White Christmas is over. Thank the Lord and all that is Holy because I was about to develop severe homicidal tendencies.
All that aside, it went very well. We performed it five nights. Yes. FIVE NIGHTS. Which exhausted all of us. Props to the accompanist, Jennifer, for her superb piano playing. She pretty much carried the "pit crew". I stood up there in a ridiculous looking leotard/tux costume and waved my arms around pretending to be in control. They were nice about it and let me pretend to be in charge.
I am never again offering up my choir to do a production unless I am allowed to grade them on it. Getting them to practices and staying until the end was nearly impossible. I about had it with a few of them until I adopted a defeatist attitude and said "c'est la vie" to the whole thing. "Que sera, sera" for you spanish minded folks.
Our Christmas Choir concert is tomorrow. I left the school on Friday last week feeling very positive about it and left school today feeling nauseous. I'm trying to convince myself that it's just Monday and the dress rehearsal day is always bad. *clap clap clap* I do believe in fairies!!
My JazzCats sounded pretty good. I will say this for them. What they lack in discipline they make up for in confidence, and sometimes that's all you need to pull of a good concert. My concert choir did as they usually do. They're awesome in the classroom, where they're most comfortable, and timid in a new environment. Well, the girls at least. My guys are just loud this year. Makes me happy.
Women's choir needs vowel reconstruction. How many different ways can I say OPEN YOUR MOUTH and TALL VOWELS?
"ouvrez votre bouche" and "voyelles grandes" - french
あなたの口を開けなさい and 高い母音 - japanese
"abra su boca" and "vocales altas" - spanish
"apra la vostra bocca" and "vocali alte" - italian
"öffnen Sie Ihren Mund" and "hohe Vokal" - german
...well, you get the picture. (thank you Babelfish)
And here I am, snuggled up to my Delonghi heater with my cuddly bear, getting ready to re-read Jim Butcher's Alera Codex. (Great books by the way, love love LOVE!)
Ta Ta for now.
Monday, December 7, 2009
Monday, November 9, 2009
Meh
I wish my JazzCats would just shut up and sing. Honestly. The other classes do it! I feel bad for my Concert Choir, because they have to deal with me after JazzCats and I'm cranky. But they usually make me feel better.
Part of me wants to just let them do what they want and concentrate on the other two classes. But that's unfair. It's not their fault that it's 8:00 in the morning and they all have senioritis. Even the juniors. Ugh.
White Christmas needs to be over. My nights are not my own and I miss my laziness. No. That's kind of a lie, I like having something to do, but I will never EVER have my JazzCats help out again. They are perfectly capable and talented but getting them to come to rehearsals...well, bah.
I need a new author to read. A good one who doesn't have to deal in the cliche of werewolves and vampires. Whatever happened to good old fashioned fantasy novels? Thank God for Jim Butcher. His final novel should be coming out soon. Yay!!
...no more to say. Too tired. I need a loooong nap.
Part of me wants to just let them do what they want and concentrate on the other two classes. But that's unfair. It's not their fault that it's 8:00 in the morning and they all have senioritis. Even the juniors. Ugh.
White Christmas needs to be over. My nights are not my own and I miss my laziness. No. That's kind of a lie, I like having something to do, but I will never EVER have my JazzCats help out again. They are perfectly capable and talented but getting them to come to rehearsals...well, bah.
I need a new author to read. A good one who doesn't have to deal in the cliche of werewolves and vampires. Whatever happened to good old fashioned fantasy novels? Thank God for Jim Butcher. His final novel should be coming out soon. Yay!!
...no more to say. Too tired. I need a loooong nap.
Thursday, October 15, 2009
Friday, October 2, 2009
Monthly Post
Oh dear oh dear, where to start?
I should really try to update more than once a month, but activities pile up and I dread reliving them all through blogging. *grimace* However, I'm so busy that I find I need to organize my thoughts and clear out the junk in my head.
Let's start with school. We have a concert in four days (October 6th). I actually think we're ready for it. Concert Choir - my youngest and most inexperienced choir - will muddle through their first performance with an A for enthusiasm if not for accuracy. I really love my concert choir, they are willing to do most anything and are learning quickly. There are a few in there that make me wonder why they decided to do choir to begin with, but for the most part they are coming along fine.
My women's choir goes as usual. They alternately delight and disgust me. Teenage girls....twenty-five of them in the same room for an hour and a half. That is the disgusting part. However, when you can get them to focus for a few minutes, they sound fantastic. It takes an entire cheerleading squad and bribery to get them to do anything, but sometimes it's worth the effort when they produce the sound they're capable of. I wish I could get them to do it without performing a circus act for them everyday, but I guess that's the nature of the beast.
My oldest and supposed "advanced" choir...makes me want to shoot things. Or make things explode. Or crush things with giant hammers. Or tear my eyelashes out one by one.
Okay, so I'm frustrated...it's not always bad, but I happen to be updating this blog after a very frustrating week. I shall stop here, as I would rather not re-hash the very things I've been brooding. I took a 40 minute walk and instead of listening to my iPod I ran through various scenarios in my head as to what I would do to fix things so I wouldn't have to commit myself. I think I'm too much of a chicken to pull it off. I like these kids outside of class so it's hard for me to give them a reason to dislike me...even if I am fully justified in my complaints.
I know it sounds sad and lonely, but these students are the closest people to me down here. It's not that I need more friends, or that I'm lonely when I go home. I love the alone time I have because of how many people I'm around all day. But when you see the same people day in and day out, for over three years, you get close to them. I'm having a much easier time disciplining my newest students because I've finally gotten the hang of keeping the proper distance. But since I started out wrong with some of these older students, I don't really think there's any way to fix it. Not if I want to keep the relationships I have with them now.
