teaching highlights...

After a long and exhausting week last week, I finally feel like a teacher again. I made it through my two twelve-hour days (Tuesdays and Wednesdays) for this week, and I'm still feeling lucky to be a teacher.

My choirs are now singing together (after the initial 'first week back' singing placement tests and surveys). Tuesday, we spent several minutes on a choral warm-up...working on specific parts, careful intonation, breathing, listening, clarity of tone, and diction. It was becoming tedious, until...they performed the simple song again, all together. It was beautiful. The female voices were finally balanced by the strong basses and tenors. It was the first music we read together this year, just a warm up. But it was enough to encourage me for the rest of the day.

The beginner strings class is overwhelmingly large this year. It's fun. But it will be a challenge to keep them all focused...finding the delicate balance of keeping the more advanced students interested and engaged while not leaving the true beginners behind.
One little girl today was early for class, so she decided to impress me by telling me that she already knew how to play "Twinkle, Twinkle." Most of the time, when I tell her how to do something she just says "I KNOW," so I was interested to see if her claim was true. As she sawed violently back and forth accross the strings with her bow, she attempted to cover the sound of the poor shrieking instrument by singing (loudly) "Twinkle, Twinkle little star..." I tuned her violin for her. I knew it wouldn't help. Just before I handed the instrument back to her, she looked at me and said "Are you gonna give me my violin back or not!"
Most of my kids are really sweet.