Can You Spare a Square?

Last year I struggled mightily to teach the third grade how to blow in to their recorders.  I described it, I demonstrated, I made them learn to chant, "You're blowing too hard!" when I asked, "If you're squeaking what's wrong?"

But most of them didn't get it.  My fault.  I was explaining and modeling mainly for auditory and visual learners.  My kinesthetic babies were left out in the cold.

Then I happened to see a little snippet of a video of Maria - the AbFab music teacher who demos things for Carnegie Hall's Link Up program - having her kids practice breathing with little tissue paper squares:

Comme çi

Worked like a charm.  This year I used them - the day I handed out their recorders I also handed them each a square to keep in the case.  The idea is to hold the square in the palm of your flattened hand and blow so gently that the tissue paper moves but does not fall off your hand.  Harder than it sounds!  I call it the Leaf Blower exercise.

Because I am that geek extremely dedicated music teacher, I'm already setting plans in motion for next year.  Yep, we're incorporating MusicK-8's Recorder Karate program.  I'm hoping this makes a huge difference in the at-home practicing engagement of my kids.  It's always been tepid at best.  Check out the Recorder Rules bulletin board I pinned from yourangelofmusic.com/!  Pretty awesome blow-ups of the cute karate recorder children.

I will definitely let you know how it all comes out in the wash.  What are your tips for encouraging practice at home?  

In the Good Old Summertime

Second day of summer vacation.  Today I gave Sofya's no-knead bread recipe a try, and it is a rousing success.  I mixed King Arthur's white and white whole wheat flours and got a chewy, soft loaf reminiscent of what I could get at the bakerei when I lived in Germany and Austria.

And it's so, SO easy.  You set it to rise overnight, and if you're particularly greedy ambitious, you can get up a little early, about 5:00 AM, turn the oven on for 30 minutes and go back to bed, get up at 5:30 and throw the bread in the oven for another 30 minutes, and be eating freshly baked bread by say, 6:30.  If you happen to have done what I did on the FIRST day of summer vacation, you can eat it with this.

Small batch jam is my new friend - except that I have a slight obsession with having a jar or two to keep for the cold grey reality of winter.  So even if I'm only making enough jam to fill a jar or two, I find it necessary to get out the water bath canner and do the whole boiling jars routine.  But look, aren't they pretty?  Next on the agenda are pickled things - I'm watching the school garden to see if it produces anything worth pickling.  So far it's like this:

We think the kindergarten may possibly have spent some time re-planting the weeds they pulled.




But I'm hoping to be able to make Deb's sandwich slaw eventually, so I'm keeping an eye on things in the raised beds.  It would be terrific to show the kids a jar of colorful edible stuff in September, the fruits vegetables of their labor.

And now, time for a nap.  And what is so rare as a day in June.

I heart the InterWebz

I am not an artist.

Well, I am, but not a visual one.  Yeah sure I can crack open a Mozart score and sing my way through it without blinking, but draw a flower?  Not so much.

And this is why I heart the Internet.  Basically, if you can read, you can find the directions on how to do anything.  My first graders' April song looked like this:

Until I googled  "how to draw a rose" and "how to draw a butterfly."

Now it looks like THIS!

Okay, so it's not "Water Lilies."

The first grade thinks it's AWESOME.

That's all that matters.

I just had to put this here.

Keeping Up Appearances

Right so...we got engaged, bought a house, and I fell off the planet. Also, my Dad died, so that has not been great, to make a colossal understatement.

I've been soothing the soul by sticking close to home and pottering. 

Mr. Eshet has been very busy with projects around the new house - namely securing the fence border so that the two miscreants are unable to dig under the fence - and we began the venture by pulling up an entire floor's worth of wall-to-wall carpet (all DIY, wow, hello, more-work-than-we-thought-project) and then having the wood floors (professionally, we're crazy not stupid) refinished. And I've been engaging in a lot of online mind-numbing. The good kind. The oooo look at the pretty blogs kind. The laugh my ass off kind. iheartorganizing.com,  smittenkitchen.com,  thefrugalgirl.com,  crappypictures.com,  thebloggess.com; thanks - no fooling - for in part getting me through a very terrible time of my life.

And look what they helped me do:

The recipe for honey whole wheat bread is from 100daysofrealfood, but the success comes courtesy of thefrugalgirl. I kept getting a very heavy loaf - the texture of, say, Mount Rushmore. A kneading tutorial from frugalgirl changed my life...er...loaf.   We shall say nothing of Deb's baked goods galore from La Smitten.

