Productive Distractions

Here I am on the last day of my President's Break. Much to my wife's chagrin, I requested that we put Maestro Jr. in day care all week (she prefer that I spend bonding time with him on my days off). I told her that I wanted to use the time to do some house projects (which mostly didn't get done, except for some cleaning) and try to make some headway on my 'great reform.' Besides, we were paying for the week anyway - we might as well use it.

When I have time off, I always imagine having more free time than I really do. I keep envisioning these 30-hour days, where I can goof-off, watch TV, sleep in, nap, snack, nap some more - and then somehow get a good 5 hours of work done. It's never worked out that way. Most of the time, I blink and find myself on the Sunday before the inevitable return to school, and all of the work I brought home is still sitting in my briefcase untouched.

I've done a little better than that this time, although I haven't made as big a dent as I would have liked. As I reported before, I got some good planning done with my string coach, which I followed up at home by filling in similar goals for my wind and percussion students. Today I made a decent effort, although I ended up putting most of my energy into writing down scale exercises that my kids already have memorized. I did manage to finalize and print my major scale sheets - that was pretty good. I also poked around my new edition of Finale 2011 and figured out some stuff that may come in handy later (Turns out, the software comes with all sorts of prepackaged drills for school groups, as well as theory worksheets, stuff for jazz bands... It's all pretty impressive.) But those efforts, along with cleaning my home office, ended up being mere productive distractions from the monumental tasks that I really should be working on:

1) Coming up with a time frame to do assessments that will serve as the basis of my multi-level learning and grading process.
2) Coming up with the format and materials for said assessments.
3) Designing the standard keyboard lessons and practice exercises that I need for my beginning instruments class.
4) Coming up with the rhythm worksheets that I'm going to actually implement as homework in my instrumental groups.

I did , however, have an epiphany the other day after I started thinking about individual student progress sheets. What I really need are student portfolios that follow them through their career with the NRHS Music Department. I mean a database that tracks everything, from their progress through the skill levels to listing every solo they ever performed, as well as any honor groups they participate in. I mean yeah, it will be a lot of work setting that up (not that I don't already have enough ambitious projects on my plate. But if I start picking at it, I may be able to use it as a focal point for the new multi-level teaching and assessment process.

Hmmm... I wonder if using Microsoft Access might help. I've poked around with Access a few times, but I never got into it enough to utilize it. I've been keeping most of my information in Excel files.

(See this is the point where I get lured into another productive distraction - where I spend the rest of my weekend poking around Access and not addressing the stuff I need for next week. But then, you gotta jump into it sometime.)

It is now approaching 4:30, and I have to go pick Maestro Jr. from daycare. *sigh*