And...done.

I didn't post a single thing the entire last school year. Was it because I was busy? Maybe. Was it because I didn't have any funny stories to share? No.

So what was it? Facebook.

It's so easy to put a story in a Facebook status, knowing that soon people will be liking it and commenting. I've deliberately separated naming names on this site, so there's not much in the way of feedback.

So in the interest of brevity, conciseness, and being an attention whore, I'll keep posting new statuses on Facebook and officially stop making entries here.

It's not like I'll have any more teaching stories to tell in the coming months anyway. I managed to get laid off AGAIN. So I'm currently looking for a new job, whether it be teaching or not.

Forward on.

Before I move on...

When I appeared on Jeopardy, my interview with Alex Trebek was about how places I'd worked at (summer jobs in retail and food service) kept closing. Unfortunately, this has extended into my teaching career. I've now worked in two districts where my position has been eliminated after two years of working there. Next week starts my fifth year of teaching in my third district.

I have two more adventures in teaching stories from kids in district #2. I am sure they will be followed by adventures from district #3.

Story #1:

A boy is receiving a cello lesson. I was on my prep and using the computer in the music room. I'd been reading an email from the school regarding a upcoming schedule change that was particularly inconvenient for the music classes. I called the strings teacher over to tell him about it, remarking that it was "baloney," since there was a kid in the room and I couldn't say "bullshit."

"You want to know what's baloney?" remarked the boy with the cello. "You should have seen my lunch!"

Add the fact that this kid has severe emotional disabilities and is rarely in a joking mood, and I almost fell out of my chair laughing.


Story #2:

Sixth grade choir. They were singing a version of the popular Spanish folk song "De Colores." Every kid in the school has to take Spanish, so I was trying to see which words they could recognize in the phrase "y por eso los grandes amores de muchos colores me gustan a mi." They were stuck on "amores."

A lot of people in this district are of Italian descent (this is Jersey, after all) so I asked "Have you guys heard the song 'That's Amore?' It's pretty much the same..."

A lightbulb went on over a girl's head. She gasped.

"Amores means PIZZA!"



So that's all I got for now. And I'd like to say that since my new job is 7th-12th grade, the stories won't be like this, but we all know that's not true...they'll probably just be less adorable.

And now it's time for bad decisions in childcare.

I saw two videos on YouTube this week that made we wonder why people do the things they do with their children.

First up, a dad tells his son that he could never be a single lady and therefore, cannot sing along with Beyonce. He bawls, inconsolable.

Second, some school thought it would be a good idea to have the elementary school play be Scarface. There are so many things wrong with this video, but I love the giant pile of popcorn on the desk.

COOOOOOLLEEEEEAAAAGES!!!

I don't know why, but this is my new favorite commercial.

Adventures in Teaching, Part 562

Two interesting stories from recent weeks.

Number 1:

There are many kids in my school on the autism spectrum, but are mainstreamed. One of them, when I had him last year, would prove to be extremely sensitive to loud noises. For example, if the class split into groups and played percussion instruments, he would retreat into a corner, rocking in place with his hands over his ears.

This year, when the kids first start in my cycle, I have them write down their favorite kinds of music. What did this same kid write?

"Anything but soft."



Number two:

I was telling my fourth graders a biography of Scott Joplin. The story mentioned that he had perfect pitch. I explained to the kids that I had it too, and it meant that I could play piano by ear really well. I'd told them that in a voice lesson I'd taught the day before, I'd picked out the Taylor Swift song "You Belong with Me" for the student, even though I'd never played it on piano before.

One kid, upon hearing that, exclaimed "Can you play 'Forever?'"

"Please," a girl chided him, "She's not that funky fresh."

I turned toward them, "The Drake song or the Chris Brown song?"

The girl gasped. "Maybe she is that funky fresh!"

Current Events through the Eyes of Sixth Graders

It kind of interesting to see how what's going on in the world is viewed by my students. These two examples are from sixth grade students.

One:

In their language arts classes, the kids wrote poems using hyperbole. They'd pick an adjective, and write a bunch of hyperbole based on it. Example: "It was so loud babies across the world cried."

One wrote, "It was so happy the Iraq war ended."


Two:

A kid was having a conversation with a teacher about cell phones. The teacher mentioned that he is probably due for a new one, remarking "My phone needs change." The student looked confused for a second, and then said "Oh! You don't mean change like quarters and nickels. You mean like Obama change."

The Beatles, 2000s-Style

I'm fully aware that I have owned Beatles Rock Band for almost four months, and the stereo remasters for almost two, and I haven't talked about them yet. I have been busy, obviously, and it's been hard to form what my thoughts are. But here goes.

I was weary of getting the remasters. I'm not much of an audiophile. What was I really going to get out of all of this? Was it really going to sound better to me?

I decided to listen from beginning to end, Please Please Me to Abbey Road. (I listen in chronological order of recording, not release.) I had it all in my iPod, and I connected it to my stepmom's car stereo as we drove into the city before the Yankees championship parade. The difference in sound was instantaneous. It was like I was in studio two at Abbey Road, it sounded that clear to me.

As I made my way through the catalog, I began to hear things that I'd never heard before. There's an extra guitar solo bleeding through in "I'm Down?" There's a piano doubling the brass at the beginning of "All You Need Is Love?" I heard them both for the first time, and I've been listening to these songs in headphones for years.

The mini-documentaries that came along with them were like icing on the cake. So yes, it was worth it, and I don't care if Jonathan says I should have gotten the mono instead.


Beatles Rock Band ended up being more of a delight. Most of the Beatles community that I follow online is just a bunch of older people who just don't get what all the fuss is about with the video game. So it was hard for me to explain how much fun it is. I mean, sure, I can learn how to play the music for real, but this is still a video game, after all. I have photos to collect and achievements to earn!

(By the way, after getting five stars on every song, and not gaining all the locked videos, I realized that to truly beat the game, not only do you have to five-star every song, you have to five-star every song twice. Oy. I was not happy when I found that one out.)

The game has its drawbacks, don't get me wrong. For one thing, you can't use the Xbox 360 headsets as microphones. The game makes you connect a separate microphone for each vocal line, and of course they only give you one to use. I don't have two extra USB microphones lying around.

Secondly, like I predicted, they can't accurately portray the instruments all the time. Many of the "guitar" parts are actually keyboard parts, or other stuff that's not guitar. These things are not meant to played with guitar technique, which makes playing some of them accurately impossible. For example, I downloaded every extra song you can get so far. The guitar part includes the random calliope tape loops in "Being for the Benefit for Mr. Kite!" How is that supposed to be played?! Or when you play the guitar part for "When I'm 64," you're actually playing the clarinet part. When the real guitar part starts, does it switch? Nope, stays on clarinet.

I'm fine with things not being historically accurate, like seeing George play the guitar solo on "Taxman" (It was Paul) or Paul playing bass on "She Came in through the Bathroom Window" (George) or Ringo on drums in "Back in the USSR" (Paul). They had to do that for the sake of the game. But being musically accurate is a different story.

It's just fun for me being able to physically react to these songs that I love so much. I love that you can sing any vocal line when it's set on "harmonies," even when you only have one microphone. I love that with the mixes created for the game, I'm hearing these lines of music like I never have before. I've been getting some of the lyrics wrong too!

And you know that I'll download the other albums when they become available. Can't wait to see how they'll deal with "Revolution 9."