11 Days: Benchmarks and Tallies

With 12 days of teaching experience under my belt, my official teaching license signed by my middle school principal and former a capella mate, and a dented immune system… this life is starting to seem more real. This shall be a post of Benchmarks and Tallies.

Benchmarks and Tallies

• 15 Days: Is how far into the school year I made it before I got sick. As I sat on my darling little carpet square, next to my darling little Kindergartner, she proceeded to sneeze 25 times throughout the class. The look on her face said, "Dear Teacher, I have no idea what is happening to me right now and I'm sorry that you will undoubtedly be sick at the end of these 45 minutes, but I will now put my hands in my mouth, then onto that drum. Good thing I'm so cute."

• First Entirely Silent Class: Now, before you say, "Oopsa Karlie, you're teaching music so if the students are silent you're probably doing it wrong. Good try but let's go ahead and rescind that license," let me explain what this really means. As my 23 third and fourth grade students entered my classroom I stood in the doorway holding an index card that said, "Hi! Please enter silently." If I heard them speak, I beckoned them back to the door, and they entered again until they got it. I think a key element of this whole class was making sure to keep my attitude playful to make sure that students understood that silence wasn't a punishment, it was just a particular kind of class we were going to have. If a student spoke, I reacted as, "Oh no! You forgot!" I only had to have this reaction four times during class, and never to the same student. 

          As we moved through warm ups I gestured to all of them and pointed to my ears, then I

          sang the exercise, and gestured for them to repeat. It was the first class where I had full 

          singing participation, and we were all generally singing in the same key. To be honest, I 

          did bring in sound when I made a noise for "No" and a noise for "Yes." When I wanted  

          students to make an improvement I would demonstrate what I didn't want, and make a  

          weird "No" sound, then demonstrate what I did want and make some strange yippee-

          hands-in-the-air-dance thing. I was absolutely floored by how well students responded to

          this.

• 25 Middle Schoolers: Showed up to our first optional chorus rehearsal. Now, I told them to come and try it out with no obligation to return next week so it's possible that I'll lose some before the next rehearsal. But what I actually feel was the success here was that 25 students were curious about what chorus would be like.

• 4 Classes: Of middle school students back to back where we worked in groups to create our own lyrics to "I Wish I Was a Mole in the Ground." This gets tallied because in all four classes every student participated (some very minimally, but still,) every group had a verse by the end of class, and there was an air of excitement about the project and the continuation of it next week. Here is my favorite verse created by a group of 7th graders:

I wish I was a flyin' stump in the sea

I wish I was a flyin' stump in the sea

If I'm a flying stump in the sea, I'd land right on a whale,

and I wish I was a flyin' stump in the sea.

So, it doesn't make sense and it doesn't rhyme. But- it's packed full of imagery AND it's not inappropriate, so it gets tallied as a success for the middle school.

• 3 Classes: Have made it onto the map for our "Can We Make It Around the Entire World Through Music?" challenge. Granted, the Kindergarten and 1st/2nd Grade class are up there because of the music I taught them-so they didn't have a choice in the matter. But the 6th grade also made it up because one student brought me a list of 7 songs from around the world. From his list I chose an electronic music piece from Finland to play for the class. Go sixth grade. Here's the piece for your enjoyment, or not! Either is okay.

This second week of teaching has been filled with even more mistakes than the first, but they've been new mistakes-and I've mostly fixed the other stuff. Oh, and you should also know that I again had a frog in my class, but this time I couldn't get him out and he stayed there through the entire day... and unbelievably, he didn't hop out until I came back at night, at which point I caught him and delivered him into dewey grass. 

I bid you adieu Internet world, I'm going to try to use the 5lbs of carrots Alex and I just picked to make a carrot cake. Most of you can predict that this will not go well for me. But hey... why not?