Goals for 2011-2012

I have been turning my thoughts back toward school this week, as I gear up for the convention. Two things I want to do this year in my classroom, which will hopefully enhance the learning for my students have been rolling around in my head.

1. Play more recordings of GOOD choral singing for my students. It needs to be at least once a week. My students aren't listening to good singing by and large, and their idea of good singing and mine are often quite different. They need to hear what a good choir sounds like. Regularly.

2. Use my rhythm cards more. I made a whole set of rhythm cards when I was a student teacher that I used all the time when I taught elementary music. I haven't hardly used them at all as a secondary teacher, and it's a shame. I should be pulling them out over and over again, especially at the school where I tend to have lots of kids move in through the year. There are games we can play, and I can reinforce those music-reading skills which are so vitally important to the sight-reading process. I have taken it for granted that they'd be too easy, but I know there are some tricky ones in there, and I can mix and match... There are so many days when it's two weeks until a concert, and we know our music well enough to take some time out to do something else (and should for sanity's sake!), and I just haven't thought about those old rhythm cards enough. I need a magnetic chalk or dry-erase board, and then I'm good to go.

All it takes to implement either of these things is a little forethought and planning. How hard is that?

Ask me again when the school year is rolling and I've got a hundred other things going on!

One of these things is not like the others...

One of these things just isn't the same. Can you guess which?


We often think Daisy looks like a stuffed animal. I found this amusing and had to share!

So the song for today is "One of These Things" from Sesame Street. :o)

Here it comes...

This week is the choir directors' convention. It's the unofficial start to my school year. Choir directors from across the state get together, read through new music, visit vendors' booths, and learn from others how to solve problems in our classrooms or rehearse better, or whatever. It's a nice time to socialize with other choir directors around the district and region, and hang out in the hotel bars after hours. (I sit with my diet coke and watch the others drink, in case anyone is wondering. I have plenty of fun without drinking alcohol.) It's like a working vacation.

The only down side is that it means school is right around the corner.

But a good thing is that school is right around the corner.

I'm having mixed emotions about starting this school year. The spring semester of this past year was a very rough one, with major debates about school funding and lay-offs of teachers and morale so bad, and I definitely don't want to go back to that atmosphere. I miraculously survived the cuts (which I am not taking for granted), and I am returning to the same position I have had for the previous two years. The insecurity released upon the teachers of our state has not left me. I don't feel free to just do my job.

I have shared previously about the fact that I teach at two schools, one with the largest middle school choir program in the district, and the other with the smallest middle school choir program in the district. In both cases, we have to keep enrollment up for me to have a job. The big choir school is adding a choir class from last year to this year, so that's good. Enrollment is up. At my other school, the choir program went from 9 students in May of 2010 to 19 student in May of 2011. That's over 100% increase. That's good. But is it good enough? I feel like I have to fight for that choir to exist. Am I ready to fight another year?

How do I get kids to sign up for choir (at the tiny choir school)? It's a tricky question. I am not allowed to "RECRUIT". Most of the growth I've experienced has come from the counselors steering students to my class when they move in to our school. The counselors trust me more the longer I'm there. Four of my five boys last year were move-ins. And that's great. I love that I get students that way. The downside of this is those students missing whatever I've taught through the year in the way of music literacy and good vocal technique. Those kids just aren't going to be ready for contest come March or April the way the others are.

I really do love my job, teaching kids to sing in an ensemble to the best of their collective ability, and teaching music literacy. I always think I can do better. I have the same self-scrutiny and criticism about my teaching as I do about mothering. There's always so much that can be done better. And I do get down on myself when I see mistakes. The good thing about teaching is the start of a new school year, before the mistakes are set patterns. There's always that chance to set new, better patterns that improve the choir, the class, and even the teacher. With parenting, it's much harder to find the point to start over and correct the mistakes and set a new trajectory going forward.

I can see many differences in my teaching and in the students I've had between the two years I've taught since having the girls. It will be interesting to see what's different this year from last year. I need to keep my perspective on anticipating the good and not on dreading the bad.

So here it comes. Summer is nearly over and Fall with its new beginnings is almost here. What will this year bring? Time will tell.

The song in my head today has a story to go with it. "You Make Me Smile," came on the radio this afternoon as we left church. My dad had been sitting next to Big Girl in the pew this morning, and he said those words to her, "You make me smile." "No, I don't," she said. "You choose to smile." How right she is. It's a choice.

