Adventures in Teaching

Most of my current teaching is in a middle school. If you ask anyone in the know about teaching, most of them, upon hearing you teach in a middle school, usually say some variant of "I'm sorry." And I've found that to be true. Many of these kids are sweet as can be, but many are evil, soulless, and miserable excuses for human beings.

Case in point: I teach music as part of a set of cycle courses. I see a part of the school for eight weeks, then those kids move on and I get a new group. Yesterday was the last day of the first cycle. One kid slipped a note onto my cart (yep, I'm one of those teachers) before she left that said "You are the best mucie teacher ever." Awwww. In another class, some kids had these parting words for me: "You'll last here. We never made you cry!"

To change the subject slightly, I also spend a half hour each week with a handicapped pre-k class. This week, when the class was close to ending, I didn't turn off the CD of children's music I was using fast enough, and the song "Skinnamarink" came on. Instead of turning it off, I kept the kids in their circle and had them follow along in the song with me while I did the arm movements, which I don't think I've done in 20 years. If I did them wrong, I thought, I'll change it next week and the kids won't even remember. Imagine my surprise to go to YouTube and find out that I had them right. Woo!