The Twelve Days Before The Winter Break

On the twelfth day before the winter break
My classes all played the dreydl game
On the eleventh day before the winter break
My classes still played the Dreydl game.
On the tenth day before the winter break
One of my little buggers stole my 15 year old chocolate gelt
On the ninth day before the winter break
I took a mental health holiday.
On the eighth day before the break
(See the ninth day)
On the seventh day before the break
My classes started watching the Nutcracker Ballet
On the sixth day before the winter break
My classes noticed McCauley Culkin was in the Nutcracker Ballet
(and that he can't dance)
On the fifth day before the break
My classes wanted to play the dreydl game again.
On the fourth day before the winter break
My classes wanted to go outside an play
(Thank you global warming for the 72 degree weather)
On the third day before the winter break
My classes figured out that ballet has no words
On the second day before the winter break
My crazy third grader decided to redecorate my room

He used Conan the Barbarian for decorating inspiration

On the day before the winter break

My classes watched The Wiz with the other music class

Calgon..........................Take me away

Another great lesson to pass on.

I did this lesson with grades 3-5.  It's based on a lesson from the third grade GAMEPLAN  that focuses on improvisation. Every class enjoyed it, and one of the classes who had previously been fed a heavy diet of Quaver said, "This is so much better than Quaver because we get to make music."

A little context for that comment. After the ten day count, I was switched to other schools.  The creative scheduling genie decided that it would be a great idea to give me the classes that the on site teacher had been teaching.  That same creative genie gave me six classes and the onsite teacher 4 because my job is to give her a lot of planning periods.  The onsite teacher uses Quaver a LOT and swears that the kids love it.  My personal feelings about Quaver notwithstanding, is that general music in elementary school should focus on making music.  The about part is not as important.  As John Feierabend wisely says, "Our job is make the students tuneful, beatful and artful."  I don't think Quaver does that at all and it leads to passive teaching.  I've walked by classes using Quaver and I see many of the students off task and disengaged from the lesson.  It's not as successful as the  teachers think it is.

Anyway, the fifth grade class that I had inherited from the onsite teacher wanted to know if I used Quaver. I said I didn't and about half the class looked like I had just eaten their first born.  Also, I don't use chairs for several reasons, but this year it's because I have small rooms and I need the space. The following week was like teaching the figures at Stonehenge.  The next week they rolled their terrible eyes and gnashed their terrible teeth, but then at the end of class a few kids came up and said they didn't hate music all that much anymore.  The week I did the Virginia Reel everyone participated and I couldn't detect any visible eye rolling.  Last week after this lesson, the entire class decided that this activity was much more fun that Quaver and.....they apologized for the way they had treated me.  

By the by, before I pass on a lesson idea, I have tried it out for a week and fine tuned it.  I also add the little problems that come up so you will be prepared.  I always want to apologize to my Monday classes because that's where I am fine tuning and dealing with unanticipated issues and questions. By mid week the lesson is humming along nicely.

Process:

1. I start each class with the game poison.  It's a game that the students love and it's the only way I can get the older ones to sing.  I have the students echo all the patterns I sing, except the poison one of the day.  I isolate a small melodic passage in the song I'll be teaching and use that pattern.  Kids get a point if they don't echo me; I get a point if they don't,  I have to make sure they understand that if someone makes a mistake that it's ok and if they call out the ones who make the mistake, I automatically win.
2. Rhythm reading.  I also isolate the rhythms we're working on that day.  This one included iterations of quarters, rests and eighth notes.  I ask the students if they can tell me how many beats in each one and caution them not to count the notes.  Some get it right, most don't, so we talk, once again, about beat and rhythm.
3. I ask the students to clap 4 steady beats.  Then I have them change one of the beats to eighths.  Then I have them change another and then I add rests to the mix until I get bored or they start acting antsy, which generally occurs at the same time.
4. I tell them we're going to learn a song from Jamaica and ask if there are students with family members from there and lots of hands shoot up.  We talk about the Jamaican accent and that although they speak English, they have some different expressions and sentence structure.  
5. I sing the song Hill and Gully Rider and ask them to find the grammatical error. (Be prepared that many won't know what that means).  
6. They isolate the phrase: and a nigh time come a tumblin down. I tell them that often I overhear people on their cell phones say, "Where you at?" and ask the students how to say that correctly.  Then we discuss when it's ok to use that type of speech.  I ask them if they can name another song we've done in class and they can--Ain't Gonna Rain No More.  
7. The song has four beats of rest after each phrase with just four steady beat that are patted with alternating hands.  I have to stress that they not echo me and join in the patting when they figure out the pattern.  I sing the song twice.  I changed the ending the second time so it ends on the do  and not mi, so it sounds like it actually ends.  
8. I play the accompaniment (( syncopa rest) on the drum and stress that they should not copy my rhythm because it's MY rhythm that I bought at the rhythm store and I don't want to share it.
9. Transfer the patting to the instruments.  After playing once or twice I ask them to try and create a small motif and not just hit any old bars.  I give them a minute or two to work it out.
10. For grades 4-5 I extend the playing to change one of the beats to eights, just like in the rhythm warm ups. 

Another extension from the book is to change the words to :Everybody play now.  Then each instrument family separately, eg. Xylophones will play now.  At this point they all are looking over their instruments to read the names on the other side so I stop and hold up the bars and review that wooden bars are on the xylophones, etc.  But even after that, one or two will still look over to see what they are playing.  Sigh.

here's the song.  It's a call and response song, but instead of the response,  there  is the four beat space for improvising.

What I thought; What I actually said.

I can't believe it's the first week back after Thanksgiving and I already feel like a need a break.  Good news, though.  The next break is just two weeks away.  But after that there's a long time before the Spring break.  School calendar years are really poorly thought out.  Several years ago my county tried the whole year approach: Nine weeks on, three weeks off.  It's a great idea, but because there was no test score gains that year the calendar was nixed.  (And I think Six Flags might've also played a role.) Whoever expects to see test score gains in one year is probably from the same school of thought that says that data drives everything.  Sigh.  At what point will we really think about what's in the best interest of the students?

This week was typical.  Kids were squirrely  Teachers looked beleaguered.  PBIS (PEE-buhs) was rolled out at one of my schools. PBIS is a state-wide initiative to teach and reinforce positive behavior.  I'm trying to picture the meeting where this acronym was said out loud and no one snickered.  If a student said this: Nyah nyah nyah nyah nyah.  You are a PBIS,  it would be a free pass to call someone something that sounds like the male organ. It was such a resounding non-success in my other school.

Today there was an assembly for the kids to roll out the PBIS.  (hee hee).   There were skits that were inaudible acted out by students with the acting ability of a bramble bush. Cheerleaders from the feeder high school performed cheers that had nothing to do with positive behavior, unless you count the boys in the front row trying to get glimpses of the girl's undergarments.  One or two of their moves had a good deal of heavy gyration and maybe I'm an old fuddy duddy, but I find it offensive to see young girls move like that.  I don't mind when adults do it for an adult audience, but to me it's teen porn.  The cheerleaders threw out some plastic balls to the kids and there was a mad dive for the booty (hee hee) with lots of fighting and tugging to get those fabulous prizes.  You'd think they were throwing out 100 dollar bills.

