Music!

I don't know if it was a coincidence or not but the first grade class started singing songs the same week I started attending musical rehearsals with my third grade classroom. (Quick sidenote, the sub Ms. Haley for the first grade classroom, had this neat way of singing instructions sometimes that I really liked and it seemed effective.)

There is no full or part-time music teacher at Horace Mann anymore BUT, the PTA raised a $1,000 stipend for the old music teacher to come back and put on a musical with some of the grades. I get to learn the songs (much quicker than the other students) and am a stronger singer than the classroom teachers so now I get to stand up front and be an example while the two classrooms sing, it's very fun and they all smile and at me.

I've been learning a great deal about how Horace Mann manages to keep music in the school despite not having a staff member for it. The first graders have learned songs all year with a CD and the help of their teacher. The third graders sometimes practice with a CD but also have a rehearsal once or twice a week with the ex-music teacher Ms. Barens.

The third grade teacher Ms. Dahl told me that through fund raising and class-room teachers help there is a musical performance of some sort every spring for all the grades. They have overcome budget cuts and still allowed for music to be a part of the students curriculum. Through my interview with Ms. Dahl I also learned that volunteer parents teach the students about orchestral and classical music in the spring. Well it might not be the spring. So music has been great.

Beyond that, I'm becoming a great deal more comfortable with my role as a task-master. I do offer help, I spell words and repeat instructions or read with small groups in the third grade, but most of the time if I'm talking to a student I'm a task master. I'm telling them to focus or pointing out where they went wrong and teachers really aprpeciate that. Having over twenty children together all at once can lead to chaos and they handle it so well but if someone else is in the classroom they are so thankful to have a second pair of eyes, another shusher, someone to run out in the hallway and disperse the mob around the drinking fountain. I have shed my last hesitancy about scolding or feeling I have any credentials to discipline the kids and feel as if I'm helping the teachers by doing this role.

I've gotten confirmation that this is what I should be doing as well, by being asked to circle the classroom or "keep J.W. on task." Things like that. As an in class assistant for an elementary school, you can't expect to be inspiring, I have learned to believe that keeping the kids from talking or stealing someone else's crayon is what I should be doing. And it helps, because the teacher knows more than I do and she wants them doing the task at hand. She's the governor and I'm the cop.