Back to the grind!

We had a great Thanksgiving but now it is time to go back to school, if only for another three weeks until our next break! Today I only taught first through third grades because I was sick this morning. We are having a Christmas program on December 17 and the first and second grades are singing four songs, along with some other entertainment. Today I began teaching the kids their songs for their programs. We are singing "Away in a Manger", "Santa Claus is Coming to Town", "Silent Night", and "Jingle Bells". I was extremely amazed and saddened that half of the children had never heard "Away in a Manger" or "Silent Night"! They knew the other two "secular" songs very well, but the Christian songs reflecting the TRUE meaning of Christmas in the birth of Savior, they had no clue about. I am hoping that learning these two songs will plant a much needed seed of the Gospel that a lot of them are so desperate to hear.

Today I began teaching 3rd grade how to read music notes. I started with just teaching the lines notes and then I will do the space notes another day. I was extremely surprised and pleased that they understood it very well. I use the mnemonic device Every Good Boy Desrves Fudge to teach the order of the line notes. After they memorized that sentence, then I pointed to the notes without the letters and had them name them for me. Then on the Smart Board I had placed different notes and had them come to the board and write their names. They got them all correct! I was very happy. I also had them trace treble clefs on the Smart Board and they liked that as well.

When I came home I finished decorating the inside of the house for Christmas, so I will leave you with a picture of our tree next to the piano.

Thanksgiving Week!

Today was the first day of a two day week. One of the best school weeks of the year! I have to admit, the only thing I am doing with my students is watching "A Charlie Brown Thanksgiving". For one thing, I only have 2 days to do a week's worth of planning. Another thing is my recorders came in and I need to spend time organizing and getting them ready for the students for after Christmas, which takes a little while. And of course, it's a two day week, so trying to get the kids to learn music and sit still during a break week is next to impossible! It's like teaching when it's snowing and the kids are hoping school will be called off!

Today was also great because our girls and boys basketball team played a game at school today. Our girls won and our boys lost, but both teams played well and I was very proud of them.

Today I had a piano lesson with my youngest student and she is really improving a lot. She is seven years old and has been taking for almost a year. It seems like at first, things were going very slow for her, so we went back and did a lot of review, and now we are on new material and she is playing chords! I am very proud of her because she has a very small hand and it is hard for her to stretch but she is doing great. She gets nervous when we do new stuff because she doesn't think she can reach the notes, but she does great on the first try and surprises herself. Today was her best lesson.

I also got some Christmas decorations for my mantle at home that I am really excited about! Now if only I had the time to put my tree up! We just bought a new house a couple of months ago so I am excited about decorating it but also a little overwhelmed about it as well.

Finally, we went to the Alabama-UTC football game this weekend. I am a HUGE Alabama fan and have been all of my life but I had never been to a game until now. It was so much fun! I told John that we should get season tickets! So we'll see. I'll leave you with a few pictures from the game.

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It's Friday!

Finally Friday! Definitely a favorite day of the week for all teachers. I wanted to share an experience I had with my 8th grade classes yesterday and today. As I mentioned before, I teach music for Kindergarten up through 8th grade, so it can be challenging searching and planning for such wide spread age groups. The group I have the hardest time with is 8th grade, because it takes so much to keep their attention. Unless it is related to rap music or MTV they are not interested. I try very hard to tailor the lessons to cater to their attention span and make them somewhat fun but they will not have any of it. Of course this particular cohort group was the same last year, when they were in 7th grade, so a lot of it is just these particular students and not the age group.

Needless to say, this week I did a short unit on bands, as in marching bands, concert bands etc. The first lesson didn't go over too well. Yesterday however, I touched on drum corps. I explained what a drum corps was, showed pictures, and we listened to a performance from the top drum corps group in the country. And much to my surprise, they were actually interested! They wanted to see video clips of the groups, so I managed to go to the Drum Corps International website and find clips of each group doing their championship performance. The kids really enjoyed it and even began critiquing some of the performances! I told them that I was going to a college football game this weekend and I would try to take pictures of the marching band to show them. Now if only I could get them interested in the rest of what I teach.

The problem with this age group is they are only exposed to one kind of music. I want them to learn to appreciate other types of music that actually require real skill and musicianship like classical and jazz but it is such a challenge. Any ideas on how to do this?

On a personal note, I mentioned above that we are going to a football game. We are going to see Alabama and UTC in Tuscaloosa. I am very excited because I have been an Alabama fan since I was little and this will be my first game. I will try to post pictures when I get back.

Also I ordered the cutest Christmas ornaments today for my piano students. They are personalized with their name and year on them. I have posted an example of what they look like.



Hope everyone has a wonderful Friday!

My First Blog!

Ok I am going to try to get into this whole "blogging" thing but I am not sure how consistent I can be with it. I am not savvy when it comes to editing these things and doing html and all that stuff so I will do the best I can!

For starters, I am an elementary music teacher at a K-8 school in East Tennessee. The name of the school will remain anonymous as well as any students or teachers I may mention. This is merely for the sake of privacy. My one purpose in writing about my experiences as a music teacher is to hopefully help someone else in the same profession, maybe provide a little insight and a good read, and get tips and ideas myself on how to improve my teaching. Of course a lot of the time I will write about my personal life as well, but since teaching music is a big chunk of what I do every day, I thought I would make that the main topic of the blog.

That is about it for now, once I figure out how all this works, I will post more!