All this positive behavior made me think about how I have to make an effort to remain positive.  One of my classes was a bit unrulier than usual (see calendar lament above) and I had to really fight back the impulse to say what was in my head, so I compiled a list of what I'm thinking and what I actually say.
T= think
S= say

1.  T: Why are you staring at the ceiling tiles/floor/door/Pluto instead of paying attention?
     S:  Sweetheart, can you please turn around and face me? If I taught the class like this
          (I turn and show them my profile), you would think I am sort of strange.  Pause.  Well,
         stranger than you already think I am.
2.  T:  Why are you sucking your fingers?  You're in second grade.  That's ridiculous.
     S:  Class, all hands in lap, please.
3.  T:  Seriously?  How do you NOT know that?  What special kind of idiot are you?  And stop
           throwing out answers to see which one will stick to the wall.  STOP GUESSING!
     S:  It's ok to say you don't know something.
4.  T: Why do you find the worst possible way to execute my directions?  Did I say to     
          stomp/hop/jump/jiggle/fly when we walk around the circle?
     S:  Please follow my directions exactly the way I tell you to.
5.  T:  Only an idiot sucks his/her teeth. it's one of the stupidest sounds you can make.
     S:  Please don't suck your teeth.  (Class joins in with more teeth sucking.)  Boys and girls,
          if you can think of a job that requires you to suck your teeth, raise your hand.  Teeth
          sucking finally ceases.
6.  T:  Stop hitting your neighbor, you anti-social crazy loon.  Did your Ritalin wear off already?
     S:  Class, all hands in laps please.  Hitting each other is not socially acceptable.  And except
           for boxing, I don't know a job that requires you to hit your co-worker.          
7.  T:  How is it that you can insult each other using a wide array of adjectives, yet you can't
          speak in complete sentences any other time?
     S:   Please use your kind words.  I don't know any job that requires you to insult your
            co-workers.
8.  T:  Why are you looking over your instrument to see what you are playing?  I have told you
           a bazillion times that the wooden bars are on the xylophones.  I have told you a bazillion
           and a half times what a bar is.   Is there a wind tunnel between your ears? .  The hell
           with  higher order thinking.  I'd be happy with just a little bit of factual recall. 
       S: Wooden bars are on the xylophone......
9.  T:  What kind of parent sends a child to school with such smelly/torn/too short/disgusting
           clothing?
      S:  Nothing.  I am speechless.

My week in WtFville

I spend a fair amount of time reading elementary music blogs and I am always impressed with the creativity and passion for teaching music that comes across.  I also note that their classes have about 12 upper middle class white children, with perhaps one Asian or person of color thrown into the mix.  One or two refer to their population as "urban," but urban in Colorado isn't the urban I experience.    Their students are children, not miniature adults.  They play well with each other.  They speak sentences with verbs and those verbs are conjugated correctly, including the infinitive to be.  I grew up in that type of community.  My first grade picture shows 7 rows with six children per row, hands folded on desks, smiling at the camera.  I don't remember a discipline problem worse than Linda Stetson peeing herself while waiting to go to lunch because she was too timid to raise her hand and ask to go to the bathroom.  Not like my kids who call out, "I have to use it."  My response to that is, "Use what?  A pen?  Some paper?  My coat? "  NO, I have to USE it," as if saying it louder will make the meaning clearer.  Finally I will ask the student to say, "Please may I use the restroom?"  And then I say, "No, you know we don't go to the restroom during specials."   A little sadistic sang froid helps the medicine go down.

Back to those lovely classrooms where children behave like children.  Must be nice.  I wonder what it's like.  I call my alternate universe WTFville.  Here's what this week in WTFville was like.

It was the week before Thanksgiving, or as it's sometimes called, I am thankful that this break is finally here because I was about to commit a senseless act of mayhem.  I decided to teach a modified Virginia Reel to my students in all the grades and used several wonderful recordings of Turkey in the Straw.   For kindergarten I used the Bram and Lois version.  For grades 4-5 I used the Erich Kunzel (From the 1991 Cincinnati Pops Down on the Farm recording) and for grades 2-3 I used The Merry Singers version. One of the perks of my job is listening to really fun music that I could not play at home within earshot of  my professorial husband.   He once saw me do the chicken dance at school and I think that image seared his corneas and if he hears any type of music that reminds him of that day, he would probably have to relive that trauma.

In Kindergarten and 1st grade we did the dance in a circle.  Four steps in and clap.  Four steps out and clap.  Walk counterclockwise on the refrain. There's a four beat interlude between the refrain so we do a turkey move, i.e. in a bent knee position, knuckles facing each other, move arms out and in at the same time moving knees pointing out and then in. The kids get a kick out of it  Oh, and I wear a flying turkey hat with legs, which renders another cornea searing moment.  There is another interlude that interrupts the AB form that goes "Shave and a haircut, 2 bits...."  so we stand still and clap on the two bits and and then continue when the refrain returns.  Each class asked to do it several times.  Five and six year olds are easy to please.  Would the older kids like it to?  Emboldened by my success I forged on to grades 2 and 3

For second and third grade I did the dance in an alley formation and added a sashay up and down by the last couple who then led the rest of the group to the front of the alley.  They form an arch and everyone walks under the arch.. And that's when the fun began because it didn't occur to me that the kids would come up with their own fanciful interpretations of walk through the arch.  Par example: The first time the kids go under the arch they are somewhat confused and walk through slowly and cautiously but as soon as they get the hang of it, it's like the end of a soccer match between Italy and Brazil.   Once I get them to stop running, they decide that it would be hilarious to limbo through the arch.  I stop again.  This time the kids making the arch think it would be fun to play London Bridge is falling down and they try to trap students as they go through.   One third grader thought it would be hilarious to stick his foot out while he was holding up his end of the arch and trip as many students as possible.  Luckily I've learned to turn my head around 360 degrees like a barn owl and caught him in the act.  I also added a do-si-do to the mix, but nixed the idea after the first class kept body slamming into each other.  I thought it was because of my limited space, so I took them out in the hall.  They switched over from body slamming to head on tackling.

I went home that night and watched the video of those sweet little children from Hooterville doing the dance, and they did such a nice job that I developed amnesia and decided to do the dance again the next day.

In fourth and fifth grade I cut out the holding hands on the sashay part because it's not worth the fight. I don't do girls on one side and boys on the other because the classes are leveled academically so that means that there are  twice as many girls in the higher performing classes and almost all boys in the lower classes.  I allow them to choose partners because by this time of the year they are truly committing to forging fierce bonds of hatred with each other and it's hard to find more than two kids that like each other.  I show them what a sashay looks like and then I give them the opportunity to hold hands or just do the step.  Some battles aren't worth fighting.  I nix the do-so-do until I go to one of my other schools where I have more room.

Here's what surprised me.  I was reluctant to do this activity with some classes, like my third grade EIP/Special Ed combination.  On the first day teaching this class one child kindly offered to "Beat my ass," because I asked him to sit down and then he rain out the door.   The next week he decided to share this mantra over and over again,  "It smells like f**ken s**t in your booty."  I don't know whom this was directed at, but I was wondering why he used the word booty and not gone whole hog and said ass.  It's like saying  "Pee pee you," instead of the real FU deal.   The best part of it was getting to repeat his words when I wrote him up.  It was like having a license to curse at school, which I want to do many, many times a day.

