Wednesday, September 14, 2005

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.

10 comments:

Wags said...

I wish we had a good music program when we were in school... you're students are lucky to have you ang!

Daniel Rudd said...

That is a great story:
sawed violently...
singing loudly...
It's perfect.
I'm going to read it again after lunch

Shaundra said...

Angela-
I am so glad that you are fulfilling one of your gifts: teaching. Some of the schools today lack inspiring, knowledgeable, loveable teachers like you. Keep on keepin' on!!

Anonymous said...

Put on your "happy feet" tonight and enjoy your dance lessons even if Ryan doesn't. Love you.

Kim said...

I think Ryan should go to Calvary just to have you as a teacher!

Daniel Rudd said...

What's going on here??

Dad Corbin comments "even if Ryan doesn't love you?"??

Anonymous said...

Pastor Daniel - You blooooogers need to pay more attention to your punctuation. I'll bet you read Eph. 4:28 as "Let him that stole steal...!(KJV) I did enjoy your take on it though.

Anonymous said...

I know, I'm going to have to be careful or I'll loose my commenting priveleges.

I also want to say that I don't know anything about who posted a comment in Angela's name.

It's just so fun because you can be anyone in these comments.

Ang said...

dr. dixon,
wow. i am so honored that you would find the time to comment on my blog...especially since I was under the impression that you could never remember my first name.
i would have left the "angela" comment up...if it weren't for the very explicit website that my name was linked to.
with deep gratitude,
angela

Anonymous said...

ooops! sorry Angela. I don't actually check the web sites that I use for the names of my identity theft victims. I was just giving the astute comment reader an opportunity to know that it wasn't really your post. Thus "imposter".