Kid TV Shows

I know it's better for my kids to watch kid shows on PBS than for them to watch most other things on TV, or stick needles in their eyes or something. But by golly, those songs are so difficult for me to ignore, and even more difficult for me to get out of my head. In the spirit of this blogger's renewed zeal to blog, I just have to share this little gem with you. Good luck. Have a nice day.

Facebook Quandary

I have realized in recent months that the total failure of this blog can be attributed to transferring so much of my attention to facebook. If I feel the need to share my thoughts, I do it there instead of here.

There are many bummers resulting from that. I have people in my life who used to read this blog, and I'm pretty sure they aren't checking in any longer. And I don't blame them.

This has been a bummer for me, time after time, to see that bookmark button for my blog at the top of my browser and ignore it. Actively ignore it. I know better. There's nothing there. At least nothing new.

Facebook has the interactive thing down, but it also keeps everything very shallow. You're limited on how many characters you can put in a wall post, and in order to get a complete thought out, you have to spill over into comments.

Anyway, my husband is no longer on facebook. He was weirded out by the new facial recognition feature for when you upload pictures. I get that. It is creepy to have facebook telling me who is in the pictures I just uploaded. It's not the capability that's so bad, it's the potential for misuse that you can't control that is so bad. I generally have the feeling that I have nothing to hide, and I don't. But even in the heyday of this blog I left out details to protect my family and especially my children.

Facebook is designed to suck us in. After watching "Social Network" it was obvious that it was designed to keep people clicking. They know how long we are logged in and what we click, what keeps our interest. They are studying us by our interests, and our friends, and SELLING the information. Thinking about it in this light makes me want to delete my profile like my husband did to his.

The other side of the coin is that I know I have connected in person with people as a result of reconnecting on facebook. Friends from college or high school who are now in the area where I live are now a part of my life again because we found each other on facebook. That's a good thing. Real life is a good thing. Facebook can make communication easy, and improve real life.

Facebook can also feed a fantasy life, making us think we have connections to people beyond what is real. I know I don't really have 650+ friends. If I need something, there are not 650+ people coming to my aid. In a true crisis, I don't turn to all 650+ of those people and pour my heart out. There are not enough hours in the day to do such a thing. I know there are friends I can truly count as friends, and friends that are facebook friends. There is a difference, and in my adult understanding of life, I can see the difference. There are some people, young people mostly, and mentally ill adults, who may not see the difference. Facebook is dangerous for such people. They can put way too much emphasis on their friend count, and whether they feel good or bad about themselves can be based on something so arbitrary. It's like the facebook South Park episode. Funny, but sad.

And then there are the addictive games. I know that if I didn't play Bejeweled Blitz I'd have some other go-to game that I could play mindlessly any time I was bored at my computer. I can't blame facebook for that. But still. It's there and it keeps me going back because I'm competitive and I want to see my name in the top 5 for the week.

I am saddened when I think of all the other things I could be doing with that time. Let's limit this thinking to JUST what I can do on the computer. I could be blogging or making digital scrapbook pages. Either of those things require creativity and thought, and have more of a lasting impact on my life than facebook. The digital scrapbook pages are eventually printed and put into a book to be held and admired. My kids love looking at the pictures of themselves, and they even love it when I'm making the pages of them. They feel special. And it's a keepsake that will be treasured for as long as I live if not longer. And as for my blogging, it is a public journal. It's a verbal picture of what's going on in my life and the only place I really get to write freely. I really have missed it these last two years when I've been so bogged down by work and then frittering away my time on facebook.

So the question remains, "Is it worth-while to be on facebook?" I'm afraid the answer is yes. The connections are worth it. The fear part for me is that I know myself, and what's required for facebook to not take over my life is SELF-DISCIPLINE. I don't like self-discipline. It's hard and I'm a big, fat baby. I'm always better at making the good choices when I don't really have a choice.

Since the question was originally raised a week ago or so, I have taken a few photo albums off my profile and thought about culling my friends list. I haven't done it because I want to avoid the embarrassing re-add. You know, when someone you've taken off your friends list sends you another friend request... Yeah. I've been on both sides of that in the past. It's not a good situation.

I guess going forward, I want to resolve to live more fully in the real world and less in the facebook world. Will that happen? I guess time will tell.

