dmmetler

I went from teaching grade level K-6 music to teaching parent/child and preschool classes (and college music Ed majors) to teaching in an after school program, and they’re all very different. My after school program kids, like the ones Barbara seems to have, tend to really want to create their own stuff and less to learn skills-and their classroom indicates to me that there probably was an orff program there in the past (truth in television-PA has multiple summer Orff institutes, and it’s the most common in elementary schools) and it’s heavily focused on kids learning to compose and improvise, and the layered digital recordings the kids were playing with would lend itself well to that approach. I do wonder….why, oh, why, didn’t Barbara consider doing a Gospel choir? They’re fairly common as extracurricular ensembles in schools here. And it would have been more in her skill set. (Think Sister Act, where Deloris is able to turn the choir around by going with the Reno lounge act songs and just changing words, or School of Rock, where Dewey is able to use the kids skills and scaffold off of them for two examples where musicians are able to teach effectively)

As a music teacher, I’m glad to see Barbara struggling. Specials classes and grade level classes are two different animals, with different skill sets. And being a good singer doesn’t mean you have a clue how to teach music. Barbara was approaching it more like a high school music theory class…which generally assumes that students already have had years of music reading while playing an instrument or singing.

What does it say that I’m impressed by Abbotts music room? That’s probably about 10k of instruments. Either they forgot to remove the bribes, or at some time in the past the district actually funded it, or the former music teacher spent a lot out of pocket (probably the latter. I personally own thousands of dollars of classroom instruments.)

I’m glad Courtney is back-and I appreciated getting to see the kids in action.

Gregory probably qualifies as having ARFID. Kudos for Barbara for realizing that the mushrooms would chain well with buttered noodles. Not surprised at the golf course using Abbott at all. Sadly, that’s common for urban schools.

On the Daphne needs an interpreter for Chemistry, there is literally a NSF funded program to train interpreters to interpret science classes, particularly chemistry (they bring interpreters in training, deaf college students, and college faculty together to work on projects over the summer), and it’s been going on for 20+ years. The idea that UMKC is hosting a program specifically for Deaf students and hasn’t considered that need seems…unlikely. Also, my kid struggled with Organic Chem-and went to every help session offered and tutoring at the campus tutoring center and studied with classmates. So did probably half the class. Daphne did NONE of that-despite being in a program designed to provide support services and qualifying for services through the university’s program for students with disabilities. I might excuse it the first time through the class because freshmen are sometimes stupid, but the second??

I’m glad they did something with remote learning, because that’s now part of reality for teachers-and next to impossible with younger kids.

I’ve been a music teacher for 30+ years, the first 10 in a school which had ALWAYS had a Christmas concert. When I came in and insisted that we needed to do a winter show, it was like I’d shot Santa. It was miserable. I think most of the parents decided I was Jewish because they couldn’t understand why I’d object. My city has a Christmas tree lighting and a Christmas parade…despite the fact that we have a mosque and a Moslem day school. I now do a fall concert before Thanksgiving and explain that “It avoid conflicts during the busy holiday season”-and the parents love it. So do I. So maybe Abbott’s music teacher just chooses NOT to do a winter show? We know there was one since we saw her teaching Janine’s class recorder.

I use a parachute in my preschool music classes and have had to bring it out for the older kids in the after school program because they get so excited when they see it-one sadly told me that you stop getting to play parachute after 3rd grade.

I snorted at the "Do Skibdi toilet next" because that is SUCH a big thing for my students. (My intern commented one day that "That's the fourth kid who Skibidi'd me today!) I also loved the kids NOT wanting to Bob for apples. I mean, these are kids who went through school shut downs due to COVID. They're going to be germ-aware. And the "Why aren't you dinosaurs"....

I taught in a similar school to Abbott in Memphis for 8 years and could have counted the number of not-Black students on the fingers of one hand-we had one Latino family.

One of my teen music students told me I need to watch this. I'm really enjoying it-I love music theater :)

My only problem with bringing in the CC students is that library science isn't a degree offered at 2 year schools. Essentially, they'll be getting an untrained volunteer, when the pilot was with someone who obviously knew she was doing. It'll be great experience for the college students, but it's not going to be the same as having a trained librarian. I did like that the district person went to the CC first. A LOT of students start at the CC for financial reasons, and especially if your plan is to teach, it's a good idea to get through college without or with minimal debt-and he's ended up in the same position Janine has with her Penn education.

In one of the schools I worked at, we had a social studies lab (artifacts, costumes, videos,photo sets etc) and a science lab. Both had, at one point, had a full time teacher who managed them. Both were locked and teachers sometimes would sneak in and borrow stuff, but otherwise, they weren't used due to budget cuts. I can easily see the same happening with libraries in urban schools.

