Pop brought over his latest long project, his aluminum bass. We took pictures and marveled at the Osage orange and cherry neck and fingerboard. And we had to take pictures in the barn, of course. He bought it off of Craigslist last year when we first moved back. I had been looking for a dobro for Jube and when I saw the bass I sent him the info. I’m so glad he got it, it sounds terrific and we can’t wait to show our bass-playing friends in Branson. It can really thump.
I am feeling I’ve figured out the rhythm of school, for better and worse. The top things I worried about in the beginning do not plague me as often—I am quite comfortable getting up early in the morning to drink coffee and put on a very small amount of makeup (concealer under eyes, mascara). I don’t worry like I did about wearing the right clothes. I have enough decent choices. Getting lunch amounts to either packing snacks or buying it at school.
My kids still are determined to make me late with the wearisome habits of complaining about breakfast and various body aches (Gretel) and frantically searching for a jacket, missing homework, etc. (boys). FC has the disadvantage of huge feet that don’t go gentle into that good Nike shoe. It takes him foreeeeever to loosen the lace and shove it in. Until now he’d always been a Velcro man. Third child and all—I don’t have time to get his fine motor skills up to par. He knew how to tie shoes once upon a time, then Covid brought us down a notch. But I determined with his last new pair of shoes to re-learn the tying part because my art teacher co-worker mentioned the stress of 6th grade boys, who, having never had to wear anything other than slip-on shoes, must learn at 12 years old how to tie a knot for an art project.
Believe me, I got the message. But new skills like these are most likely to be practiced in the morning between the acts of taking Claritin, brushing teeth, and locating water bottles and other lost things. We are always a good 15 minutes off schedule. I’ve tried to remedy it by getting up earlier but no one likes that option. They just wallow in bed and get up right before they hear my voice turn peevish.
We’ve been quite on our own this week with Daddy traveling. A couple of my classes performed Veterans Day music at an assembly which was pretty darling. Boomwhackers were involved with third grade to go with an original, written-by-a-third-grade-teacher song. Homemade paper poppies and Uncle Sam hat headbands accompanied the preschool and kindergarten crowd. I did have to drag a couple of those rotten kindergartners to the principal’s office just yesterday, lest you think this sort of rehearsing is always a cupcake with sprinkles on top.
The people who sold us our farmhouse were of a family of four brothers and two sisters, the brothers all being veterans. It was a great surprise to see that three of the four were the main speakers for our assembly. I couldn’t be more proud to have our little students sing for such wonderful folks.
With Veterans Day performances behind us, I am diving into a 5th grade Christmas agenda because we’re already scheduled to sing on the steps of the Capitol. If you are thinking this is probably beyond my pay point, I would readily agree. I have no idea what I’m doing. The water is very deep. After the assembly today Jubal told me I needed to stop flinging my arms around and that he’d never seen anybody direct music like that before. It doesn’t hurt my feelings because part of this whole experiment is me making a point that this school district ought to actually hire someone who knows what they are doing (potentially with training) (or anyone with an interest to even offer training). I keep waiting for someone to call me out so I can slink back to my comfortable, shadowy farmhouse and amuse myself with goofy writing and growing my garden.
Alas! I got many compliments, like many. I need to be less enthusiastic or something. They’ve gone from a flat nothing to something and are far too easily impressed.
For 5th grade I’ve selected a (probably) much too hard Dona Nobis Pacem. Hard, because remember they’ve had no music training in over a year, much less have they ever heard of the word, Latin. Plus their teacher doesn’t play piano, ha!
The other piece is Miss Piggy’s version of Christmas is Coming. My approach is letting them listen to the Muppet’s Christmas song and copying it. Today we practiced chanting it in a round and it went surprisingly well. The first day I busted out the sheet music was daunting but I pushed through. And now I’m seeing the very tiny glimmers of light at the end of the tunnel (a boy-girl seating chart has helped).
Sixth grade is where I feel more hopeless, because the students are all as big as me and convinced I want to ruin their lives by making them do something stupid. Interesting how that attitude prevails inside kids who are regularly doing stupid things anyway. I made them rap about Thanksgiving foods today. No wonder they hated it? But what am I supposed to do? Baby steps, right?
Fourth grade is made up of half goons and half sincere kids who really want to learn recorder. Obviously I’m terrible at classroom management because the thing that led to my chronic hives situation a couple years back was homeschooling my own children. Tangent: management is not my forte—one of those comes-handy-to-a-mother skills that I just didn’t get. So it is super ironic how I am teaching recorder (??!!?)—an annoying instrument I don’t play, to kids who are terrible listeners. I feel like I’m practically yelling the entire hour: REMEMBER, LEFT HAND AT THE TOP. LEFT, NOT RIGHT. HOLD UP YOUR HANDS.
SEE THE HAND THAT MAKES AN ‘L’? GOOD.
NOPE, JASON. WHEN YOU ARE LOOKING AT ME, MY LEFT HAND WILL LOOK LIKE YOUR RIGHT HAND. OKAY, BETTER. COVER THE THUMBHOLE. NOPE, WITH YOUR THUMB. YOUR LEFT THUMB. OKAY, LET’S PLAY A ‘B’. LET’S REMEMBER TO TONGUE THE NOTE. THA, THA, THA.
ONE, TWO, THREE, FOUR, ONE, TWO, READY, PLAY. OKAY, STOP. STOP. STOP! WE’RE NOT BLOWING AS HARD AS WE CAN. BLOW GENTLY.
TAMMY, WHY? WHY ARE YOU DOING THAT? OKAY, LET’S TRY AGAIN. FIVE ‘B’S. THA THA THA THA THA. ONE, TWO, THREE, FOUR, ONE, TWO, READY, GO.
THAT’S NOT A ‘B’! ‘B’ IS THE THUMB ON THE BACK AND POINTER ON THE FIRST FRONT HOLE. NOPE. NO. NO. OKAY, EVERYBODY PUT YOUR RECORDERS DOWN. DOWN. NOPE. NO. OKAY, TAKE THE RECORDER OUT OF YOUR MOUTH.
MR. JONES, ARE YOU LISTENING? NO, YOU’RE NOT. NO, SIR. IT’S STILL IN YOUR MOUTH. TAKE IT OUT. EVERYBODY PUT YOUR INSTRUMENT UNDER YOUR CHAIR. MR. JONES, STOP. STOP!!
Wait, did I say I felt helpless in sixth grade? Never mind.
I’ll catch up on the first and second graders next time.
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