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.