It's a conundrum. ...
co·nun·drum
I should really try to update more than once a month, but activities pile up and I dread reliving them all through blogging. *grimace* However, I'm so busy that I find I need to organize my thoughts and clear out the junk in my head.
Let's start with school. We have a concert in four days (October 6th). I actually think we're ready for it. Concert Choir - my youngest and most inexperienced choir - will muddle through their first performance with an A for enthusiasm if not for accuracy. I really love my concert choir, they are willing to do most anything and are learning quickly. There are a few in there that make me wonder why they decided to do choir to begin with, but for the most part they are coming along fine.
My women's choir goes as usual. They alternately delight and disgust me. Teenage girls....twenty-five of them in the same room for an hour and a half. That is the disgusting part. However, when you can get them to focus for a few minutes, they sound fantastic. It takes an entire cheerleading squad and bribery to get them to do anything, but sometimes it's worth the effort when they produce the sound they're capable of. I wish I could get them to do it without performing a circus act for them everyday, but I guess that's the nature of the beast.
My oldest and supposed "advanced" choir...makes me want to shoot things. Or make things explode. Or crush things with giant hammers. Or tear my eyelashes out one by one.
Okay, so I'm frustrated...it's not always bad, but I happen to be updating this blog after a very frustrating week. I shall stop here, as I would rather not re-hash the very things I've been brooding. I took a 40 minute walk and instead of listening to my iPod I ran through various scenarios in my head as to what I would do to fix things so I wouldn't have to commit myself. I think I'm too much of a chicken to pull it off. I like these kids outside of class so it's hard for me to give them a reason to dislike me...even if I am fully justified in my complaints.
I know it sounds sad and lonely, but these students are the closest people to me down here. It's not that I need more friends, or that I'm lonely when I go home. I love the alone time I have because of how many people I'm around all day. But when you see the same people day in and day out, for over three years, you get close to them. I'm having a much easier time disciplining my newest students because I've finally gotten the hang of keeping the proper distance. But since I started out wrong with some of these older students, I don't really think there's any way to fix it. Not if I want to keep the relationships I have with them now.
It's a conundrum. ...
co·nun·drum
Pronunciation: \kə-ˈnən-drəm\
Function: noun
Etymology: origin unknown
Date: 1645
1 : a riddle whose answer is or involves a pun
2 a : a question or problem having only a conjectural answer b : an intricate and difficult problem
Right, I'm also working on White Christmas. Which is out for public use (if you buy the rights) as of this year. The music is INSANE. But I'll leave that for another post.
It is time to go eat my Marie Callendars Meatloaf. Yum.
Friday, September 11, 2009
Healthy...??
Yay! I finally went for a walk today for about thirty minutes. Then I went to Sonic and got a Jr. Breakfast burrito and a small Cherry Limeade. I don't think I quite understand this healthy living...thing.
Tuesday, September 8, 2009
Recharge.
I'm wondering if I should just try to find a nice job at a bookstore. I think I'd excel there.
Wednesday, September 2, 2009
Engrish
So, I find it slightly irritating that I have to dumb down my speech to be understood around my students. I even find it offensive that our educational system isn't effective enough to teach young people that there is more than one way to say something. You can use "be aware of" OR "be cognizant" and it will still be right - but the latter sounds waaay cooler. I think the biggest problem is that I think of the bigger words before the simpler ones and when they don't know what I'm talking about my brain freezes and refuses to de-evolve. Text messaging has killed what remained of the young generation's ability to communicate using words longer than a syllable. Now they have been rendered incapable of moving beyond more than a few letters. OMG.
Am I spewing vitriol? Perhaps, or am I just being brutally truthful? Or did I just want to use the word vitriol to prove I know it? Could be any of the above.
I also heartily dislike when a teenager says (after reading through a Portugese piece), "why can't they just all learn English?" Oh, the arrogance. Nevermind outside of America, most teenagers are bilingual if not multilingual. It's okay to be stupid because we have the big guns. No, dad, I'm not being overly left-wing. Anyone with a knowledge of our educational system here should agree that we are sadly lacking in how we treat learning. It's a prison system, not a privelege, at least in the minds of the students. I don't know that it's truly a problem that can be solved because half the issue is that people these days would rather let a computer tell them how to sit, stand and brush their teeth before thinking for themselves. Kids don't seem to want to learn anything. They see no value in the information. Knowledge for knowledge's sake is definitely not the theme of modern day schooling. I don't even want to get STARTED with my thought on standardized testing. Morons and their perfect little statistic charts. Bah.
Enough ranting for one day. Now I get to go to church. It's hard to get too excited about choir when I've been in choir ALL WEEK. But hey, at least I don't have to be the one in charge.
Am I spewing vitriol? Perhaps, or am I just being brutally truthful? Or did I just want to use the word vitriol to prove I know it? Could be any of the above.
I also heartily dislike when a teenager says (after reading through a Portugese piece), "why can't they just all learn English?" Oh, the arrogance. Nevermind outside of America, most teenagers are bilingual if not multilingual. It's okay to be stupid because we have the big guns. No, dad, I'm not being overly left-wing. Anyone with a knowledge of our educational system here should agree that we are sadly lacking in how we treat learning. It's a prison system, not a privelege, at least in the minds of the students. I don't know that it's truly a problem that can be solved because half the issue is that people these days would rather let a computer tell them how to sit, stand and brush their teeth before thinking for themselves. Kids don't seem to want to learn anything. They see no value in the information. Knowledge for knowledge's sake is definitely not the theme of modern day schooling. I don't even want to get STARTED with my thought on standardized testing. Morons and their perfect little statistic charts. Bah.
Enough ranting for one day. Now I get to go to church. It's hard to get too excited about choir when I've been in choir ALL WEEK. But hey, at least I don't have to be the one in charge.
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