A Little Rambling

A new school year has begun.  Funny that that should be the time I finally sit down to blog again, when I feel like I have no time to breathe amidst the rush of things that have to be done now .  Especially considering I spent my entire summer reading Harry Potter in German, watching Dr. Who, and staying up too late with John every night. It's been a victorious day for me.  In my two freshmen classes, my boys are tripled by the number of girls in their sections.  They also can't sing (yet).  The first day of school, one boy asked, "Wait...we have to sing in this class?  Everyone?  Even the boys?!"  They were aghast. Freshman year is a rough time for boys.  Their instruments are so wonky, poor things.  All those changes...or worse, none of the changes just yet.  I do have one boy alto still.  He bears it well.  Individually, they can all match pitch pretty well.  Stick four of them together, and something goes terr...

Final exams are over and graded!  Fortunately for me, my students never leave me without some very amusing attempts at answering their questions to keep the grading from being dull. "Clarity played a huge role in the Classical Ara [sic].  Now in musical piece, you see that there is less of something, and doesn't feel or sound as gody [ gaudy , sic].  What I mean by gody, is that there is a lot of the same thing going on, like when you wear too many bows in your hair, for example.  So in the classical ara, there is no more godiness, but now clarity.  Clarity is pretty much no more gody, so like only wearing one bow in your hair, it's clear!" Why does the Count want Cherubino sent away?  "B/c he is a playa'." "Marcellina wants to marry Figaro because he pledged to marry her if he didn't pay some money back.  It's good that she doesn't however because she's his mother!  eeeeeeewww!" Also, every possible mutilation of the Ge...

Death by grading: 50 quizzes, 30 musical compositions, 60 two-to-four page essays, and 25 worksheets all in one day.  I have the best mom and sister in the universe who helped me through it.  I feel a bit like superwoman.  Before I go curl up in my bed and pass out, I thought I'd share my favorite gems from the concert review essays.  There were the usual spelling errors and odd uses of terms, but these stood out in their oddity. "It was a memorable experience, full of unusual music and unique hair styles." "It then bacon to go all over the place and became loud." (In the middle of a detailed description of Liszt's Dante Symphony ) "PIZZICATO FROM THHE VIOLAS!  I don't know why that made me so excited but it was important in my notes." "It was also al dente and I can't read some of my notes because it was dark and I can't write in the dark because I cannot see." "The piece was a bit high-pitched, and, as its tit...

Having classes full of freshmen is a wonderful thing when you need to get a lot of something done.  I was facing the prospect of folding three hundred some-odd programs this weekend in my apartment when inspiration struck.  What was a daunting couple hours of tedious folding and likely paper cuts became a five minute diversion that my students enjoyed a disproportionate amount.  At the end of the day, my room was a disaster - this has been that kind of week - and for some reason my floor never gets vacuumed over the weekend.  Dismayed at all the little tiny chads and bits of paper and hair ties and pencil stubs and goodness knows what else littering my floor, I again though, ooh, I have freshmen.   In less than a minute my floor was spotless.  Well, almost spotless, they are just freshmen.  But still.  Free labor is fun! I also noticed something interesting in my classes today.  We had our first combined rehearsals with both sections yester...

As a music teacher, I don't have much opportunity to read my students' writing.  This week, though, they had to turn in their big quarter project, and I have been ever so amused (and a little aghast) at some of the things I've heard.  I thought I would share some of my favorites with you.  (If you don't speak music, they might not all make sense.)  There were many others that left me scratching my head, but these were the most comprehensible. "The overall dynamic was mexxo forte." (ole!) "This piece was sung by an Acapulco choir." (goes well with mexxo forte) It crescendoed to a nice mezzo-forte, adding a silent beauty to the sound."  (louder music has silent beauty how?) "The most interesting fact I found about this song is that there are not many pages on the internet about this song." "The dynamics in this piece were evident variations in volume without change." "This song has no dynamics."  (it is sil...

