideas are often presented as simply what good teachers do, it can get reaaaallly tricky to imagine that there are other ways of using our expertise.
Ways that help singers understand choices rather than merely comply with them.
Ways that make the learning process visible rather than assuming it has occurred.
Ways that support singers to observe, assess, experiment, decide, and become self-directed (rather than teacher-dependent) learners.
Reading critically offers us the space to be intentional about whether or not we want to fold an author’s assumptions into our own teaching.
Take the time and space to ask:
What does this author believe effective teaching is?
What do they assume the teacher is responsible for?
What do they assume about the learner?
Which outcomes are being treated as desirable… and who decided that they were?
What possibilities are being offered?
And which possibilities seem to be missing?
Fraaaands… We cannot change the ways that we teach if we cannot see the assumptions those ways are built on.
But once we can see them, we can examine them.
We can decide what is useful, what is contextual, what needs to be adapted, and what does not belong in our teaching at all.
And we can choose principles of teaching and learning that help us become the educators we actually want to be…
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If you wanna read it with all the formatting that makes it, well, readable? Go on over to my Substack (link in comments). And subscribe if you wanna get future articles from me.
ALSO! The Summer VoicePed Sale is ongoing with
➡️ $200 off the VoicePed 101 Library Yearly Subscriptions until 15 August (automatically applied at checkout).
➡️ 50% off all VoicePed consults until 31 August (with code SUMMER50)
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