On Students

Thus far, I've seen Music G 1-3, 5-6. What a hoot.

First graders are running around screaming, lots of happy song time, main challenge is keeping ahead of them and limiting sit time.

Second graders were my favorite: serious and studious after song time, without the pressure of any sort of expectation or anything but nose-picking success. And the only ones worse for nose picking were the fifth graders.

Third graders are much more serious and value doing something the right way—no monkey business of “Great job!” But they love hi-fives.

Sixth graders were just punks. Adolescents out to get away with anything they could eek out. Doesn't matter that there's nothing else to do, nowhere else to go, they're going to get out of doing whatever teacher tells them. Of course, this is also the grade with the student who so solemnly waid in the middle of his dinner.

Fifth graders were...interesting. Initially a pack of wild hyenas, as soon as they saw that I was not going to put up with... anything, they shaped up. Miraculously well behaved.

My biggest challenges, at this point, will be working with the English classes. I'm to teach someone else's lesson plan, and our styles are diametric. I'm going to knuckle down on to get them in chairs, then we'll have a whole lot of fun learning, but order comes first.

So we'll see how it goes.

For now, though, I'm going to introduce some fun camp songs, some clapping and dancing games, and am extremely excited about the prospect.

Now if my body will cooperate and catch up....

The good news is that there's a 4 day weekend at the end of the month, and I'll have a scooter to go cruising around on by then. And on August 1^st, I'll hop on a van down to Malaysia for a visa run. Should be a hoot.