What saddens me, though, is that this particular special ed class is the sweetest, most wonderful class and I just adore them.   They work really hard and they usually are able to accomplish my lessons with very little, if any modifications.  Because this nutcase's mother refuses to medicate him and because he has an IEP, he gets to expose these kids to language they don't need to hear. Most of the time he sits apart from them while his interior monologues fall out of his head.

As soon as I told this class how to line up to make an alley, crazy boy starts his mantra of the day:  "You're all gay." Fortunately he was standing apart from the class so only I got to hear him, and I decided to shield him in an invisible cloak.  Interestingly, he joined in the dance and kept trying to go back to the end of the line to do the sashay, HOLDING HANDS with his male partner. Me thinks he doth protest too much,

I have two fifth grade classes at my home school.  One is fairly high-functioning but there are a lot of discipline issues.  Five are mainstreamed in and they have behavior disorders.  Several of the girls have really awful attitudes and there's a permanent sneer etched into their faces.  Teeth sucking is de rigeur.  I told them ahead of time what I planned to do and allowed them to choose whether to participate.  If they chose not to, I would give them paper and crayons, and reassured them that there would be no negative consequence.  I felt sure that most of them would chose to do the dance.  Out of 28, 6 chose to do the dance, meaning that I had 22 noisy children sitting in the small hallway off my room coloring.  But then....

I put the music on and a few heads peaked n.  "Can I join in?" some asked.   I allowed them in.  A few more heads peaked in and asked to join in.  Only three didn't want to join, and those were the three I had expected would not want to do the dance.  At the end of the lesson, I asked them what made them join.  A girl said, "We felt bad that we didn't want to do the dance."  I asked, "Did you enjoy the activity?"  "Oh yes!"

My other fifth grade class at my home school is populated with I just don't know what to say.  Each week several are held back from coming to class because they are in trouble for various kinds of creative derring do    This week the entire bunch came.  I hadn't decided whether or not to do the dance until they walked in the door.  They were sitting on the floor and I went to get something off my desk , which is located in the front of my hamster cage-sized  room.  I forgot to use my owl swivel neck so when I turned around, one of the boys, a slight, mild-mannered bespectacled kid, had his fists balled up and was huffing up a storm.  Apparently he had touched another kid's back when he was stretching his legs, so that kid decided he had every right to punch this child in retaliation for such a heinous act.   The other kid started screaming and ran out of my room slamming the door just for good measure.  I buzzed the front office and  the AP came in.  I told her that there were  4 kids in this class that were making this boy's life unbearable.  Whatever had started in their classroom culminated later in mine.  She  put on her serious face and used her stern voice to tell them that they they treat bullying very seriously and that the consequence for bullying is to be suspended.  Well, she sure told them what's what.  Then she turned around and walked out.

I waited a while to see if any of the kids would be called to the office to be suspended.  Nothing happened.  I decided to continue with my activity.  We talked a little bit about their behavior and bullying and after they seemed calm enough,  I told them what we were going to do. Of all the classes-these kids did the dance without any sort of mischief.  They walked through the arch.  They did a do-si-do without chest bumping.  They clapped hands without causing any welts. They HELD HANDS when they sashayed.  At the end of the dance one of them asked, "Can we do more dances like this?"  Go figure.

Last day of the week is a fifth grade that is so awful that their teacher walked out.  They had just been told she left and the thoughtful sub sent me 24 sobbing children.  I gave them some time to talk to me but within minutes a few of them started yelling at one girl.  She got so angry that she threw a chair across the room.  I walked her over to the door (I'm in a portable and the doors to the school are always locked so it's hard to use the option of sending a kid to another teacher's room because I'm out there by my lonesome.)  to calm her down, but she decided to run outside and several more followed behind her.  Luckily there was  a teacher outdoors who corralled them in and took them with her.

I told the remaining kids that if they wanted to do a music activity with me, that would be fine and if they needed to sit out, that would also be fine.  A few came up to join me and, as had previously happened, the rest joined in at various times.

Here's what I learned.  Sometimes you have to be brave and stick to your guns ad not be afraid to fall on your face. Many kids and adults, too, don't like things that are so different from their own experiences  I didn't force any of them to participate.  I can't say I was confident that I'd win them over, but I hoped I would and decided that I would be ok if I failed.  At least I had tried.  I also remind myself that despite their rough exteriors, most of them still have an inner kid in there somewhere. So aside from the chair hurling, it was a good way to end the week in WTFville.

The Inmates are Running the Assylum

Well, honeymoon season is definitely over. Students have sussed out their turf and their cloaks of good behavior have dropped off. I finish my week at one of my more difficult schools, and the last class of the day is the children from a lesser god. At the beginning of the year their were 12 kids and it has more than doubled. This school is almost as transient as my last year's school, But hey, it's an "achievement zone" school so maybe their achievement is that no one stays put.

 Anyway, their teacher has a habit of keeping the good kids with her to do important things like stack chairs, so she thoughtfully sends me all the clowns. I was all set to tell her to stop doing that, but she had a sub this week, so finally I got to see the entire class. Now I know that this class is very gifted; they can say shut up more than 392 times a minute. They are seriously THAT good at telling each other to shut up. I finally sat them down, folded my arms and stared at them for about 5 minutes while they sat their silently staring either at me or at a dust mote on the ceiling. I told them if they kept this up, this is what music class would be. None of them looked very upset, but then I realized that they were weighing the pros and cons of silence vs doing something. Ultimately they decided that doing nothing was a little on the boring side, even if they had previously been entranced by the dust motes they were staring at. I got up to try and resume my activity, which was allowing them to create an 8 beat body percussion and/or movement pattern to perform with a partner. I watched some of them work out interesting things while others tried to engage themselves in productive activities such as trying to inflict bodily harm on themselves or their classmates. This is when I noticed that one of the shut up squadron leaders was also quite adept at jumping up and down. I watched him leap around the room until finally he knocked out a cord that was hanging out of the ceiling. (*Note to self: Why was a cord hanging from my ceiling and what did it connect to?) I walked over to him and he told me it happened because someone tripped him. iI looked at him and said, Really? You mean to tell me that someone tripped you and you fell upwards? That violates every law of physics that I know." I told him to sit his flying bottom in a chair so that I could prevent him from further levitating activities.

 And while I'm talking about their special talents, let me not forget how good these guys are at sucking their teeth. I turned to the only well behaved students --4 girls-- and said, "One day, when you own your own company and one of these nudniks come to you for an interview, you will say," I remember you. You were great at sucking your teeth, but we do not offer a position that requires that particular skill set."

 I also got screamed at by the PE parapro at another of my schools. My class is across the hall from the gym and the hall is quite narrow. My door was closed and was just starting my fourth grade class. All of a sudden the quiet is interrupted by the SCREAMING of a teacher at some poor shnooky kid. The kids said, "oh that's Dr. Smith," whom I assume is the resident screamer,and she, like the students in my Friday class, is quite good at an awful skill. She was so loud that I couldn't get the kids' attention so I went across the hall to close the door. I was smiling and tried to appear nonplussed, but I didn't notice that the juvenile offender's hand was in the space between the door and where it closes, so when i reached for the door, they yelled at me about his hands. He moved his hands, I apologized, and tried again to close the door, but the PE para wouldn't let me--she caught the door, gave me a withering look and told me NOT to close it. So I gave up and walked back to class. After my class departed, in came the PE parapro and she let me have it. She and the screamer were offended that I wanted to close the door because the kid's hand could've been injured. Ok. They had a point. I apologized. Then I said, "I only wanted to close the door because my class was sitting there slack-jawed. Her response? "They are used to that." I could see that I was dealing with a full-fledged idiot and was a little intimidated by her snarl, so I said, "I'm so sorry. My bad. It won't happen again." The para pro hissed, "Thank you for that." But I'm pretty sure by the way she stormed out of my room that she wasn't really thanking me.

