The Joys of Teaching, Update

Just wanted to let everyone know that our little concert band trumpeter is still trying to figure out if his instrument is considered brass and gold.

Also, Hershey Kisses motivate kids to play off their scales early.

The Joys of Teaching, Story 2

To spice things up a bit in concert band we decided to divide the class up in two groups: The black and silver instruments (clarinet and oboe) and The Shiny Gold instruments (Tuba, trombone, sax, and trumpet). So after I explained this to the class, our little trumpet student holds his trumpet up and asks, "Is this gold?"

Dean told him that he would get him a color wheel to review after class.

The Joys of Teaching, Story 1

Today I was sitting next to our trumpet player in the Concert Band. (For my non-band friends, concert band is the bottom group). We had a conversation that went something like this:

Dean: Ok, let me hear the brass play line 25, Glow Worm.

Trumpet student, to me: Is that me? Am I brass?

Warms my heart.

Words Cannot Express.......

The day that I had today. Let me start by saying that I always hate the Mondays after I'm out of town all weekend. I also stopped checking my school email on Sunday nights because there never fails to be a parent email that will just piss me off and ruin what is left of my weekend. So the first email I get this morning is from a mother of a kid in Dean's band. She is emailing me, I assume, because she was in my class last year and I teach her sectionals. She is emailing to let me know that her drama queen daughter (drama queen is the understatement of the century) has informed her that they were told to schedule their lives around their band sectional and she wasn't going to be able to make it to her sectional this week and she was very concerned that she was going to be punished severely for her absence. (We asked them to schedule tutorials for days other than their sectional and the coaches have okayed them to miss practice on the day of their sectional. Basically we told them that they need to be at sectionals no matter what. However, some students have had conflicts and these students have come in to make up their missed time on another day - no big deal). So this lady is going off because she is supposed to be induced on Thursday, the day of said sectional, and she feels that her daughter should be there for the birth of her baby brother. She feels that we are being unreasonable by asking her to schedule the birth of her son around our sectional. YEAH - that's EXACTLY what we are asking her to do. And she better let grandpa know that if he's going to keel, it should be on a Friday so that she can get to that dang sectional! Now I see where her daughter gets it. What teacher on earth is that unreasonable? I don't expect people to schedule births around my sectionals. You would think parents would understand that we say these things so that the kids don't take advantage and skip every week for whatever stupid reason they can come up with. I forwarded the email directly to Dean and he sent her an email that made me laugh. I have no patience for this kind ignorance. Especially when her daughter has a tendency (again, tendency is an understatement) to exaggerate EVERYTHING in her life and turn what should be a minor issue into a life altering scenario.
I have so many other great stories about teaching and I will share all of them in a new series of blogs called "The Joys of Teaching". Amusing stories that will hopefully make you laugh.

A Beautiful Day For a Concert

I took this picture of the Bass Hall today before the afternoon concert. It was such a nice day and I ended up walking around town for a while after the concert. I'm so excited that fall is on the way! Sundays are the best days for walking around downtown, especially this time of year. Just wanted to share my picture!

MSNBC Anyone?

If you do not already watch MSNBC, I highly recommend it! I have just recently started watching it in the evening and it's awesome! I like to keep up on the news, but sometimes I get bored watching CNN. I love The Daily Show, but I don't always catch it. MSNBC is like CNN meets The Daily Show. It has all the news of CNN with the humor of The Daily Show. I recommend watching between 7-9. You'll catch up on all of the news and get several laughs in the process. Check it out!

Sarah, This Blog is For You!

I was told that I didn't update my blog with enough pictures and life details. So in an effort to keep you better informed on my very uninteresting life, here is a day with me:

Here I am on my way to work this morning before the sun came up. I walked outside and it felt awesome!!! Finally a cool morning. I was really pumped about it so I put my favorite tunes on the iPod and headed to work.

This is our note review during the oboe class!

Trying to get the oboe in tune. This is not an easy task for a 6th grader, hence the funny face I'm making. We got there though.......

Trying to play the french horn during Dean's band. I am finally getting to live my dream of being a horn player!!!! And Dean, I apologize again for all of the wrong notes today.

This was my lunch today. That diet root beer always makes my afternoon better!

Here I am being "dj" during concert band. We have the kids in this class play their unison songs to a cool beat from our fancy keyboard. It's the only way we can get through class - well, that and lots of inside jokes that fly right over the heads of this group. This is definitely a class we have to keep a sense of humor in.

Here is Dean jammin' out after all of our classes were over. Thank goodness for last period conference time.

Learning how to play a fork F in oboe sectionals. It's a amazing how good our oboe students are - this guy doesn't even need a reed! And he's super excited about me showing him how to play a note he learned last year!

