My Oter Car Is Pnis

Our county's newest mandate is to promote literacy in the music classroom.  I've been doing that for many years and after I got my Orff certification, I realized that this idea has been around for more than a hundred years (thanks Karl) so once again, music has been way ahead of the educational curve.

This year one of my five schools is in an achievement zone (yay), which is referred to as an AZ school because, as I've said before, educators are addicted to acronyms. (As a side bar,  I've noticed that this country has a habit of calling unpleasant things by misleading, more pleasant sounding names, e.g. The Clean Air Act, which one would think is a mandate to clean up air pollution,  but it turned out to be a bill designed to allow companies to continue polluting the environment  Or the Patriot act, which was anything but patriotic because, in the name of fighting terrorism, it allowed the government to perform illegal wire taps and search business records.)  So it's no surprise that the  AZ is the part of the county with the lowest performing schools. It's unclear what, if anything, they're achieving, unless you count high teacher turnover as a positive outcome.  As I've said many times before, schools can not be expected to fix what is wrong with the community at large. If we don't address the larger issues like poverty, unwanted and too many teenage pregnancies, drugs and crime, then schools will only be a band-aid applied to a gaping wound

The schools in the AZ community wisely decided to extend the school day because elementary students are so good at staying on task for 8 hours a day.  By the time the last class comes they are either in a super- charged caffeinated state or comatose, sort of like having Donald Trump and Ben Carson together in one room.   The longer and more productive fun-filled days allow the schools to have a professional development day one Friday a month while the students are at home trying to recover.  (I have a suspicion that the parents are not very happy to have their kids home one more day a month.)  Not surprisingly no one stopped to take into account that if you are a specialist, one third or more of your curriculum is not going to being taught on those classless that fall on Friday., especially when you factor in the award assemblies that many schools hold on one Friday a month.

 I attended my first professional development today. Luckily it was just music teachers because other schools frequently make the specialists attend professional development that has no earthly relevance to our subject area, but does allow some of the younger teachers to sit in the back and play on facebook or pay their bills.   Most of the teachers  in the AZ group are young and eager to do a good job, but I bet that in 3 years none of them will still be teaching.  One teacher said that 7 teachers quit last week.  I told her that 8 quit at the beginning of the year last year so that's a positive trend. 

Back to the meeting.  It's always nice to feel the shared pain. Everyone had war stories.   We traded funny student names.  I won again this year: Antonin Dvorjak Carter III (and his name is pronounced exactly the way you would pronounce the composer's name, minus the Carter.  I'm guessing the  familial lineage is probably a bit faulty at best.)  But that name still doesn't come close to this beauty: NVMeMzBerthaMae Jones.  When our coordinator walked in we'd return to one of our assignments, which was to share student work  I don't make my students do much writing.  I'm too busy trying to make music.  But sometimes I have them write a reflection when I send them to time out.  Here's what I go t from a third grader.  If you can decipher it, then I think it's possibly a love note to me.

 

The art teacher, who I share the room with, said I should make it a bumper sticker. I thought that was a great idea, but I'd add to it: My oter car is pnis.

*translation" You are a vagina.  I don't care.