Lunch Lady Land

This last week has been a trip. I have forgotten how much energy it takes to teach a bunch of crazy kids. You have to be on top of things for the entire time you have them in class, or you loose their attention and then class goes south.

I had my first observation on Tuesday. Dr. Misenhelter decided to do an impromtu visit. He watched me teach the first afternoon fifth grade class and then sneaked out. I was a little worried about what he would say. This group was not the most proficient in their recorder skills; several of the students had missed the previous week for a field trip to the Ozark Natural Science Center. So, when we started working on "My Heart Will Go On" from Titanic, I was a little frustrated when they started having trouble getting the rhythms. Oh well, Dr. M said that I was doing a great job and to keep up the good work. That was a relief!

Thursday was my first planned observation. Dr. Ellis Melton came to watch me and give me feedback, as well as a grade, for my teaching skills. I picked Thursday afternoon because this group is actually having their second hour of music for the week, and Shannon and Rachel combine their classes and do a different kind of lesson with these students. I decided to do an Orff lesson with the classes, using the different keyboard instruments (marimba, metallophone, Glockenspeil) and the drums, as well as teach a new note on the recorder. This sounds like a lot to do, but it never fails that I always finish before the class is over and need one more thing to do. First I taught the recorder note. I had to do this in order to teach the melody for the Orff exercise we were doing. The classes picked up on this pretty easily, so we moved on to singing the words to the melody we were playing on the recorder. We kept adding instruments and started telling the story Hush! A Thai Lullaby by Minfong Ho. It went over very well. I even had them write a short story about one of the animals and one of the instruments we had just sung about.

Dr. Melton and I chatted after class. He said that he had a great time watching this class. He said I had a great confidence in front of the class and I commanded their attention. He also liked the lesson we had done, saying that it was great in all the musical aspects we had covered. He gave me a couple of suggestions how to better the class and said that overall, it was an excellent class and to keep it up! Yeah!

Do you remember the school cafeteria? I usually brought my lunch since I was kind of a picky kid. And probably for that reason, I no longer eat ham sandwiches. Anyway, I have been eating in the lunchroom at the school. I must say, cafeteria food has gotten a lot better than when I was a kid. And the lunch ladies are so sweet! None of them are sweaty and none of them have any crazy moles!