Driving to Subway for a quick dinner before Meet the Teacher night. It was such a pretty day that I had to drive with the window down and with my favorite tunes pumping, of course.

And that is my day in a nutshell. Only difference is tomorrow I will teach clarinet lessons until 7, Thursday I'll go to the gym after sectionals, and Friday I'll drive to Pittsburg for the reunion. So you see Sarah, I don't update my blog as much because I do the same thing every day. I'll try to do better, though. And take more pictures so it is more entertaining. I just don't have cute kids to take pictures of like Natasha, and it's hard to take pictures while you are trying to teach. Maybe we will have lots of photo opportunities this weekend to post! Love ya Sarah!

Things Are Going Well.....

No, really, they are. For once. Things are finally looking up. Being settled into the new house is great and it's nice to have Natasha right down the road. It's great being able to hang out with friends and then be home in 1 minute! School is going really well, too. It feels like the days are shorter this year than the last few years have been. Maybe it's because I don't dread going to work anymore! I don't absolutely love it yet, but I surely don't dread it like I did last year. The only big problem that we've had so far is an inordinate amount of parents telling us that they were in band in high school and that they were just going to have their kids do exactly what they did. They haven't touched an instrument in 15 years, but they're going to teach their kid how to play it better than us and give them better information than what we can give them. Sure. Sounds great. If all it takes to do my job is simply being in the high school band in the 80's, then I am WAY over qualified for my job. Every time one of them talks to me like I'm a moron and tells me how much they know about running a band program, I just want to say, "Look, I've flown on many planes in my lifetime. However, I am in no way qualified to fly the plane. STOP TRYING TO FLY MY PLANE!!!" Parents are one of the few things I hate about teaching. (Not all of them. There are a lot of good ones that are very supportive and very helpful. We just rarely hear from them.) But all in all, things are so much better now. Natasha and I are gearing up for a garage sale this weekend, so if anyone needs any gently used stuff, please stop by!!!

So Much To Do, So Little Time

I knew that when school started I would be bad about blogging (along with being bad about doing anything else besides work), so I've got a lot to catch you up on. What a week it has been. Classes started up on Monday and so far, so good for us in the Trinity Bands. Things are so much better than they were last year when we felt like we were teaching in the Wilmer Hutchins school district. I'm optimistic because there is no way this year could be any worse than last year - unless the school burns down. On Tuesday, the battery in my car died in the parking lot of Half Price Books. Dean was nice enough to come give me a jump and escort me to the Interstate Battery that is in front of the Target in Keller. (Remember this location, people, because you NEVER want to take your car there!) What was supposed to be a 15 minute battery change turned into a 20 hour ordeal of ignorance at it's finest. To make a long story very short. The guy that was changing my battery couldn't get my car to start, decided that it wasn't the battery it was the starter, told me to call someone to get a ride and then kicked me out of the store and left me before Tara could get there to pick me up. (I'm not an auto mechanic genius, but if it was the STARTER, then why did my car START when Dean jumped me off? Operative word here being START.) Dean was again nice enough to come back up there to assess the damage and discovered that this moron had put the battery in backwards!!! It took me about 10 seconds to learn that the black cord connects to the negative side of the battery. SO - the next day, Tara was nice enough to take me BACK up there during my break so I could tell they story to another guy there. He takes a look at it and finds that the first guy put the wrong battery in there to begin with!! It takes two guys calling another guy to figure out that this has blown some fuses. Well, I ended up having to come back later to pick it up (again, this will make it Dean's THIRD trip to the store with me) and I'm thinking that this battery change is going to be on the house. WRONG. I got a whole 10% discount for my trouble. That came out to about $7.19. And they were even going to charge me for installation!!!!!!!!!! I made it quite clear to them that I was in no way going to pay for their crappy installation. Stay far away from this place people!!!!!

Abby's 2nd birthday is today and the birthday party was yesterday. It was fun for her. It was a little too much time with small children for me. Here are some pictures:

Here she is blowing out her candles on her Dora cake. (The two girls sitting next to her were the most annoying children I've ever met in my life. They were constantly shoving Abby out of the way of her cake and they opened nearly all of her presents. Their parents never once pulled them away and asked them to stop, even though clearly they are old enough to understand. It is parents like this that will eventually drive me out of teaching.) Good thing Abby is a very nice girl and likes to share.

Here she is enjoying her birthday cake!

Opening presents with mommy after mommy finally got fed up with the bratty children and told them to back off!!! She got lots of Dora stuff. She loves Dora!!

Abby watching her favorite show, DORA!!!!