An Ordinate Number List of Stuff You Could Never Have Known When You Became an Elementary Music Teacher

I just read this adorable blog post about the 10 things they don't tell you about being an elementary music teacher The blogger noted that after 17 years she had some super keen insights such as:  You have to switch gears because teaching fifth grade isn't like teaching kindergarten.  Really?  You didn't know that before you went into this profession?  Here's another of her observations: People assume they know what you do in your classroom.   Well, ok.  Let's alert the Channel 10 News Team.   I know that teaching, and teaching music in particular, is a lot of on the job training and that many college programs, and again, music in particular, do not adequately train or prepare teachers,  but I think there are a lot more surprises out there than the ones she mentioned. 

 So I thought about the 10 things I didn't know before I stepped into the elementary music room.  I have an intense, almost visceral, dislike for articles and books that have numbers in the title  I think I developed this pet peeve when we were forced to read that idiot Stephen Covey whose popular 7 Habits of Highly Effective People was forced upon us in my specialist degree that I earned from P.U.University in Firecrackerville, Tennessee. The book was a facile, over simplified compendium of useless information.   So unless the titles are something like: The 5 Things You Should Know Before Becoming a Prostitute ; 10 Reasons Not to Have a Baby, or 15  Reasons You Should Not Own a Pet Rat then I'm not interested  And while 5, 10 and 15 seem like very nice numbers and I really have no personal vendetta with most any number, using a number in a title forces you to either pad your list or winnow away good ideas.   Therefore, I will call mine, "An Ordinate Number List of Stuff You Could Never Have Known When You Became an Elementary Music Teacher."  When I finish my list, that will be the number of things I wanted to say.

I didn't know that:

1. I would have kids tell me that they would "beat my ass," because I asked them to sit down, and not even be tall enough to reach my ass.
2. Chairs would hurl across the room just because, I don't know, it was a full moon.
3. Teaching music would take a back seat to have to deal with things like defiant behavior disorder or bat shit crazy disease and that each and every class would be required to have a minimum of one (with no maximum limit) of these delightful little buggers, and that these were also the kids who had perfect attendance, including coming to school when there wasn't any.
4. That there would be SO MANY behavioral disorders.
5. Students would tell me my class was lame because I didn't want to do the kind of music they liked and made them doing evil hings like reading music, or even worse, holding hands with their partner, but that's why cootie shots were invented, no?
6. That a child looking at another child is a violation of rule 64, subsection B, article 38 in the  children's code of ethics manual, and is an actionable offense. Punishment should be swift,  and the perpetrators made to suffer a similar torture such as being burned by a magnifying glass  or hung from a tree limb as buzzard feed, which ever method is legal in the state.  I believe both are legal in Texas.
7. I would see a mobility rate of 85%.
8. Parents would come to school in their pajamas.
9. A first grader would appear in HER pajamas, not know any letter of the alphabet, and move after being there exactly one week.
10. Students would be enrolled the LAST F**IN day of the year.
11. Classes would be leveled so that the higher performing class had 12 students and the academically challenged would have one less student that the state limit, which I think now has a teacher student ratio of 1 : 163
12. Politicians, Bill Gates, economists and other self-anointed gurus, who think they can fix education because they know more than the people who actually do the teaching ,would try to improve the  schools with their data obsession, high stakes testing, and tying student test scores to teacher pay, while making sure that teachers were vilified and demand that  their compensation rate of approximately 4 cents an hour be cut even further because they pull up to school in their Bentleys at 8 am, leave at 2pm  and munch on bon bons all day long, be required to work longer and harder than most any other profession and then expect the schools to fix the problems brought on by the larger societal issues of crippling poverty, unstable home life, and various other pathology , because what's needed are long-term fixes and that's too complicated and costs money and many Americans don't want to give money to people who don't look like them, although they're perfectly happy to take the tax money that comes from all people (with an even larger tax burden placed on the ones that didn't create the financial melt-down of 2008 or reside in 1% land)  that the government puts aside for them when they are old, cranky and sick and trying to convince everyone to return life back to the good old days when women were forced into back alley abortions, people of color were discriminated against,  gays, lesbians and transgenders were in the closet and smoking cigarettes was a god idea. Whew.  I wonder if there's a run-on in there?  IF not, I'm giving James Joyce a run for his money.  But I digress.
13. School systems would become bloated with administrators always looking to spray their territory and move up the career ladder, leaving the teachers to pick up the mess they've created and ready themselves for a new leader every few years so the pattern can be repeated.
14. We would receive emails that must start with one of these salutations: Greetings Lemur Family or Hello Llama Team Members.  I already have a family and I don't play sports.    I find  it patronizing and idiotic.  I am a professional;  I don't need to be a member of either group to do the right thing.  If someone asks for me help I will gladly give it.  If we all need to pitch in for the common good, I will do it because that's what you're supposed to do.   Some management moron probably wrote a book  (The Seven Hundred Most Annoying Things to Do in Order to Tell Other People What to Do) and has forever changed the landscape. I'd almost rather be addressed as Dear Pod Seed Member.
15. Parents would call all the shots and the inmates would run the asylum.

hunh.  I ended up with one of those nice numbers.  So be it.