 I work with difficult kids. I've been working with them for ten years now. No matter how egregious an act a student commits, I can not bring myself to shout and scream at an ear splitting decibel. I have my stern voice and I trot it out when need be, but I would never get 2 inches from a student's face and scream into it. I've had students that make me want to drink until I black out, but screaming at a child means that I have lost all moral authority. 

 When did screaming become an acceptable behavior for a teacher? I hope the answer is, It hasn't.

A wonderful lesson

I learned this lesson from Alice Pratt and recently trotted it out again because I had to hold off on my curriculum until after the 10 day count.  Itinerants are assigned schools based on  projected enrollment and reassigned if enrollments change.  The 10 day count unwisely falls before Labor Day when lots of parents decide that it's time to send their kids to school.  It's a mess.  Since I never know what the new physical set up will be, I try to do a few lessons that don't require that much space or materials. This lesson can be done with grades 2-5.  

Poem
Oh the kids around the block are like an ice cream store.
There's chocolate and vanilla and there's maple and there's more.
There's butterscotch and almond and flavors by the score.
Oh the kids around the block are like an ice cream store.
Process
1.  Read the poem out loud and ask the students why the children are compared to an ice cream store.  Grades 4-5 will have studied similes so they should be able to identify it.  To avoid your concrete thinkers from telling you that children are sweet or drippy or like to eat cream,  you might want to guide them away from those answer and have them think about the colors of those flavors otherwise you'll spend half the class talking about what flavors of ice cream they want and why vanilla is better than strawberry and they're hungry now and when is lunch?
2.  Add the body percussion parts one at a time while saying the poem. Kids=snap  block=clap ice cream store=pounding fist into palm of other hand   flavors=patting rhythms with alternating pats
3. After all the body percussion parts have been added, whisper the poem with bp and then think the     poem and do only bp
4.  Transfer the body percussion to unpitched rhythm instruments.  I use a vibraslap for the snap part, but anything on hand is fine.
5. Perform the piece in whatever form strikes your fancy-reciting just the poem, poem and bp, just instruments, poem, bp and instruments, etc
Extension: transfer to barred instruments.  
    

ITunes12 and how to fix it. I still F**KING hate Apple

This is a short rant. I recently stopped updating ITunes because every time I did, something crazy happened. I thought I was being careful, but apparently those sneaky little buggers updated me when I wasn't paying attention. I didn't realize it until I saw that over 100 selections had those annoying exclamation points next to them meaning that iTunes didn't know where the files were, even though they've been stored in the same location for about 10 years. I located them, dragged them back into the file, but those exclamation points wouldn't go away. ITunes decided that some files, even though they were all in an mp3 format and had been perfectly happy in their former homes, were now being evicted with a no return policy. W T F?

So, as my mother would say, I asked the google, what is going on? Lo and behold I found a zillion other WTF posts about iTunes 12 and found out the solution was to get rid of it and download the former iTunes 11 version. Sure enough, all my files were allowed to return from their diaspora.

 I am going to look for a non-Apple mp3 player and system to store my music as Apple decided to eventually stream everything. I am old. I like hard copies. I like the physicality of objects.  I don't mind backing up my music in the clouds, but only as a vacation home.  I want them here, with me, on this planet.   Also, I don't want to have to pay a monthly service to this idiotic company that makes expensive toys for inattentive adults who like bright, shiny things.  All I can say is that if you buy Apple products, caveat emptor.

Welcome Back Activities

It's a lovely 98+ degrees, the perfect weather for the beginning of school. I feel liked wilted lettuce. I still can not get used to school starting before Labor Day. Apparently, neither do half of the parents, because a boatload of kids will not show up until the first Tuesday of September. Even my dogs can't quite fathom why I'm up with the roosters. Sadie, the smart one, tells Alice, the bless her heart one, that the human is making coffee and that means that walk time is coming soon. Sadie also points out to Alice that the human's eyes look suspiciously inert. Not only that, it's still dark outside, so what's up with that?

My school closed last year and I'm back to being a homeless one man rhythm band, or what is commonly referred to as an itinerant teacher. I dread the first day back to school because we have to play getting to know you games and I find the activities to be artificial, inane and a waste of time. If I want to get to know someone, I am perfectly able to introduce myself and speak a few words. I sat there thinking about the incredibly high salary administrators get for thinking up our ice breaker activities, and how much more modest my salary is, yet my ice breaker activities are anything but inane (that's what I tell myself because I haven't had any major eye rolling or groaning from the students). And plus, my activities (they're mine in the sense that I've commandeered or stolen many of them) actually teach some music concepts. So feel free to steal, add on, or roll your eyes.

How do you Do Ti, a game from Australia.
poem (in 6/8)
How do you do ti?
How do you do ti?*
How do you do today?
Do you live where you used to live
Or have you shifted away?
I’m sorry to be disagreeable (say this line in a disagreeable way)
I only came to say
How do you do ti
How do you do ti
How do you do today?
Process
1. Say the poem and ask students to identify expressions that are not common (how do you do ti/shifted away)
2. Have students form circle and cross their arms over each other and pulse the beat while you say the poem.
3. Invite them to join in when ready
4. Have students take their neighbor's hands and pulse GENTLY while saying the poem. I don't know how your kids react to hand holding, but it isn't high up on their favorites list. I tell them they can have a cootie shot if need be, and if that doesn't work, I say that I'm only asking them to hold hands, not get married and ride of into the sunset together. I also have to remind them not to try and pull their neighbor's arms out of their sockets. This is the kind of stuff that doesn't come out when you learn it with adults.
5. When ready, change the arm crossing at the end of phrase on today and away. They will probably get confused. Have them drop hands and practice by themselves and they will see how easy it is.
6. Make sure they use a disagreeable voice on appropriate phrases and this time drop hands and fold arms in front and turn to their neighbors while they say it. For the question phrase, put both hands in the air, palms facing the ceiling, as if asking a question, and pulse the beat On the words shifted away, take both arms and sweep them in front of the body from right to left. The last last three phrases are the same as the first three.
7. After the poem is learned, count aloud to 8, keeping the same tempo. (Go to 16 if large group/room). During that time students have to change places in the circle. The first time will probably go well. The second time they will run around like their hair's on fire as they collide in the middle of the circle like a highway pileup on a foggy day. This is a good time to pause and ask them if they could supply some alternate paths that don't involve body slamming.
8. Next, stop counting the beats out loud and have them feel the 8 beats while changing places in the circle.
Extension
Have the students pair up and shake hands on the first two phrases. Instead of changing places, they change partners. I have a partner system that I use at this time. Anyone who can not find a partner by beat 6 raises a hand and comes to the front of the room to scout out the other unwanted ones. I also have to tell them not to pick the same partner twice. I do this activity with grades 2-5. With grade 2 I usually leave out the changing places in the circle unless I think they have a bit of spatial awareness. Otherwise they make an amorphous blob instead of a circle. I used to have a circle marked out in my room, but I am itinerant this year and have to make do with whatever watershed closet they offer me as teaching space. Sigh.