Tomorrow, it is to be hoped, there will be pictures of my school's raised bed garden. Unless it rains. Or the neighborhood cats pee in it. In that case, it may be pictures of otters wearing sweaters or something.


PS:  Have I mentioned that my kids are fabulous?  Can't have a post without mentioning that.  The K's and 1's are loving the circle games I'm teaching them, the 2's just finished a field trip to sing at Carnegie Hall, the 3's are preparing for theirs, the 4's are checking out the History of American Popular Music, and the 5ths are getting their butts kicked by History of Western Music, but most of them love it.  Just sayin'.  They're fabulous.

Here's my big accomplishment this week:

Actually that was just the first step. The end result is that oh-so-satisfying stocked larder shelf, dear to the heart of every closet domestic goddess:

I'm experimenting with recipes requiring less sugar, not because I am averse to sugar - most assuredly not - but because I am averse to preserved fruits that taste primarily of sugar, rather than the fruit itself. The most spectacular tastes-of-fruit example I have ever inhaled nibbled is this one. The sour cherry jam, to be exact. The strawberry vanilla jam recipe is new this year - last year's was nice and all but generally sweet rather than a sudden mouthful of ripe, bursting June accompanied by an unseen orchestra striking up Vivaldi. You want that on a dank, dreary March morning. Trying out Pomona's Pectin - one that requires little or no sugar to jell - to see if it helps bring out the taste of fruit.

Will post the results of its use with blackberry jam after the jam is done.

Lazy Days of Summer

So here we are, another year gone. I return to each parent that which said parent hath wrought. Admitted - I return them full of sugar and beans. I hold a "summer birthdays" party on the last day of school each year. Hey, parents fill their kids up with sugar every day at lunchtime. This is my one chance to do it back. Meanwhile, summer included a few notable events.

The arrival of this individual:


And the arrival of this item:


Yes indeed, a few changes. Other change at the top of the list - going back to teaching K-5 music at my old school! No classroom again, but looking forward to preparing another ferocious year of torturing expanding the minds of the fifth grade. Stay tuned, vacation won't last forever! Sob...

March Madness

Any teacher knows, April doesn't cut it. March is the cruelest month. It's typically still cold, dark and dreary, and there are zero vacation days. The kids get, let's say, extremely squirrely. They get tired of rules, tired of tests, tired of sitting, tired of the weather, tired of school lunch, tired of behaving, tired of the rat race, and just - tired.

So do the teachers.

So we all start being crabby, and that's no way to run a classroom.

In order to remedy this situation, I have hit upon a few new strategies. One of them is a sort of mid-year redecoration. I'm having a good time putting up new signs about our rules, changing the bulletin board border, getting new baskets for the library, re-organizing the signs on the baskets (we're getting more sophisticated, instead of "Non-Fiction" now we have "Non-Fiction: Health and the Body" and "Non-Fiction: Earth Science," and the like. I also reorganized my supply closet. Gaze upon its beauty:

Then, because we had a Science Fair project to complete, and because I thought it might be more fun than watching stuff float in salt water, we did this:

That is correct, we made ice cream in class by jumping up and down, basically. Instructions for this little beauty are here: http://www.asliceofhomeschoolpie.com/2012/02/ice-cream-in-bag-science-experiment.html

And, finally, I have decided that while we are working on a non-fiction genre in reading and writing, we need a little levity. So we're reading all of the Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle stories. If you don't know them, go look them up at your library. The first grade is in stitches - every single day.

And by these methods, we hope to claw our way through to spring, the sweet spring. Which technically is only another three days away.

Bzzzzzzzz!

Here's a nifty little energizer for anyone who works with children. When they get cranky and need to re-focus, this is a good one:

Do this with your hands:

Tap tap (on knees) Clap clap (repeat ad nauseum)

Say:

Flee (children repeat each line after you say it)
Flee fly
Flee fly flow
Flee - fly - flow - mosquito
Oh, no no no more mosquitoes!
Itchy itchy scratchy scratchy
Oo! I got one down my backy!
Get that big bad bug with the bug spray.
Shhhhhhhhhhh (make bug spray noise)

A variation is available here http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AY-KjQ0ebAo to get the general idea of how it's performed.

The Thin Pink Line

Elementary school teachers are supposed to be sweet. We're supposed to be kind. We're supposed to be mild-mannered. We wear pink. We hand out birthday pencils. We explain how rainbows work.

