I thought Spring was the easy semester...

1st semester: check.  We're well into the 2nd semester...and I feel it will be crazier than the 1st!  I'm really proud of how far the junior high concert band has come.  We still have some behavior issues, but they're with a small handful of students that since most of the class is under control, we can work to smack that out of them.  I'm really excited to take these guys to contest in April.

High school...is slowly turning around.  Opposed to the junior high classes which I picked up in August, these guys I didn't really start working with by myself until December, so we're still in the figuring out my expectations stage.  A couple weeks ago they were so bad that I set up the band room like study hall and we wrote the band expectations for the entire hour.  2 days in a row.  They HATED me when they came in that second day, but now I just remind them that I will make them rewrite the band expectations if I'm not convinced that they know what they are, and they get quiet pretty fast.  Sometimes, I even enjoy being in that class :)

Next Saturday, I'm taking the color guard to contest.  We've been working since January and it's been a struggle.  This week was the first time I had a practice with 100% attendance.  I also lost half the guard gradually through the semester, which meant I was writing a new show every week for a while.  But now they all know the show and I think we'll have a lot of fun at the contest.

On top of all the work at school...I'm now engaged!  I am very, very, very excited, but I am now also very, very, very busy!  It's awesome that my mom is back in Houston until the wedding, because there is no way we could get married this summer if she wasn't here!

Chicken Fried Something Something

Hanging out with band parents selling some Chicken Fried Chicken dinners. Pretty much every Friday that we've have a home game, we've eaten some kind of chicken fried animal before the game. I know it sells well for fundraisers, but I'd be ok with a grilled chicken salad fundraiser.

I wrote my first guard show to performed in public this Friday. The girls seem to enjoy it, so hopefully that momentum continues into the spring so we can really train on rifles before I have a fall season full of girls with broken shins, torn hamstrings and bruised toes (yes, I hurt myself again. Shocking.). And besides, I really like spinning so I hope I get to teach it in the spring so I have a reason to keep learning.

Yesterday was a junior high solo contest, so I got to accompany about 15 students. One of the students forgot a line of her music, and when the judge pointed that out at the end the student simply responded, "yeah, I got hit in the head this morning on the way here." Junior high is certainly never boring.

What I have learned so far:

1. Parents are probably the biggest factor in determining the commitment and attitude that their kids have toward band.

2. Coffee is the biggest factor in determining my cheerfulness in 2nd period.

3. Kids will do just about anything for lollipops.

4. Let a 6th grade girl help you do something after school, and she'll be ready to give you her left kidney.

5. If you wear purple 2 days in a row, 6th graders will ask you every day for the next 5 weeks why you're not wearing purple that day.

In the beginning...

It's been 8 days and I haven't gotten myself fired yet!  I am enjoying this teaching position.  My favorite part is getting to teach 6th graders.  They're so excited!  They sit up straight every time one of us gets on the podium and actually like the games I come up with.  (The 7th and 8th graders think they're too cool for my games.  I'll win them over eventually.)  6th graders, however, are still getting used to middle school classrooms, so I still have to occasionally send kids back to their seats who have come up to tell me a story about their pet or what their favorite color is.  I think the best question that has been asked of me has been, "Ms. Hollowell.  As a member of this band, I need to know whether or not you are married."

Last friday was our first football game.  We still have to reinforce procedure as far as behavior and participation goes at the games, but they did alright for the first game of the season.  The football team won by like 20 points.  Which while it is exciting, I hope I'm not still going to football games at Christmas...

I'm still getting used to the early hours.  5:30 seems to come earlier and earlier every day, and it's only the 2nd week!  But it's not so bad.  I do like getting to listen to a whole podcast on the way to work in the morning.  And since I take farm roads to school, I get to see a variety of animals on the way.  Some of which aren't always fenced in...Also, I look forward to going to work because my fellow directors make me laugh a lot during the day.  They're kind of awesome.

Working Girl

I got a contract!  Well, I sign it tomorrow, but I started working a couple weeks ago.  I'm a high school assistant band director, but the 2 high school directors team teach with the middle school director, so we all teach 6-12 band.  It's a smaller school, which is kind of new for me, but it's going well so far.  I get along with the other directors well (even though I'm "girl-ifying" the office...).  This week we have inservice, then we start the 23rd.  It's quite miraculous how all of this worked out.  It seems almost silly how upset I got about opportunities I wasn't picked for last year.  The ones that I did get helped me earn this job with an actual contract!

