Small Victories

OK, so the task is impossible. But _something_ needs to happen in my classes, so where do I find the middle ground between "the impossible" and productive class time? I am going to start by documenting the small miracles I see every day, just like in Friedman's book (thanks, Mom!). I have always been a firm believer in the idea that if you look for good things, you will find them and that if you focus on the bad, that's all you'll see. It's so easy to focus on how difficult it is to teach in our current system!

Truthfully, although I am daunted by the task ahead of me, I see wonderful things going on all around me. Take my crazy English class, for instance (no, seriously... take them! ;*)). They are an energetic group of grade nine students who have been together for years. Their hormones are raging, their attention spans are shrinking and yet I am supposed to inspire them with the elegance of the English language *sigh*. It has been a long, slow battle, but one by one I see them engaging despite themselves. We spent most of December reading some of my favourite short stories and talking about the genre of the short story in general. Throughout the short story unit I showed a few film versions of classic short stories like Ray Bradbury's "All Summer in a Day" and Kurt Vonnegut's "Harrison Bergeron". Now we're working on writing our own short stories and the "carrot at the end of the stick" is that when they are finished writing, they will be able to interpret their stories in another media, like film, drama, poetry, song, etc. They really seem to be enjoying the process. Everyone is on task and some of them are downright excited about their stories.

I guess I see this as a huge achievement with this particular group.

I have also been enjoying my music classes a lot more since the Christmas break. I decided over Christmas that we should spend a little time exploring, composing and improvising instead of starting right away on a piece for the Spring concert, so when we returned I let my grade sixes explore different instruments. The students who played flute, for instance, brought their flutes out and with the help of a little disinfectant spray, were able to lend them to anyone who wanted to try flute. This helped my flautists realize just how much they _have_ learned since the beginning of the year, and helped the rest of the class understand a little bit more about the flute. I also let students try guitars, pianos, percussion instruments etc.. They were particularly interested in trying my accordion (hopefully I'll find a young budding accordionist in the bunch!). It was a great way to solidify some of the things they have learned about their own instruments and it gave them a chance to try some things musically that they might not have tried before.

Following along in the creative theme, I gave each of my other classes the assignment of writing their own piece of music in groups of three to six. We reviewed the basic elements of music and they have been charged with keeping detailed notes, which helps them remember what they are working on from week to week, but also offers me the opportunity of teaching a little practical theory. As I go from group to group I am able to help the students understand why theory was invented. They see in a very concrete way why it's important to know what key to play in or what time signature. They also understand some of the complexities of communicating your musical ideas to another person. It has been a great exercise so far.

Lastly (but not "leastly"!) my drama class is drawing to a close and will be presenting a play they wrote as a final exam for the class. This is probably my biggest "small victory"... I started the year with a group of individuals who hardly knew one another, some of whom were grudgingly taking drama in order to fulfil an arts credit, a couple of whom were taking drama for the second time since they enjoyed it so much, and the rest of whom fell somewhere in between those two extremes. We're finishing this semester with a team who are confident, hard-working and justifiably proud of what they've accomplished. They managed to coordinate their efforts and produce a wonderfully quirky murder-mystery that takes place during a "mi-carême" party. This cleverly offers them the opportunity to show off the masks we made during our unit on characters as well as tie in some good old fashioned acadian traditions. We will be presenting the play twice at school and once in the evening for parents and invited guests. We did an interview today with Radio Canada that's going to be aired tomorrow morning, so I hope that will drum up a little bit of an audience, but regardless, we'll be video-taping it for posterity.

See, there are lots of things to be happy about. I just wish I didn't feel quite so much like I was only just barely treading water... when I look at all the things I've accomplished, it looks great, but I'm still falling far short what I think I should be doing.

Woah, that being said, I'd better get back to work- I have to get ready for three classes of music tomorrow as well as our final dress rehearsal.

No rest for the wicked...