On Valentine’s Day every year, the McLean High School chorus traverses the school throughout the day, singing popular love songs to celebrate the holiday. This year, the tradition, dubbed ‘Singing Valentines’ continued and was a celebrated event by McLean students.
“I enjoy going to different classes and seeing reactions, especially those of the freshmen,” senior choir member Zoria Waller said. “Because it’s their first year, some of them think Singing Valentines are interesting and some of them really enjoy it.”
Singing Valentines is a longstanding custom, with many years of singing making it an integral part of the McLean community.
“The choir students have been doing it since before I started teaching, and that was 29 years ago,” chorus teacher Linda Martin said. “It started around the time that McLean was opened, so it has been around for the majority of the school’s history.”
There is a lot of preparation that goes into Singing Valentines, such as choosing the songs and rehearsing them until they are performance-ready.
“We spent a lot of time deciding how we wanted to sing it, whether we wanted to improvise the parts or if we wanted to use sheet music, Waller said. “Once we decided to go with sheet music, then we rehearsed as much as possible to perfect our songs.”
Chorus students spend Valentine’s Day performing songs that they selected. Their day is dedicated to delivering the songs ordered from others as a Valentine’s Day present.
“We had to get here before the school day started,” Waller said. “As soon as we ran [our pieces], each choir had certain periods to go to. We had a big stack of [Singing Valentine] orders to get through, so we went hallway by hallway.”
This creative custom not only generates revenue for the choir program but also benefits the school.
“Singing Valentines are a good way for people to see an aspect of McLean that they maybe don’t always see,” senior choir member Alexandre Stephant said. “It’s fun for teachers and students, and so it adds festivity to the community.”
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