As the Powers-That-Be continue to rain down new requirements upon my children, I find myself getting less so by the minute.

No six year old should sit in his classroom weeping because the testing is stressing him out. Last month said PTB began demands to I test my children on things that are not even in our curriculum - the curriculum I was assigned, not one I chose.

More and more, I am the person standing between the educational policy makers and my children. More and more, I stridently insist that I will not disseminate this insanity to the first grade.

This, folks, is why I need tenure. Not just to protect me - to protect THEM.

Since When?

Hm. The Mayor says I'm in the bottom 20 percent of my college class and didn't go to a very good school.

Oberlin College, my Alma Mater, is consistently ranked in the top 25 in the country. So that's a no-go. My GPA was a 3.8. That's probably going to ruin his "fact" stating right there.

He also says if he could just fire half of us union-clinging liberals (well okay, I added the liberal part in), the school system would be...HEY PRESTO! Fixed. He would simply double the class sizes and put a GOOD teacher in there.

In all my conversations with my fellow educators, guess how many times I've heard someone say, "I want more money?"

Zero. Bagels. Big fat round hole in the middle doughnuts.

The old refrain? "I want my class size to be smaller. It's impossible to do my job really well with too many kids."

When will they ever learn.

Encore La Morte

One more day. Tomorrow is the LAST. DAY. OF. SCHOOL.

This time of year teachers get..well...tired. Students get tired. Everyone is over it.

But today I showed the fifth grade the end of Carmen, which we have been watching for the past few days. I admit it, I fast forwarded through quite a lot of Act III, most notably Micaela's aria. Let's face it: Sopranos got a raw deal in this opera. Everyone puts his head back and counts the lights in the ceiling when the first chords of Je dis float over the audience. We saw the Card Scene, talked about foreshadowing, saw the knife fight and moved on.

But the end, oh the end. I watched 100 fifth graders creep further and further towards the edge of their seats as Don Jose fell to his knees and pleaded with Carmen not to leave him (by the way, Roberto Alagna and Elina Garanca, you have no idea how much you rocked the world of a bunch of 10 year olds). They hissed in disbelief as he brought the knife down next to Carmen's head. They muttered "no way is he going to kill her!" as she shrugged free of him and tossed his ring contemptuously to the ground. They gasped in horror, "NOOOO!" as he dealt the coup de grace and she sank, lifeless, to the floor. "MISS CLARA HOW COULD HE DO THAT????

Because that, my children, is Art. Go forth and buy tickets.

Wider Still and Wider

Wow. Um. Yeah I know. Seven months later or so.

What a year.

When I sort it all out, I'll post it. For now:

So this week we had auditions for the annual talent show. One of my favorite students (yes, we do have our favorites, live with it), let's call him Ibrahim, decided to audition with his guitar. Which he has been "studying" for one week.

A little background: earlier this year Social Services visited his house because his "What I Did On My Summer Vacation" essay detailed how he went somewhere very private and learned how to shoot AK47's. With a name like Ibrahim, you can guess what conclusions were drawn.

And...this child...is a child of God. His sweet soul shines out of his face. When I played the opening chorus of the Bach "Magnificat" earlier in the year, he sat, transfixed. When it ended, he waved his hand madly in the air. "Miss Clara! THIS...This MUSIC...makes you FEEL things!" This kid could no more be a terrorist than the kittens on icanhascheezeburger. All year long he questions, "Miss Clara, why did King Henry do that? How did Mozart decide that? What did Beethoven do after that?" And nods thoughtfully after every answer - or responds eagerly to the question I ask back.

So up he gets on the stage and plays one note at a time: Dum..dummmmm...dum dum dum/dum...dummmmm....dum dum dum....

Miss Clara (to Principal): Um...is the terrorist playing "Havah Nagilah?

Principal: Uh...yep.

Four bars. Then he jumps up. "That's it!"

I pull him aside. Where did he learn that? Oh, he's been studying for a week with his Argentinian friend. Apparently, the friend is an Argentinian Jew.

In another month, I have to let Ibrahim go. I will watch him march solemnly down the aisle to the strains of "Pomp and Circumstance," and hand him one of two new honors awards this year - for Music Historian. I feel pretty good about him though. I did my job. That which the lyrics to Pomp and Circumstance are all about:

Wider still and wider shall thy bounds be set;
God, who made thee mighty, make thee mightier yet.

