February Musings

Remnants of the Empire

I know I said I would give up complaining about Former-Principal Palpatine... and for the most part, I have. I can't help, however, but continue to be annoyed by the aftertaste of her rule. Chief among the residual elements is the fact that more and more kids are being moved into my choir class, simply because there is nowhere else for them to go. For the second time in my stay at New Republic, the choir class has exceeded 50 kids - a number that wouldn't be so bad if it weren't for the fact that a third of them didn't really want to be there.

The inflexibility of the schedule was magnified by the removal of many of the school's electives, leaving only a few to carry the burden of the excess enrollment. Let's not forget that it was Palpatine's grand scheme to put a lot of the lower-academic performers into band - thus giving me the numbers to start a marching program. I won't go any further than that - you know how that light's my fuse.

What saddens me is the fact that I saw this coming years ago. I saw the school slowly transformed into Palpatine's instrument of progress. Now bereft of her driving ambition, the limbs still flail like the twitching corpse of Medusa, still fresh from Perseus' blow. Principal Leto is doing a pretty good job of not getting in people's way, but I'm starting to wonder if he will try to reshape the school to be something other than Palpatine's obsolete tool. I certainly hope so.

But can Eden be restored? Can we just reverse the machinations of a tyrant - rebuilding a more varied schedule of classes that would serve more student wants and needs? I don't know. It would involve the abandonment of newly formed sections of AP and Honors courses, and I don't know if this town would approve of that. Plus, people don't like schools being filled with 'frivolous' electives when the economy turns bad. It's just one of those things.

Still Dancing With The Devil

So last night I took a pep band to a home basketball game for the first time ever. I was asked by both the Athletics Director and Assistant Principal Bob. The game was kind of as big deal. After football season, I don't like to do pep anything. But they said "pretty please" and given that I'd promised to be a little more cooperative now that Palpatine is gone, I decided to help them out

It wasn't too hard - you can get away with a small group at basketball games. The only down side is that the CIF rules are a lot more strict for indoor sports, which means that we don't get as many chances to play. What I'm more worried about is the possible precedent that any sport can ask for our participation, and that last-minute pressure to show up at this game or that game will be a common practice. Eh... folks, I have a newborn at home now, I can't be doing that.

Still, I think I might just be being paranoid. The Athletics Director did say "Hey, if it's too much trouble, don't worry about it." But I decided to do it anyway just to earn brownie points, and to earn the right to maybe say "no" in the future without allowing the impression that I never say "yes."

Finding the Right Carrot

So after five months of fighting and yelling, I think I may have finally made some progress in turning my hellish beginning instruments class around. The advantage of working in a academically college resume' motivated community is that grades become the ultimate motivator. Unfortunately, a lot of students and parents are all too eager to find ways to obtain the results without actually doing the work... but that's another post.

I posted the semester grades for that class, and more than a few kids freaked out. I mean they freaked out over Bs and Cs... lets not even get into the Ds and Fs (of which there were only a few). Parents were e-mailing. A few of them called. My answer was all the same - "Well, getting some extra practice time in would help, but really little Johnny/Suzie needs to be more attentive in class." Fortunately, I covered my ass months ago by e-mailing out notices to students/parents who were falling behind, saying that they needed to arrange some 1-on-1 time with me to get caught up. Not one single kid took me up on that offer.

But here's the thing that seemed to dramatically improve the class-wide behavior on friday: I announced to them that after reviewing the practical final (playing test) from 1st semester - it was apparent that half the class was ready to move on, and half the class needed to go back to the beginning of the method book and start over. The students who seemed to be making progress on their instruments will be given a significant amount of individual practice time (in practice rooms with solo and ensemble books) - meanwhile, the remedial group would stay with me in the main room and review everything from page 1. I will check on the progress of the 'advanced' group regularly - having them perform weekly in front of the class. If they seem to be using their time wisely, I'll allow it to continue. If not - I'll simply reform the advanced players into a separate group that will stay in the main room, and trade off rehearsal time with the remedial group (ie. I'll have to switch back-and-forth between the groups - whoever isn't being worked with will have to sit there and wait.)

I said we'd start as soon as we got back from our week-long President's Break.

I don't know what it was about that announcement, but that day was the first class we ever had where the entire room was focused from the bell to bell. It's way too early to tell whether or not that will hold, but it was promising.

The Happiest Place on Earth!

Today was my annual trip to Disneyland with my advanced choir. Probably the smoothest one ever. All the kids were well behaved, the chaperons performed their duties with flying colors, the performance came off without a hitch - and this time I managed not to lose an $1200 camera set-up.

Yup today was awesome.

I only wish I hadn't checked my school e-mail before I left. I have two situations breweing that I'll have to deal with first thing tomorrow:

1) An 8th grader in my band is turning into a bully. He's been a good kid for me up until now - but he's been getting aggressive and mouthy with the other kids. Time to step in.

2) Mother of a kid in my hellish 4th period class is concerned that her boy got the lowest grade ever on a final exam - a 76%. Obviously this is unacceptable - he's an A student. Well, he seems to be a nice enough kid - the problem is that he's a C musician. Apparently little Jesus Einstein's middle name is not Amadeus.

Making a Bad Situation Worse

Despite the gloomy title, this one is actually kind of funny. Kind of.

Today was the first day back after finals week - the first day of the second semester. A day of adjusting my hand-made attendance sheets for the new rosters (not too bad, actually) It's also a day that sends the autistic kids (of which I have five in 1st period) into a tizzy, because the schedule is weird, and they've been bounced around with no stability the week before - yadda yadda yadda.

Well, today little Miko had a meltdown in choir. She spent most of 1st semester quietly sitting in her seat, with an aide beside her. Then suddenly the week before finals we notice that she's startin to get a little fidgety - going through other people's stuff, etc. Today she jumped out of her chair, went full prone on the ground and started screaming. Before her aide could get to her, she jumped up and started dashing around the room. The class was paralyzed with shock. Finally the aide got her out of the room.

I've learned that my job in those situations is to try and remain as calm as possible. But once Miko and her aide got out the door, I casually uttered "Thank God for Aides"... only seconds later did I realize that I had just come across like a protest sign for the Westboro Baptist Church. The whole room laughed. I think that Miko and her aide were still in the hallway, and could probably hear that. I'll try and smooth it out tomorrow - explain that we weren't laughing at her, but at what I said.

The Best Laid Plans.....

So, I gave a final to my beginning instruments. Usually I don't give finals in my performance classes - I use two concerts per semester as a mid-term and final. But this class pushed me to put each one on the carpet individually and ask the to produce. To that end they got both a playing and written assessment.

It was a nice idea, but it kind of fell apart. Kind of. I still think it was worthwhile, but I have to adjust how I do it. The problem with the playing part was that I listened to the kids one-by-one, while the rest of the class was on 'silent activity.' The silent part didn't happen. Hell, the 'stay in their seat' part didn't happen. Next test: small groups (two or three at a time) right there in rehearsal. I wanted to make it so that the kids weren't just playing by themselves in front of the whole class, but since the class in general has to be monitored every second - that's kind of out of the equation.

The written test was.... well for starters, it was a self made test. I also tried to design it to be instrument-specific. Add in the fact that I also am careful to make multi-version tests - it turned out that almost every kid got a unique test. That sounds like a nightmare to grae, but I actually have a system to cut down the confusion. Plus, we're talking about basic musicianship - like "what is a whole note" kind of stuff. I should be able to grade it without a key.

The only problem is that the test was full of bugs. I was swarmed by kids who were trying to navigate their way through my mistakes. It really is a good test in theory - I just have to iron the glitches out... um... for next year's class.