Field trip!

There are only 10 days of school left!  You should all feel very honored since I have decided to provide you all a small tour of my classroom.  So here we go:

Here's my room set up for a beginner class.  Since I am a sub, most of the stuff in the room was up before I arrived.  But as I usually do, I added some of my own ideas. 

As I have said before, I had to decide what were the most important things I wanted my students to learn in the few weeks that I was teaching them.  1 of those things was rhythm reading, so we were sightreading rhythms every day (clapping and counting, then playing on concert F).  We started out in the book using simple rhythms that were repetitive, then graduated to rhythms that I would make up and write on the board every day.  On written tests, I would offer extra credit to students that made up their own articulation/counting exercise, and they were always excited to see their compositions on the board in class.  By the end of the 10 weeks, the students were able to easily sightread rhythms with straight sixteenths and could count sixteenth/eighth combinations by working through them.

Scales were also important to me, even though we only got through the 1 octave scales.  Most of these students can play all of their scales, but to earn stickers on the poster (which led to a variety of other prizes) students had to play the scales from memory at 80 bpm.  I'm pleased with the number that were able to do it, as well as the number that tried and can at least play the scale now even if they can't do it from memory or quite that fast.

The students that passed off all 8 scales are our "Scale Masters"!  They got cupcakes.

Around Spring Break I started that paper chain counting down the days...I really do like teaching, but I like sleeping in, too!

This cart is simply the greatest teaching supply I have ever bought in my whole 3 month career.  I noticed quickly that I was losing a lot of time just getting supplies into the room, or forgetting papers, or thinking of an idea while in the room but not having anything with me to actually do it, so I did some research and found this cart.  

On the shelf I kept my lesson book and notebook of lesson plans. I got tired of looking at the backs of my students heads while they watched the clock, so I took it down and put a watch around the top of the cart.

In the hanging folders, I kept assignments to pass out to classes as well as these notebooks.  Since I wanted to be able to occasionally work with small groups of students, I needed something to keep the others from eating each other, so I came up with these notebooks.  Every few days I would add a couple more worksheets and they are due at the end of the semester for a major grade.  Also with this cart, they never have to leave the classroom.  Saving trees!

In the drawers I kept a class set of markers, stickers, magnets, flashcards and other basics for the variety of music games I made up.

These students got to experience practice cards for the first time when I arrived.  That really made them adore me...so I tried to make it fun.  The class with the highest % of practice cards that earned a 100 gets a party this friday.  It kind of worked...if nothing else, there was a cross curriculum lesson on how basing this contest on % meant that Honors Band being the biggest class didn't make this contest unfair.

Proof to my students that I don't make them do anything I don't do myself.  A few of them got into this and would check it every day to see if I practiced.  

So there you go.  My first classroom.  Hopefully I'll be able to put up pictures in the fall of a whole new room!

22 days

One of the first things we learned in ed classes was that younger students learn best when they can be moving as opposed to just sitting and reading/writing.  Trying to be a good teacher, I have come up with a number of games that get students moving and reinforces our current unit: rhythm.  What's funny is that every time I go "I have a new game for us today!", half the class moans as if I told them fries would be permanently removed from the cafeteria menu.  About 5 seconds into the game, however, they all think it's the greatest thing ever.  Good thing I know they're not as cool as they think they are.

We have only 22 days of school left this year...I find myself being caught between hoping these 22 days fly by and wanting to ask students to stay after school and come in on saturdays to make sure they get all the instruction they need before summer break.  Next thursday is the last day for students to pass off scales (1 student has passed off all 8 scales already!), the next thursday is our spring concert and May 20th we start auditions for next year.  So really, I have 13 days left to teach as much as possible.  Now I understand why my teachers were freaking out while my dumb middle school brain was already on vacation.

My goal for these students is that they will know how to find pitches on the staff, count like pros and flawlessly use a fingering chart.  I realize I may be naive in hoping that with these tools the students will practice what we have done this year and teach themselves some new songs/scales over the summer, but I'm going to reach for the stars anyway.