*Make sure you REALLY pronounce the T sound in Ti as well as making that second syllable as unaccented as possible. I'm just sayin.

Hickety Tickety Bumble Bee ....Not just for the little ones I do this either seated or standing and when they say their name, they can use a silly voice and/or add a movement for the class to echo.

Willoughy Wallaby, a 3 chord guitar song Instead of always singing "an elephant sat on _______", I change it up and sing an elephant tweeted to ______ or an elephant texted_____or an elephant backed up into, or whatever else strikes my fancy. I generally finish with " an elephant married_____" and choose the angriest looking boy in the group.

A Tisket A Tasket
This is a partner activity. I stole the following partnering idea from Erin Wang.(I try to credit the ideas I steal, but sometimes I have been doing an activity for such a long time that I can't remember who taught it to me, so if any of you recognize your ideas, let me know and I'll credit you.) When choosing partners I start with usually the most meekest looking ones and point to each student one at a time. I count to 6 and that student has to find a partner or else I will assign one. The rule is that no one is allowed to say no if chosen, and if they do, they are sent to the bad manners zone, wherever that may be. They may return to the group when they've changed their minds. Shake hands right 8 counts Shake hands left 8 counts Step slide step slide fist bump 4 x (no hand holding is a plus!) change partners on b section. Students should be able to identify phrase length at the end of the activity

Name game
BP pattern: Clap, Right Snap, Left Snap. Pat I'm sorry, but I'm too lazy to put in a BP notation chart, but it's not hard to figure out. Also, I have a hard time reading those things. I think I might be a little special.
On the first snap everyone says his/her name.
Repeat until secure.
On second snap everyone says name of person on his left. (You will undoubtedly have some left/right befuddlement, so beware. I have Left Right hand signs on my wall, which you can download in the free stuff section of my blog. )
Repeat until secure.
Instead of all together, take turns. Start with a designated leader and each person says his own name and the name of the person on the left. The group echos.

Data Data on the Wall, Does it Really Mean Anything at All?

I'm currently waiting to be called into serving on a jury of my peers. My peers consist of the  woman? man? human? with a long braid, sitting in front of me, dressed like It's Pat from Saturday Night Live, snoring loudly enough to make several heads from the front of the room swivel round and stare; a man talking on a cellphone in Urdu (?) to someone I assume is hard of hearing, two woman kvelling about their talented offspring, while the others are playing around on their cell phones doing important things like scrolling down their screens with both thumbs like ambidextrous apes Since the internet access here is as fast as AOL was 15 years ago, I have plenty of time to multi-task*.  I just finished reading my New Yorker magazine then started making more beat strips to upload to the blog,  alternating with filling out report cards and pondering important life questions like, "Whose peers are these?  and "Why data collection?"

At this time of year I am administering SLOs (student learning objectives test) to about 99 first graders, a process that takes me 2-3 weeks to complete because  1. part of the test has to administered individually, meaning that at any given time 99% of the class will be not directly supervised by me, and we all know that first graders are very good at finding quality activities to occupy their time when their teacher is not looking right at them. ( I tried giving the test in their classrooms and asking their teachers to leave them with some type of work but within 3 seconds of their teacher walking out the door, tiny hands shot up with VERY IMPORTANT issues like, "My pencil broke." "She/He's looking at me."or "I don't know what to do." Meanwhile, I'm sitting in the back trying to get a child to echo my singing, "So La WOULD YOU BE QUIET! Mi  Mi." ) and 2. I have to hunt down the tons of absentees who come to school on the days that coincide with a full moon or high tide.

In the beginning of the year when we give the pre-test, we ask these first graders to bubble in the answers, which is in itself a crazy task.  Most of the kids have the fine motor coordination of a goat with Parkinson's.  That plus their .04 seconds attention span and you get children who tell you that they filled in their answer sheet to get pretty patterns.  I decided to give this part individually after I saw that those students who weren't making pretty patterns were auditioning for clown college, studying their fingers or staring into the void.  Also, many of the questions only had 2 answers, which means you really don't know if they chose an answer based on knowledge, guesswork or divine intervention.

I am opposed to data collection for this very reason.  Tests that don't ask students to generate information, but instead rely on supplying the answer in a multiple guess format do not give you enough diagnostic information.  If I hadn't interviewed my students as they took the test, I really would not know what they didn't know and why they didn't know it.  I asked them to talk to me about why they chose an answer.  I'm sure this is against all the laws of the land, but I need to know what my students know so I can teach them effectively. If they guessed the right answers then I would be teaching them based on unreliable data. 

A few years ago I was trying to figure out why my students couldn't read notes on the staff.  Many teachers, especially those who have lower performing students, struggle with this.  I tried many, many different things until one day I pointed to the staff and  asked, "Show me on you fingers how many lines  you see."  Two students held up six fingers.  I could've told them they were wrong and continued, but I was puzzled and wanted to know how they arrived at their answer so I held my snarkiness in check and asked them how they came up with the number 6.  One of the students came up to the board and pointed to the perpendicular line part of the treble staff.  It struck me that 1. I hadn't asked the question correctly.  I should've asked them how many horizontal lines they saw  and 2. if I had given a test and asked, for example, what note was on the fifth line I would've gotten wrong answers but wouldn't have known WHY I had gotten wrong answers. We, teachers, need to know what the students are bringing to the table.  Some of my kids are coming to the table with empty plates and if I ignore that and skip to dessert, they won't ever be satisfied 

And that's what's wrong with data collection.  It's based on tests that don't tell us what the students know, what the students don't know, and why the students do or don't know it.  You can't post the data from interviewing students.  But you sure do get a better idea of what's going on in their little heads.  I would love to see this craze about data collection be put to rest so we can get back to the business of teaching and students the business of learning.


 *day dream

I F**king Hate Apple

 Call number one
Thursday morning
Time: 1 hour 15 minutes
Number of technicians talked to: 3
Result: bupkus

Thursday morning I tried to log into my iTunes account and my password wasn't working. I reset it several times and finally I got locked out. I set up a time for a technician to call back. I stupidly forgot to turn my ringer on and missed the call so I scheduled another call.  That call came promptly but I was kept on hold for 15 minutes waiting for someone besides a robot to answer the phone.

I got my first iPod when my county updated our textbook series 9 years ago. It was the first generation--white, with a click wheel and print large enough to read with my old eyeballs. It worked really well when it worked. By the end of the first year it kept freezing and I got tired of seeing the sad Mac guy who looked like he was trying to escape his moribund surroundings. I took the iPod to the Apple store. You didn't need appointments back then. You could actually walk in and go up to a resident genius. He looked at the iPod and said it was dead. I looked at him like the sad little Mac man. Since it was under warranty I got another one. It also worked well until it stopped working about a year later.

