Mrs. Crazy Last Name

Well, the last time I posted was just after I got engaged, so it seems appropriate that my next post would be after I'm married!  Greg and I got married just 2 weeks ago and he keeps telling me it was the best wedding he's ever been to.  It was great to spend some time with family and friends in the days leading up to the wedding, and the wedding itself...I guess it was my favorite wedding, too :)

My bridesmaids (and honorary bridesmaid :) ) were the 6 greatest girls in the world!  It was so wonderful to stay up late talking with these ladies.  I gave them a hard time about being my "blubbering bridesmaids" but it was very sweet to see how happy they are for me and Greg.  I've already promised Jessica I'll be a hot mess whenever she gets married, too.

The ceremony couldn't have been any more perfect.  The rehearsal was insane, which apparently is normal.  Someone should fix that...but anyway.  Ceremony was wonderful.  At the reception, Greg and I got to play a duet together, and he got to play the duet on his new marimba that he just got this semester!  We worked together to arrange "My One and Only Love" for marimba and clarinet.  We had our first dance after that, which has been everyone's favorite part of the day so far.  The jury's still out as far as I'm concerned...the power went out!  The first time was just a flicker and we all laughed our way through it.  The second time was a little longer, but still holding it together.  The THIRD time, it was out for about a minute.  It felt like at least 6 days, but everyone said it was their favorite part because they got to see Greg try and, as one person described it, "talk her off the ledge."

We had a photo booth, which was a HUGE hit!  I was in that thing at least 12 times.  And since it was my party, I got to go to the front of the line whenever I wanted!  Greg was able to hire the percussion teacher from his school to put together a combo to play for the reception.  I'll be honest, I was a little nervous about that because I never got to hear them until the day of, but they were fantastic!  I'm pretty sure they got some more gigs lined up because of how well they played!  The dinner music was light and jazzy, not distracting enough to stop the conversation at the table, and when dinner was over, they rocked out with some classic rock, oldies, pop, anything.  The person who got the dancing started?  My mom!  I'm pretty sure my grandparents will hate me for the rest of their lives, but we had an awesome time!

For our honeymoon we went to Gulf Shores, AL and spent a week lying on the beach, playing putt putt, and visiting Bellingrath Gardens and the Mobile Art Museum.  Greg did an awesome job planning the week!  We're already trying to figure out when we can go back!

Now, the honeymoon is over, and we've actually gone back to work already.  We spent this past weekend at Texas Bandmasters Association in San Antonio, and we start our summer band camps in another week.  We are still in the process of unpacking and settling into our house, but we love it and couldn't be more excited with the house we got.  Many, many pictures of the wedding and house will be up soon!

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!