Fake Teacher

What a day! Fifteen minutes into class today, I never wanted to see these girls again.

Twenty minutes in, I remembered my blog post from this morning and stopped trying to resist or change their behavior. No matter what they did or said, my response was "Well, there you are. That's great."

Twenty-five minutes in, I stopped trying to teach piano.

"What is the sound of funny?" I asked. J_______ insisted she could not do a thing without a bandage for the pin-prick-sized wound on her calf. "OK. I'll go get you one. You guys figure out the sound of 'funny' while I'm gone." I told them they could use voice or keyboards.

The break did me good. I was a much groovier person (at least in my own mind) when I returned to the classroom. R___________ asked, "Miss Alex, can we use keyboard AND voice?" I could have kissed her. "Yes!! I hadn't even thought of that. Sure, use both." T__________ asked if she could use her voice and the keyboard AND her hands. Stunning.

We spent the last half hour finding sounds for "beautiful" and "tired" and "gentle" and "rude". Nobody was off task for the rest of the class period, two students actually said "thank you" on their way out of the room and R_________ asked me to stay after class to hear her play an assigned piece!

I've been doing my best imitation of a teacher for 4 1/2 months. It's over. I'm a resident artist from this point on. This is what I know how to do. This is what I want to get better at. This is what works.