Around this time Apple came out with the Nano, so I spent my own money and bought one. No more freezing. I sort of missed sad Mac guy. But now that I didn't have to fool with freezing, I had more time to notice stuff, like how proprietary Apple is. If you actually read some of the fine print that came with the frequent reminders to update iTunes you can see how sneaky they are. You think you own the music, but you don't. You sort of co-own it with Apple, or least it, to be more exact. But that doesn't mean into perpetuity.  Apple will try to wrest it from you in all sorts of creative ways,

With more free time I also discovered how frustrating it is to use iTunes and iPods. Try and transfer music from the iPod to iTunes. Apple doesn't want you to do that.  Why?  Read the fine print. My laptop died at the beginning of the year and I had no way of getting to my music.  I had backed up my music but no computer at my school has iTunes on it.  My tech was out sick and no one in my building has admin rights to install iTunes so I was stuck with a virtual music library that I could only play in my virtual brain.  Thank god I am still low tech enough to haul out my guitar in class.

Every so often music will disappear out of iTunes "...could not be found." Where the hell did it go? I can always find it on my computer, but how did it slip out of iTunes? Did it run away with the socks that disappeared from my laundry?   And I'm not alone with these problems.  There are countless websites that deal with user problems.  I know because I have wasted many a planning period reading about how to fix these problems from the thousands of frustrated users. Maybe we need to form a union? 

Apple products are very pretty and shiny, but they don't play well with others. Apple is the good looking, snooty girl in your 9th grade geometry class who only talked to other pretty girls and made fun of you behind your back. The work she turned  looked beautiful, like an invitation to the Queen's wedding. But her work could never compete with the tall, skinny, pimply guy in the back of the room who turned in work that looked like it had been written by a troll with a hand cramp and offered up solutions Euclid hadn't even thought of. That's Apple. A for effort. C- for grammar.

I  got a free iPad this year from my county. I have to choose between storing my iTunes on there or an update I needed to make it work. I can take about 4 minutes of video. It doesn't have flash drive. I don't have enough memory to download any app that's worthwhile. It's basically a large email device that allows me to show my face while I talk to other idiots who purchase Apple phones or iPads. Feh.

 Call number 2: Thursday afternoon
 Time: 1 hour 36 minutes.
 Number of techs talked to: 3
 Number of times disconnected:3
Frustration level: Infinity and beyond

 Call number two was supposed to be a check up call to see if the fixes from that morning were working, which of course, they weren't. The call was scheduled for 2:15. At 2:30 I called them back. I was put on hold for 27 minutes and then disconnected. I called back and it was suggested that I was locked out because my account wasn't current. I said that was highly unlikely as I hadn't purchased anything in a year and surely Apple would've garnished my wages for the 99 cents I might possibly owe. He put me on hold for 30 minutes and came back and said, "Your account is current, so that isn't the problem." By this time I had updated all my passwords to If**kinghateapple and got a slight twinge of joy every time I was asked for it or had to type it in.

 During call number two I learned that if you buy anything from the iTunes store under an email account, then that purchase will always need to be accessed using that email account. My first account was on AOL, which I think dated back to when LBJ was president. I don't have that account anymore so if I needed to receive a verification email, I was up a creek. The genius was able to just use my log in name without the aol.com and change it in the system. I finally got back into my Itunes and thought I was finished. Ha.

Call number 3
 Saturday morning
Time: 2 hours
Number of techs talked to: 2
Problem solved, but only after several set backs

During call number 3 I learned that after March 31, all old Apple email addresses had to be updated or you would lose ALL your purchased music. I asked the genius why no one I talked to at Apple had thought about telling me this, especially since I had spent most of my day chatting with half of their corporation I got the verbal equivalent of a shrug. She helpfully added, "Apple sent out an email notification about this." "Well, that's thoughtful, but what about people such as myself whose email is no longer taking any calls?" "Oh, well, I guess you didn't get an email, so you'd better update it now." I said, "But I was told I wasn't able to change any of my old email accounts and would have to use them all individually to sign into iTunes if I wanted to access my purchased music THAT I BOUGHT AND YOU SOMEHOW STILL CO-OWN WITH ME."

She remains on the phone with me as I am asked to change my AOL email to another email NOT associated with Apple. I said "But I only have 2 other addresses and they are both associated with Apple." She said "Well, you'll have to create another one." The stupidity of that made me type in my password furiously while I tried to figure out a third email that I might actually remember. I finally realized my school account wasn't associated with Apple. I hated to link up my last untainted email address with this idiotic company, but I had no choice. Now all I have to do is worry about not getting fired so I can use my school account. She walks me through all the steps and stays on to make sure I can log into iTunes  I can, but none of my purchased music is showing.  Apple has thoughtfully suggested I purchase an album by U2  They did this by showing it in my purchased column, making me think I had bought music and then developed amnesia.  I get put on hold for another 20 minutes, but she is thoughtful enough to check back with me every few minutes by saying, "I'm still waiting for someone from iTunes to pick up." I am mentally inputting my password over and over again. She comes back and says, "i don't know how you did it, but you changed all your emails to one address and that's all you need now." I said, "But I thought that wasn't possible?" She said, "It's not, but you did it."

 Man oh man. I wish I could remember what I did, because I would take out the equivalent of a front page ad on the world wide web to tell everyone how I did it. But for now, you should that it's possible. And I would encourage you to use If**kinghateapple as part of your password, although I would spell it out. It feels good to type it.

Thank You For All You Do

Over the years I've gotten my share of  thank you for all you do emails. They inevitably follow a request to do something fun, like pick up an extra duty or cover a class. The thank you for all you do is the closing line so that you understand that nothing you're being asked to do is negotiable. I have my suspicions that it's an admin code for " f**k you, silly underling." ( Another code is a see me email without any explanation.  It is admin code for "This is an ambush and you are in a heap of trouble.")

So the other day, I took my first graders to the Atlanta Symphony.   The ASO provides several outreach programs and I was able to get a grant to take the entire first grade.  It was a program about musical opposites (loud/soft, fast/slow, etc), concepts that we work on in kindergarten and first grades.

There were lots of schools in attendance, with a healthy mix of suburban and urban populations.  Not surprisingly, there wasn't a person of color in the orchestra and I was wondering how or if my students would notice.  I m not sure how  much my kids notice race. During Black history month I will sometimes mention  that 50 years ago it would've been highly unlikely that I would have been teaching African American students like themselves, and I can always count on several to pipe up, "but you're not white; you're light skinned." The rest of the students are trying to fathom being on this planet for more than 50 years and stare at me in disbelief when they figure out I'm older than their great, great, great grandparents. (Age is something else little people have no concept of.  One year when asked on my birthday by a first grader how old I was I said, "110, and as the class exited the room I heard her tell her classmates, "Ms. Jove is 110 years old! )  For the record, I go out in the sun only under duress and am about as colorful as a snowball.  The first time I heard the comment about being light skinned I mentioned it to a Black teacher and she said  it was a compliment, so that's the story I'm going with.  Anyway, I was glad to see that at least the conductor was African American.  I think it's important for children to see people who look like them doing important jobs.

My students were beautifully attired.  Two boys had on  three piece suits and many girls wore their party dresses.  As we were entering the hall I looked around and noticed several of the  more suburban students  hopping and jumping around like frogs on a bad LSD trip.  I looked at my students.  They were standing quietly in a line, one head behind the other, mouths in the closed position, hands and feet held in check.  The five first  grade teachers surveyed their students with a watchful eye, and two of them were holding the hands of their most squirrelly ones.  If a student even approached antsy pantsy phase, his teacher would swoop down and nip it in the bud.  I watched the teachers of the LSD tripping frog children and they seemed oblivious to all external stimulation.   I had to fight the impulse to run over and fuss at one kid who  looked like he was throwing out the first pitch at Turner Field over and over again to another one playing the role of imaginary catcher. The students at my school are not easy to control and if you turn your back they will invent all sorts of dangerous jobs for themselves, but I know that within nanoseconds there will be an adult who will close down shop just as quickly.  But these looked like middle class kids who I've heard said are supposed to know better.  Well, they don't. They were exhausting to watch. I wanted to hand their teachers the number of a local pharmacy.