That's MAY I has more

School Daze

Yes. Yes I realize it's been um, a while, since I posted. Normally I would resume posting on about the first day of school (look at my cute bulletin boards! check out the cool stuff the principal bought for me!), but the thing is, I switched horses midstream. There I was happily trotting along in second grade when suddenly the music teacher retired and...well...can one really resist a "pleeeeeeeeeeeeeeease you'd be so good at it," from one's principal? Maybe you can, dear Reader, but I can't.

So now I teach K-5 music. Let's make this clear. I have 635 students. I am teaching four grades I've never taught before. I'm teaching a subject I've never taught before. I'm using equipment I've never used before. I am a complete and utter lunatic. It's almost like being a first year teacher all over again, minus the frightening ability to turn a classroom into total chaos in ten seconds flat. At least I've mastered that part.

So far the little ones are doing a lot of dancing to the beat..or, you know, to their inner drummer. If I can somehow manage to get (and post) video of the kindergarten rendition of "Mamma Mia," rest assured you will get to see it. Because EVERYBODY should see the kindergarten dancing to "Mamma Mia."

The middle grades are learning the notes of the staff. Slowly. Also "Allouette," because I figured any song about a small bird getting ripped to pieces by a chef would be popular with the second through fourth grades. I was right.

THe fifth grade thinks it has stumbled into a nightmare. I'm making them learn a much-abbreviated version of (Oberlin grads anyone?) Music History 101 with Professor Susskin. Today O mitissima, next week Ce fut en mai...and Justin Bieber. Look everyone! Look where those songs about far off love come from! Also, could you all stop saying "Justin Beaver?"

They're good sports though, some of it they find interesting (slaughter, dungeons, unfortunate forced marriages), and the rest they're willing to put up with.

Next time: Thoughts on our new chorus.

And What is so Rare

(originally posted June 1, 2010)

Yes, I know it's been (cough) a while since I posted. Blame my boyfriend, he's way more fascinating than anyone has a right to be. Also, he lives in Oklahoma, so we have to make...uh...hay...while the sun shines. Anyone with a lead on a philosophy assistant visiting professor position in or around New York, you know where to find me.

But, hallelujah, today is the first of June. JUNE JUNE JUNE! Today is the day I traditionally begin reading Charlotte's Web. And I did. Mercifully MOST of my Criminals remembered my injunction: DO NOT USE THE WORD MOVIE IN CONNECTION WITH ANYTHING WE READ. EVER. I detest hearing "Miss Clara! I saw the movie of that!" Most of them don't understand me when I yell "NEVER JUDGE A BOOK BY ITS MOVIE," but some do. Of course, the ones who do wouldn't do that in the first place. The eternal paradox.

As I write, there are 20 (19 1/2!) days left of this school year. The natives are restless. I'm keeping them in line with the old no-California-Pizza-Kitchen maneuver. Talk and die...or at least miss the field trip, which to a 7 year old is LIKE dying.

This time of year, teachers everywhere are looking ahead....in their minds' eyes they're planting basil and tomatoes, reading trashy novels, sleeping late, baking things, cooking things, staring at the ceiling, going to the county fair. It's the only thing that keeps them from jumping out a window, because in reality they're keeping 30 seven year olds itching to be free from killing each other, jumping in the garbage can, having a food fight, running with scissors...you get the point.

And what is so rare as a day in June!

Ballet Basics

Hm, field trip to see the ballet of "Cinderella" today. Nice sets and costumes, adequate dancing, and...

A lady with serious Locust Valley Lockjaw who felt it necessary to explain the plot of Cinderella to a bunch of early elementary children. Um. Anyone not know this story? Oh good, so let's dispense with the synopsis - especially the unfortunate use of the phrase "gossamer wings", 'cause very few 4-7 year olds understand it.

What they DID understand was that this is the story of Cinderella without any words. On with the show. Children are not as stupid as some people think they are.

The Good, the Bad, and the Dusty

Ah, the day we come back from Spring Break.

The weather is warm (some days it's really warm....89 degree high anyone?), the days are getting longer, and the countdown to the end of the year begins (before Spring Break the numbers are too depressing). The kids are more relaxed than they were when we left, and so are the teachers. Also some of us are in a kind of chocolate covered matzoh-induced trance. Cough. And, well, let's face it, chocolate Easter bunnies too. We're very ecumenical here at The Down Staircase.

This year, though, was unusual. The day before the break, Miss Clara was informed that her ENTIRE CLASSROOM had to be stripped bare. All bulletin boards taken down, all materials removed from the shelves. Every. Single. Thing. The art teacher very kindly offered to store this load of stuff in her office over the holiday. The fifth grade teachers kindly - nay eagerly - sent some Spring Fever Crazy students out of their classrooms to help tote.