Oh, and I almost forgot the most interesting part of this blog - THE SONG IN MY HEAD! I have had that dumb song, "Gives You Hell," in my head for the last few days. It's driving me nuts. At least you can trust that I'm being honest. Why else would I own up to knowing this song well enough that it gets stuck in my head?

Daisy

This post was begun in June, and finished over a month later. Oh well, better late than never... (This explains the incongruous timeline references.)

School is out for summer. Yay for that! Around our house things are far different than they ever have been. We have completed our suburban stereotype with the addition to our family of a four-legged member of the canine variety. Yes, folks, we got a dog.

Her name is Daisy. She's currently three and a half months old, and last week she weighed in at three and a half pounds. She is a full-bred shih tzu, although her parents were both on the tiny side at less than five pounds each. She's not going to get very big, which has a lot to do with why we chose her. I grew up with Hotdog, a six pound runt toy fox terrier. Hubby grew up with Beau, a lhasa apso who was on the huge side of the breed standard at 20+ pounds. Beau was too big for me, and Hotdog was too yippy for Hubby, so agreeing on a dog was a big deal.

Daisy is very social. I have not seen her react negatively to any person. Ever. Each new human she encounters is an immediate best friend. And she doesn't bark at people. Not unless she is left alone.

She will fetch a tennis ball. It's a hilarious sight to see this tiny dog carrying a ball the size of her head by clutching the fuzz with her teeth. It's too big to fit in her mouth, of course. She also fetches her other toys. The tennis ball is the most fun for us, as it requires more of a chase, and watching her scamper through the house is quite entertaining.

The first few nights we had her, she cried all night long. Not liking to be left alone, she let us know what a horrible thing it was to be abandoned in a crate downstairs while we went upstairs to our bedrooms. One night we put the crate in the laundry room, and after that, I just wore earplugs to bed like hubby does all the time. Daisy has learned that it's not so bad, and now she doesn't even bark at us as we ascend the stairs. Sometimes, when she's feeling particularly cooperative, she'll go in the crate on her own accord.

House training was a challenge at first. Now that it's been about two and a half months that we've had her, and she's five months old, she knows what to do outside, and not to go inside. It took a whole bottle of Urine Off to get to that point, however. It pains me to say that it was easier to teach this dog what to do than it was my second born child... Long time readers of this blog know what I'm talking about. That was April of 2009 after we started working on it in August or September of 2008. The dog has the concept mastered in about a month...

Daisy has some towels that we've given her, old towels we'd use to wash the car. She's fond of dragging them to wherever she wants to park for a little while. They're hers and she doesn't get into trouble for chewing the corners. They're not in good shape anyway, that's why they're hers. She sleeps with one on her bed in her crate. As I'm typing, she's got one right now.

Shih tzu have bad rep for intelligence. If as a breed they are generally dumb, as some websites suggest, then I fully believe she is an exception. Any failings in her training are not her fault. They are ours. We have trained her to wait for her dinner. She will stay seated about five feet away as we pour her food in the bowl, and not come to eat it until we say it's OK. She's getting to be good about coming in that way too. When the door is open, I want her to be invited before she comes. There was one day when she got her front leg caught in the door for trying to come in when she wasn't welcome. She hadn't yet done her "business" outside, and it was in the days before she was fully house trained.

One thing she hasn't learned yet is how to go down the stairs. She can climb up, but she doesn't know how to go down. I guess that's all right with me because I don't really want her to have full reign of the house anyway. I would like her to stay down. She used to go upstairs and then be stuck, but lately she doesn't try to go up, and that's good.

Hubby and I will look around and then at each other every now and then and remark, "We have a dog." It's kind of like the feeling we had after we had our first baby. The reality of it is still so new. Unlike having a baby, this is something we never thought we'd do. This is a change from the paradigm we had worked under for so long.

So there it is. We have a dog.

Another Opening, Another Show

This is the week I dread of all the weeks of a school year. It's the week of our pop show. It's a huge thing to put on a show with 200+ kids, each singing at least 2 songs all together, with choreography, PLUS 2 songs for each choir, also choreographed, PLUS 15 solo acts scattered in between. There are all kinds of details that have to be rehearsed, and rehearsed, and rehearsed again. When do all those rehearsals have to happen? AFTER SCHOOL when none of the 200+ kids we need are in math or science or English classes. It's a nightmare.

And who gets to tell all those kids to be quiet over and over again? Oh yeah, you got it. It's me.

I hate this part of my job. Why can't kids just be professional for a little while?