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.
