Always amazed

..at how much I miss this place when we are on vacation, and how happy I am to be back.  Is it the routine that I miss?  Yes, it is.  Is it the chaos and confusion that I miss? Of course it is, why else?  Is it the wonderful smiling faces of the students?  Yes, it is.  Is it the practicing of the piano each day that I miss, because you know I don't really love my piano at home, and I love the piano here!  Yes, I miss this piano when I am not here.  But mostly, it is the interesting learning that is happening all the time in this place, and I miss it a lot when I am not here.  The conversations about educational ideas, the thoughts I have about teaching and books that I read, the walks at my lunch break with my friend, other really great conversations at lunch with all the teachers I work with.  I am so privileged to work at a school that cares about the success of each student, that really appreciates the arts, that knows me so well that my first day back I am given gifts by teacher friends and students alike.  I am lucky to be a part of an educational community that supports all endeavors, all new ideas, and supports experimentation with ways to teach all the subjects.  I will be here for as long as they will have me, of this I am pretty sure. 

Spreading the Love

Our advisory groups picked another advisory to create valentine's hearts for.  We brainstormed character traits about each person in the other advisory, and we found different quotations that would be appropriate for each student. We decorated the hearts and then gave them to the other advisory.  It was a wonderful activity, and we also did a heart for the advisory teacher as well.  My heart said these things which were so perfect for me! 

"Music gives a soul to the universe, wings to the mind, flight to the imagination, and life to everything." Plato

The words they chose for me were:

Talented      Full of life   great at piano   passionate

Caring     Cheerful    musical   

I will take that..have a great vacation!!    

Fifth Grade Week Two

Every year at this time of the year I have to learn more than a hundred new names, and more than a hundred new personalities and learning styles.  I find it exhilarating, and often, quite exhausting.  I am back to fifth grade again, and must customize my teaching to all those new students and their abilities to learn new musical ideas.  I begin with a creative project, but sometimes creativity is easier for some students than for others.  I teach them about dynamics, and then they have to discover the possibilities of the keyboards and use all the dynamics and create a piece of music with them.

This is a new project, that I started last year.  The group last year never questioned the idea of writing down music any way they chose, but this year is different.  Many of the students have no idea how to hear a melody in their heads, and very many of them, even if they have an idea, don't know how to make up a way to write it down.  I have told them they can use pictures, numbers, letters, words, directional signals, anything they want, but they still don't understand.  This is problem-solving 101, this is creativity 101, this is figuring out how to remember something that works for you, but they don't HAVE to remember anything, it is all at their fingertips.  It is a little frustrating, which is why I am writing about this, but that being said, I am not giving up on this assignment, because it is an enlightening and fascinating entree into a group of students.  You get to see who is organized, who is focused, who needs a lot of help, who gets lost in the shuffle, and it is easy to figure out who will need the most attention going forward for the rest of the year.  A social, psychological, musical, creative diagnostic..it works for sure!!