Why, you ask? Well, the good news is: because my classroom got a new tile floor. And before I proceed to kvetch, may I say it is an absolutely GORGEOUS floor. It's swimming pool blue. Not necessarily something I would install in my living room (although a Kindergartener once told me, "I like your house," whilst gazing at the class artwork), but just right for an early childhood classroom. And uh, truth be told, I might (who are we kidding, definitely would) install it in my kitchen. Cheery blue! Pretty yellow! How chic, how French!

But I digress.

So when I got back this morning, I walked in to my room and kinda screamed and clutched at my chest. The furniture had all been moved out. The asbestos abatement team had abated (welcome to 2010!). The tile guys had laid the new floor....and left a shroud of tile dust over every. single. surface. Bookshelves, sink area, windowsills...not to mention all the furniture had been moved back in...to the middle of the room. It looked like my classroom looks in August when I return from summer vacation and the wonderful custodians have waxed my floor. Except way dirtier.

Now, at least two of the four people who read this blog know that I am, shall we say, slightly OCD-ish about my classroom's cleanliness and order. There was not a rat's chance in hell that I was going to simply put everything back on the dust-laden shelves. No, this called for the Green Scrubbie of Doom and the Windex. And while we were at it, the tile men had disconnected all the computers and pulled the tables out from the wall...perfect opportunity to scrub the grime off the tables and Windex all the filthy cords and cables! And boy howdy were they FILTHY. Like Times Square in the 70's filthy. Legendary filth.

And hey! since they had taken every single piece of flotsam and jetsam out of the room (if you are a teacher you will know the sinking feeling feeling when you walk into a classroom that's new to you but not to the other nine packrats teachers...who had it before you) and then piled it back in the middle, today was the perfect opportunity to THROW OUT THE JUNK!

Once small glitch. There were 25 seven year olds who needed to learn something. Oh yeah. Oops.

So we sorta had um, an "easy" day back. We wrote in our journals about vacation, we read our independent reading books, we did a few desultory pages of math, we stared out the window at the bright sunshine and butterflies. Well - THEY did. Miss Clara cleaned like a maniac and made a pile roughly the size of Mount Rushmore in the hallway. And apologized profusely to the custodian who was going to have to throw it all out. But seriously. A set of encyclopedias from 1973? Why? Materials from teachers who retired ten years ago? Good bye! Old textbooks with pictures of Ronald Reagan as "our current President" covered in mouse droppings (the books, not Ronald Reagan)? Good riddance (the books and Ronald Reagan).

So now I just have to figure out when I will put BACK all the bulletin boards and teaching charts. I guess everyone's just going to have to be patient for a few days.

I hate being patient.

The History of the English Language

By this point, we know that this year there are some seriously bright lights in amongst the Criminals. One of them, Nashat we'll call her, came to me with her new American Girl book on Friday morning. Pointing to the pictures in the non-fictional history section in the back, she demanded, "Miss Victoria, what's this, the Great Depression, what's that mean?"

So, short explanation, knowing it wouldn't end there.

"What's a soup line?"

short explanation

"What's this, why do they call it a Hooverville?"

short explanation

"Well if they knew he would do that, why did they elect him?"

short explanation

"Well who fixed it?"

short explanation.

Pause

"Miss Victoria...where do words come from?"

Astounded pause. "You mean...how do words get in to the English language?"

"Yes...there are so many of them!"

"Well...Nashat...the story of English is a very long one, I'm not even sure how I would tell it to you."

"Well...could you tell it to us today instead of reading Socks?"

So I sat there for a little bit with my mouth hanging open. I mean really. Second grade. This is a question for a high school sociology or English class. Or history class. Or, well, you know, someone who teaches high school.

And then, my stupid brain started whispering to me....you could get a map of the world before the creation of the English Channel...you could show them how it happened...just the top reading group...come on...you know they'd be fascinated by this spellbinding story....

Sigh. Yeah. Pleiostocene Era...here we come.

Forsooth and Verily

Today I told the Criminals about the Ides of March and read them the Soothsayer's bit from Julius Caesar. They then proceeded to go around all day wiggling their fingers creepily at everyone and moaning "Bewaaaaaaaaaaaare the Iiiiiiiiiiiiiiides of Maaaaaaaaaaaaaarch."

The lunch lady was quite taken aback.