Seven Quick Takes

-1-

IMEA conference was a blast! It was so much fun to go as a real live educator this year. When I looked at music, I thought of my students. When I listened to the clinics, I thought of my students. And when I went to work today, I was excited to try some of the things I'd learned and do better for my students. The only hard thing about going to IMEA (as Emma mentioned too) is that it's hard to apply a lot of the things to my own program and classes right away. But it is better to attend the conference and get those ideas than not to attend and get stuck in a teaching rut (which is what I was already starting to feel a little bit this semester already).

-2-

Last week I had the greatest teaching moment I've ever had. I was teaching a guitar lesson after school to a 4th grade girl. She's quite mature for her age and she's very outgoing and talkative. Well, we got to learning some Em and Am chords and we started joking around, telling sad stories with the minor chords changing back and forth in the background. Then in the end, we finished the song with a lovely EMaj chord and a happy ending. She LOVED it! But that wasn't even the best part. We moved on after that, just practicing some other basic chords like G, C, and D, but she was still hung up on the basic song we made earlier with the minor chords. So as I continued to play the G, C, and D chords, she stopped playing with me and started singing a new song with the chords I was playing. And I added a line, then she added another line, then we went back and repeated the chorus....and before we knew it, we had an even better song written than the one before! She couldn't stop talking about how cool that was! She said "We should write a song every time we have a lesson!" She was IN AWE. She was EXCITED about MUSIC. She wanted to record it and burn a CD and sell it and perform at places! She walked out of the building saying "I had the best day ever! Thank you, Miss (Sara)!" It was like...straight out of a movie or something.

Not only was it fun to be writing a silly song with student, but I could see it "click" in her. She got it. She got what music was all about! It expressed her story, it expressed her emotions, it was FUN. It was so cool to see that happen.

-3-

Next week I'm going to try new lesson groups with the 5th and 6th graders. At this point in the year, I have a good idea of the abilities and talents of each student, and I can see that just grouping them by instrument for their lessons is holding some of the advanced players back. And then some of the struggling students aren't getting the attention they need. So I grouped each class into 3 different groups - Advanced, Intermediate, and Beginner. I decided every "beginner" (even if they're in 6th grade) will get his/her own private lesson so we can really focus on their needs. The Intermediate groups are not going to be moving slowly but not super fast either. I tried to still group these "intermediate" kids by instrument, timbre or tessitura. And then the Advanced group will obviously be a quick-paced group. I'm excited to see how far those kids can really go when they're all put together for lessons.

-4-

I'm starting a harmonica/blues unit in 5th/6th grade music on Thursday (which also happens to be my 2nd evaluation day for the year). I'm a bit nervous about it because, honestly, I don't really know how to play harmonica very well yet, haha. But thanks to fellow-blogger Mary, I think this will be a fun unit for the kids. I ordered each student a harmonica from westmusic.com.

-5-

I've been thinking about attending the Conn-Selmer Institute this June. Anyone out there have any thoughts about this?

-6-

Today is snow (ice) day #7 for me and I plan to finish working on the harmonica unit, do some laundry (ugh), and find the rest of the music we're going to play at the Spring Concert. I'm going to use this new book and CD of recordings I just got to aid in my decision-making. At IMEA I bought "Teaching Music Through Performance in Beginning Band" and I'm very excited about it! The high school series is supposed to be great and very popular, so I'm hoping the beginning band version will be as helpful.

-7-

Have I mentioned that my district is consolidating next year? Yes, it's true. No one knows what they will be teaching or where exactly. But I have already been dreaming up plans for 5th/6th grade band and possibly middle school & high school choir. More specifically, I want TECHNOLOGY! I want AT LEAST a projector in my room that I can hook up to SmartMusic. It would be so helpful for beginning band since SmartMusic has Accent on Achievement in the library. I'm not sure how to go about asking for a projector or for SmartMusic, so I'll try to post about it later.