Alas, poor blog.  Neglected is your state!  Would that I had more time to devote to cherishing you. On this cheerful Friday, I wanted to take a moment and share a glimpse of my first quarter as a *real* teacher.  It's been insanely busy, especially as I am still keeping all my weekday private students and I just started dating.  JW and I laugh that my first semester teaching and his last semester of law school is a very silly time to start a relationship, but some things are worth the effort.  "What we obtain too cheap, we esteem too lightly: it is dearness only that gives every thing its value . Heaven knows how to put a proper price upon its goods."  -Thomas Paine. Here's an adorable picture of us, just so you can see.  :)  Except now JW has shaved off his beard with no warning, and I'm still adjusting to him looking like a totally different person.  But anyways.  We're cute. So far, teaching has been fun.  Stressful, fo...

School starts on Monday!  Well, parent teacher conferences start on Monday and school starts on Tuesday, but whatever.  I've ordered my workbooks, made up my gradebooks, organized seating charts, set up my class and my desk and my calendar and made forms and passes and all kinds of stuff...and have chosen (almost) no music and written no plans.  I'm severely lacking in motivation, and the closer I get to panic the more I avoid it.  Thus, blogging.  I WILL get it done, and the situation is not as dire as it appears, but I'm still in quite a tizzy of terror.  It won't be that bad...right? Anyways, the purpose of getting on here today (for the first time in far too long) was to share another recipe.  This one is stolen from a wonderful neighbor and adapted slightly. These ham buns are DELICIOUS and easy.  I've made them twice this week for friends who came over. Ham Buns 1/2 cup butter, softened 1 small onion, diced up into itty bitty pieces ...

My friend Matt has this fun blog idea, wherein his blog topic each day comes from the song stuck in his head that morning.  Sometimes they're silly, sometimes he turns it into something quite profound.  Inspired, I thought I would try that. Problem: the song song stuck in my head this morning was "The Mitten Song."  ( listen to it here )  I'm not sure there's much useful storytelling I can pull out of "Thumbs in the thumb-place, fingers all together/this is the song we sing in mitten weather."  It's an adorable song, and I don't really mind it cycling around my brain, but there's really not a whole lot of purpose behind it except that kindergarteners will look precious as they sing it with their reindeer antlers and missing teeth in the Christmas sing-a-long. However, it does lend itself well to talking about my favorite classes - the Ks.  They're so flipping adorable!  I have one class in particular on Tuesdays and Wednesdays that I...

Today was my first day of teaching, at a school which shall remain nameless for the sake of privacy.  Just know that it's a pretty big school somewhere in the Greater Phoenix Metropolitan Area. I've looked forward to this moment for quite some time now, with varying degrees of excitement and trepidation.  I wasn't too nervous...and even that turned out to be for nothing.  I really did almost nothing today.  I got to do some warm-ups, but only one choir actually sang.  I took roll in a few others, and then sat at the desk listening to the explanation of the handbook over and over, doodling a new choir poster at the desk. I was so underwhelmed by my activities today that I am now eagerly looking forward to getting to teach actual things tomorrow instead of being terrified.  I guess that worked out well. It's weird to look at my little photo id card and see "Faculty" instead of "Student."  It's weird to eat lunch in the fine arts office with all...

Because I loathe packing so sincerely, I often find myself doing many other things in between boxes, which means it usually takes a long time.  I'm somewhere around half done and still have all weekend before I move, so I'm counting that as a good start.  This small fiend doesn't make it go any quicker, though. The last week has been fun and productive, and cramming it all into this one post won't do it justice, but I'll do it anyways.  We'll go backwards. Today: Jessica came over and we learned two dances (the shim sham and the line dance to Fake I.D. from Footloose), ate smoothies, took pictures of adventures in Walmart, had lots of girl talk, and indulged in a delicious dinner of mac & cheese, cheesy bacon potatoes, totino's pizza rolls, and oreo cake pops. Last night: As You Like It was our play for Shakespeare night.  We formalized the accent-adoption process, and some were very interesting (for example, I was both Igor and an Alligator...

1.  hearing students excitedly telling their parents what they learned today 2.  my boss telling me I'm a saint 3.  getting new students who are already pretty good 4.  getting new baby students excited to learn 5.  students wanting to hear me play 6.  making silly faces and yet still having 'classroom management' abilities 7.  brownies, cake pops, cupcakes, cookies, and raspberry lemonade 8.  a photocopier! 9.  listening to my students make up their own music 10.  when I can tell my students actually like me :) I am so blessed in my job!