 During the performance I tried to tune out the banging of little feet on the backs of chairs and the rustling of whatever the little ones saw fit to rustle about with.   Then I glanced at my students.  One was sleeping, but the rest were staring transfixed at the stage trying to suppress their need to tell me that they recognized the pieces on the program or had seen that instrument in my room.  Several were surreptitiously doing the patterned movement routines I use when I play classical music.  I was doing them, too.  Music makes us want to move.  It's just that we have that slapped out of us when we're young. 

As we exited the concert hall I overheard many of my students tell their teachers or each other how much they enjoyed the program.  Again their teachers kept them in quiet lines as we went to wait  for the buses.  And again I saw the crazy frog children twirling and bopping around while the adults in charge engaged themselves by  communing with air molecules.We stood outside for about 10 minutes and I couldn't believe how the other kids were behaving.  Running, jumping, twirling and oddly gesticulating...and those were the quieter ones. 

The first grade at my school is definitely a level or two above the other grades.  Part of it is because many of them have been there since pre-k.  But a large part is due to their teachers.  I teach every kid in my school and I know that with certain teachers I will see a steady improvement both in behavior and academics.   I am grateful to them.  To them I say, "thank you for all you do."  And I mean it.  No strings attached.

birdbox studios
piano tutorial
communication skills

You have 15 minutes.

3. PUBLIC SPEAKING

2500 riot-crazed aborigines are storming the classroom. Calm them. You may use any ancient language except Latin or Greek.

4. BIOLOGY

Create life. Estimate the differences in subsequent human culture if this form of life had developed 50 million years earlier, with special attention to its probable effect on the English parliamentary system. Prove your thesis.

5. MUSIC

Write a piano concerto. Orchestrate it and perform it with flute and drum. You will find a piano under your desk.

6. PSYCHOLOGY

Based on your knowledge of their works, evaluate the emotional stability, degree of adjustment, and repressed frustrations of each of the following: Alexander of Aphrodites, Ramses II, Gregory of Nicea, and Hammurabi. Support your evaluation with quotations from each man's work, making appropriate references. It is not necessary to translate.

7. SOCIOLOGY

Estimate the sociological problems which might accompany the end of the world. Construct an experiment to test your theory.

8. ENGINEERING

The disassembled parts of a high-powered rifle have been placed on your desk. You will also find and instruction manual, printed in Swahili. In ten minutes a hungry Bengal tiger will be admitted to the room. Take whatever action you feel appropriate. Be prepared to justify your decision.

9. ECONOMICS

Develop a realistic plan for refinancing the national debt. Trace the possible effects of your plan in the following areas: Cubism, the Donatist controversy, and the wave theory of light. Outline a method for preventing these effects. Criticize this method from all possible points of view. Point out the deficiencies in your point of view, as demonstrated in your answer to the last question.

 

">Sound of Music condensed version

Here we go again.    Back in the Land of 10,000 Acronyms

 Just when you think you can not possibly recycle the same idea anymore, back it comes, dressed in a new acronym.  I don't know about other professions, but in education, that seems to be the norm.   Either we rename it, e.g. differentiation is a born again version of the one room school house,  or we rebrand it with a new acronym: Continuous Improvement Plan (CIP)  formerly known as Professional Development Plan (PDP) formerly known as pink slip-- something that harkens back to The Era Before Acronyms (TEBA).

Our new acronym is...drum roll..... PBR....  hmmm....that doesn't seem right.  PB&J  I don't think so. PabLum?  nope, that's not right.  Oh, wait a minute....  PBIS ( pronounced  PEE-bihs),   Wait for it......(Hint: A day after it was introduced we were told not to call it that in front of the kids because it sounded like....).   PBIS stands for positive behavior something something. 

The system we had before was called PAWS, an acronym that stands for positive something or other--I guess I'm not good with acronyms, but at least I got the positive part right.   Our school mascot is a tiger so, double bonus there. PAWS were slips in triplicate that we were supposed to give out  whenever we caught students doing the right thing. The PAWS were redeemable for edible and non-edible McDonaldi's type gifts.

Problem 1. First thing to go down was that the kids were angry if they didn't get a PAW when one of their classmates did.  "Why didn't I get one?  Wasn't I good?" was their whiny battle cry.  I tried to hand them out stealthily, but word always got out and I was accosted with, "But you gave __ one last week and I wasn't throwing anything, either."   I tried to help them understand that it was important to celebrate other students achievements and turn it into a teachable moment, but the more I thought about it, the more I sympathized with the kids.  If my co-workers always got the attaboys for the same things I was doing, I think my envy button would light up a bit.  So if an adult is capable of feeling this way, why would students be expected to be twice as magnanimous?

 I  finally resorted to hiring helpers every month.  I chose three types of helpers: Group one were students that demonstrated content knowledge and could be called upon to help instruct other students who were flailing around.    For example I would find the students who could demonstrate proper recorder technique (i.e. not banging it incessantly on the floor or using it as a periscope) and designate a few of them to help new students get caught up to the class. Group two  were the ones who behaved well.  I gave them very important positions like Person in Charge of Closing the Door or Person Who Gets to Sit Next to Me on a Chair in Front of the Class (PiCCDoP and PWGSNM.  (I have a feeling I need help in the deriving acronyms department)  The third group  were discipline problems whom I had finally caught doing something more productive than creating a public disturbance so I used the job as a way to reinforce that positive behavior. (I'm still puzzling over why kids want jobs in the class.  In my school days I would slink down in my desk so I wouldn't be called on to clap the erasers outside in the courtyard, a strangely coveted position)   At the end of the month, if the helpers had performed their jobs well, I would pay them 4 PAWS.  There were enough jobs for all the kids at least once during the year and it seemed to work well for the kids and me.  It was like being queen of a bee hive, minus the honey.

Problem 2:  Uneven distribution.  Some teachers gave PAWS out like candy.  Others were miserly.  Battle cry whine no. 2, "But Ms. blahdeeblah gives them out all the time," or "My teacher NEVER gives them out."  Kids quickly figured out who the Santa Paws were and made sure that they did stuff like picking up imaginary papers in the hallway or smiling like a pre-frontal lobotomy patient when that teacher was looking. 

Problem 3:  Thievery.  A nice little black market economic soon sprang up.  The forms were in triplicate, and that was supposed to alleviate that problem.   There was a white, pink and yellow layer.  You had to press down with a boulder to get something to show on the third copy and were supposed to keep one color, turn in another color and give the white copy to the student.  Everyone kept forgetting to turn in their copies or remember which colors were to be turned in,  turned in illegible copies or lost them.  And then the front office  became so inundated with colored paper that they stopped asking for the copies.  Underground economy went into overdrive.

Problem 4.  No more money for rewards.

Problem 5.  It didn't work.  The good kids were still good and the bad kids were still bad, which took place somewhere between the time the newness wore off and the underground economy exploded. 