Cursive first is a thing-i want to say that traditional Montessori is cursive first. Motor skills wise, it's easier in many ways than print, and is less prone to reversals. The reason for doing print first is to make learning to read easier so you don't have as many forms of each letter at once. (There are already multiple ones just in printed text that kids will encounter while learning to read).

I love the CGI on Cerberus. And yeah, he's just a good boy who wants to play and be loved.

They're well set up for a UNIT spin-off like Torchwood, with Kate, Shirley, Mel, Donna, and very light doctor content. Which I would watch the heck out of.

Recprders can be made of plastic. Those were recorders (Probably YRS-20). Tonettes are rounder, and flutophones have a more flared bell. I've spent a LOT of time teaching recorder.... https://www.westmusic.com/recorders/ Specialist teachers (music, art, etc)are more common in school systems which have unions. It's not because of changes in teacher training-I've taught the required music Ed class for eled majors. It's because the contract calls for X minutes of paid planning time, and the kids need to be somewhere-so, let's let someone else handle those pesky standards. . As a music specialist, I've been told by students that "this is my break"-bwcauae their classroom teachers have told them "30 minutes until break" or whatever. I loved that they showed that the teacher goes room to room-that's reality for music teachers in schools like Abbott, and usually it limits you to recorder, voice, and whatever you can stick in a tote bag.

The last one I went to was 3 days in an Embassy Suites conference center. :) I remember one PD where the day before a break, the district brought in a guest presenter for all the elementary music teachers in the district. It was awesome! Not only did we get to hang out with other folks who do the same thing we do,but we got out of the party zone of overstimulated kids for the day. (I think my principal replaced me with a teacher's aide and a VCR...)

I obviously went to the wrong conferences.... The school I used to teach at is now a charter, and Melissa's sister is exactly right. Here, when a charter comes in, the employees stay with the district and are moved into vacancies, and if you want to stay in the building you've been in for years and teach the same kids, you have to apply. There were teachers who had taught those kids' parents who got kicked out.

Also, oil based styling products tend to smother them. One benefit of teaching in schools like Abbott-lice were a non-issue. But when I started teaching at the University lab school....I cut my stick straight white girl hair real quick!

In my first year of teaching in a school much like Abbott, I was ready to step between two kids who were squaring off to break it uo when one of my 6th graders PICKED me up and said "Don't do it, Ms M-they like to kill you!!". Another went to get the campus security officer, who agreed with him after the fact-that those two kids, when they got into it, would have taken me down without even noticing who I was. I was regularly asked for my hall pass as a student teacher in a middle school.

Realistically, current policies require trying a couple of levels of interventions before testing, so Melissa would need to support and document Mya in class, and probably do a small group before testing beyond what is done for everyone. While I appreciate where they're going, the conference where a teacher proposes testing would not be the first time the parents have heard of concerns. Split grade classes in my district were still the same size, or sometimes smaller, so counting the same number of kids makes sense, and since books get a lot longer when you move from picture books to chapter books, Melissa's 3rd graders don't get an advantage unless they're being allowed to count books below their current reading level. I wish they'd brought back Courtney. Gifted kids can game the system on something like this. My kindergartner once had the highest point total for the whole school on AR because the librarian wouldn't let kindergartners go outside the little kid section, and the class library was at a similar level. So, my kid who read mostly science books from the adult section of the public library for fun, racked up a ton of points because in an hour library period or free reading period in the classroom, they really could read 25 or more kindergarten/1st grade level books and test on them. It wasn't until the librarian looked at the point totals that they realized that, yeah, maybe we should let the kid read Wizard of Oz and the Chronicles of Narnia...

I assume that the kid isn't a class clown,but a ND kid with a special interest. If you can connect with those interests, you're golden-and it's a lot easier when that interest is, say Bluey, or Pokemon, or anything else that peers also generally like vs something like computer OS versions. A lot of kids with autism can function academically, but struggle socially, and getting such a child referred and actually assessed is often really hard for teachers, especially in 1st grade. If so, doing a referral to the office is often helpful in providing a paper trail. I have written referrals with a note to that effect-that I didn't need the principal or counselor to intervene, but that I knew I needed to do those steps to actually get a kid evaluated because while they could get by in elementary school where classes moved together, they were going to get lost in middle school-probably literally.

I kind of wish they’d had another parent who was less than thrilled. Because I can easily imagine little ones coming home and asking about those words that they managed to decode and parents coming into Ava’s office mad. Because early readers read everything. One of my favorites was the kid who read the graffiti on the playground and was upset that they’d misspelled Duck and that “Duck you” didn't make sense on a tunnel. I agreed with her...and told the janitor we needed to get that painted over before a kid who knew what thaf word was noticed it! When urban public schools/districts have uniform codes, it's not because they want to look like private schools. It's because they're heading off problems at the pass. Parents don't need to wear a polo shirt and khakis, but they need to avoid anything that's gojng to cause trouble