THE END OF QUARTER ONE

We create arbitrary timelines and stopping points so that we can assess ourselves and our students. Teachers, students and parents stress about where we "should" be in terms of our standards, our teaching, our progress.  Teachers have been handed standards in complicated language to share and impart to our students.  Often we have to translate them so that we can understand these standards, and "unpack" them, as the term goes for our families.  Sometimes it seems that the joy of learning is being obfuscated by the stress of deadlines, the complications of assessing so many standards, and the hyper-focus on student achievement, shown by test results more than by anything else that students accomplish.

I am here today to say that even with all of these stresses and complications, my students in the sixth grade at York Middle School have ACCOMPLISHED A GREAT DEAL in quarter one!   Students have learned to sing several songs, they have learned to compose and perform rhythm compositions by themselves. They have interpreted and discussed music by the infamous and prodigious Mozart, and they have written their very own opera stories!  This week they completed their songs with lyrics that match the melodies they wrote, and designed stage sets and costumes for their characters and stories.  Finally, at the end of last week and this week, they have been sharing their ideas and summarizing their stories for the class, and the class has been using their listening and feedback skills to create a supportive and wonderful audience for these students.  It never ceases to amaze me how many skills these sixth graders actually have, and how many skills they are continuing to hone while they work on these projects.  I have only assessed half the standards that are shown on my mastery connect trackers and curriculum maps, but I have every intention of assessing the rest of those standards, and re-assessing some of the other ones that I have looked at and worked on only once so far this year.

I am so happy to be working with these children who are hard-working, focused, work well together, and are cooperative and are not worried to be handed a piece of music back to them to make corrections and re-write.  I want to thank the parents for the opportunity to work with such fabulous students, and I want to thank the York Schools for having given me the opportunity over twenty years ago to work with middle school students.

 I learn new things every class, every day, every arbitrary timeline, every year!!

 Have a spooky and fun Halloween everyone!  and thanks for reading my blog!!