So here we go again, except this time the forms aren't in triplicate.  Hooray for innovations. And to kickoff this repackaged failure, we sat in a meeting that lasted for 1 hour and three million minutes.  The presenters and the administration had little cat noses and whiskers stenciled on their faces.  I didn't ask why.  It was fairly obvious.  They had come down with feline leukemia.  

We got to play some fun fun fun games at this professional development led by the cat women.  Fun games like four corners.  Each corner of the room was labeled A, B, C or D.  One cat woman read a question and when the multiple choice answers were read, you went to the corner with the corresponding letter.  I just followed the faculty members who looked serious (2 of them).  We also got to stand up and play a variation of Who Put the Cookie in the Cookie Jar. The cat lady who demonstrated confused the word beat with rhythm, which even my second graders can tell you IS NOT THE SAME THING.  I went to the bathroom. I could've distilled the meeting down to 14 minutes,  and if we had cut out the games and other nonsense, it would've lasted as long as it takes to sing Hot Cross Buns if that song was sung by Alvin and the Chipmunks after smoking crack .  I don't understand why we have to inject a healthy dose of cute into meetings or be forced to play games suited for patients in a mental hospital recovering from aphasia.   I am more open to learning when it's presented in an academic atmosphere.  I don't need to play Pin the Tail on the Mousie to learn.  I am fully capable of comprehending sentences that have more than 5 words.

The day after the Feline Games. I went to talk to the Kindergarten special needs teacher whose opinion I value.  She is a wonderful teacher and has a lot of experience in behavior modification.  She and I remember the first go round with PAWS.  We talked about how she had gone into the classrooms and observed teachers and then implemented strategies for each teacher.  If the strategies failed or stopped working, she went back in and retooled.  The long and short of it was that her system, labor intensive as it was, worked.  I don't know why we asked the cat people and not the expert to formulate a behavior intervention plan.  

We also have instituted PEACE POINTS, which each grade level can accrue if their entire grade goes a day without an office referral. Every 15 points accrued is a reward ranging from a popsicle party to  pizza party to movie day.  I am highly, highly skeptical  that children have the ability to 1. think about the welfare of their group and 2. wait more than 1 day for a reward. "Listen, Jemeese, if you don't slug Antoine for calling you a booger nose, then your entire grade level with earn a peace point."        THWACK

PAWS is just a way to show the county we are doing something about school-wide discipline, and if we wrap it in a positive  acronym, then it looks like we're doing the right thing.  But we're not.  The right thing is research-based.  The right thing doesn't neatly fit into an acronym. The right thing in one school is not the right thing for another.   The right thing takes hard work and is labor intensive, and I, for one, would like to roll up my sleeves, and not take the easy way out.

I do understand the frustration our administration must feel having to deal with daily student eruptions.  I was standing in the principal's office one day when the custodian came in to tell her that for the third time this week, someone had taken a dump on the bathroom floor. I thought to myself,  is it really that hard to walk the extra 4 steps to the stall?"  Then I thought, "Wow, it sucks to be head of this school sometimes."  But to her credit, she took it in strive and told me that you have to keep a sense of humor.  First time I've ever seen an administrator act like a human. 

I think everyone's hearts are in the right place. We are, in effect, all in it together.  I just think the wrong people were called in for advice.  We should've had a faculty meeting that allowed us to talk about the issues in an adult way and not held a pep rally for people with early onset of Alzheimer's.  This is a serious issue; we cannot teach effectively if our students are disruptive.  It's  a complicated and difficult problem and I think we didn't tackle it seriously enough.

I have let a few weeks lapse before posting this.  After the winter break we spent specials time going over the school expectations, something I think should've been done at the beginning of the year and repeated prn (I like that acronym)  The following day the behavior school-wide as well as my classes had improved significantly, so I thought that perhaps I had been too hasty in condemning the initiatives.  I will admit, however; that I was taking bets with a few faculty members on how long it would last.  Bets ranged from 24 hours to a few days.  I said a week.  I won.

Mallet Wrapping

 how to repair orff instruments
http://teachingwithorff.com/category/teaching-tips/

Teaching Improvisational Skills

Before I start teaching improvisation I do a game called I've Got The Rhythm/I've Got the Beat

Students stand in a circle and I demonstrate and say: I've got the rhythm, now check my beat (I use a dotted rhythm for the first part and 4 quarter notes for the second).  I use four levels of body percussion to demonstrate a four beat pattern.  I do several patterns and then when the students are ready, we go around the circle.  Sometimes some students will do a rhythm because they confuse the two.  The second time around the circle I change the chant to I've got the beat now check my rhythm.  My students want to do elaborate step dance moves, so I ask them to either clap or pat the rhythm and that makes it easier to echo.  

Note: I do this activity a few times a year because I have so many new students all the time.

After this activity we will talk about the difference between beat and rhythm.  I ask questions like, "What do your toes tap when you hear music? or When you tell me that song has a great beat, what do you really mean?"

Next I ask the class to clap a four beat rhythm and then I extend it to 8 12 and finally 16.  I count it out 1234, 2234, ect.  On the 16th beat I tell them to hold their hands up in the air.  

The extension to this exercise is going to the instruments and having each family echo me--woods, metals, skins, etc.  If there are some students who are not shy, I'll call out solos.  At the end all the instruments improvise for 16 beats and then we rotate.  

This year I did this activity the week before Valentine's day.  The following week we did a passing game to Big Bunch of Roses

I bought some plush roses at Oriental trading company and the students did a passing game with the song.  We did the song twice and then I had them improvise a rhythm.  The first time I had them improvise while audiating the song one time and then extended it to two times.  I extended it by transferring the activity to the instruments.  When the students are improvising on the Orff instruments I ask them to try and get a secret song--this prevents them from playing like kindergarteners with their hair on fire.

There's an activity in GAMEPLAN, grade three that is also wonderful for shorter improvisation.  The students learn the song Old Joe Clark

I only use the first verse and on the B section (m.9) I play the piano while they clap for 4 beats, pat for 4 beats, clap 4 and pat 4.  There are two instruments set up in the middle of the circle.  I use conga drums and a washboard, but anything will do.  One person improvises on the clapping and one on the patting.  I do have to model some ideas otherwise many of them will just play 4 steady beats.

Question and answer improvisation activities:

I start many classes by having students echo rhythm patterns and will eventually segue into Q and A by asking them to substitute beat one of the pattern with something else, then beat three and continue until they have a different four beat pattern than the one they are echoing. After this is secure I will have the group do an answer to my rhythms for 4 beats and then extend that until they can comfortably do 16 beats.  

 

Acka Backa Soda Cracker

The first part goes like this:
My mother, your mother

Visit every day

But every night they have a fight

and this is what they say:
Acka Backa Soda Cracker

Acka Back Boo

Acka Back Soda Cracker

Out goes you

In partners, students do a simple hand clapping pattern (clap r, clap own, clap left, clap own)  and on the Acka Back one student will walk away from his partner waving a finger in the air as if yelling at someone.  On the word "you" the partner returns and then the second partner has a chance.  

The following week I have the students line up in two rows.  On the acka backa section a student from one side will improvise a rhythm using rhythm syllables and the student from the other side responds. Before this activity starts I do about 7 minutes of reading and/or playing rhythms as a preparation.  I extend the activity to hand drums and then melody instruments the third week.