Today started off so well...

I had First grade today and we had a great class!! They were well behaved and we accomplished a lot! Up until this point we have been dragging our fingers across the Note Knacks (http://www.noteknacks.com/) and singing a sound. The children begin when the "conductor" starts and they stop when he/she comes to the end. Today, we learned the colors in rhythm. They did really well with it. I added movement by running (safely) while we recited 16ths, jogging as we recited eighths, and so on. The kids loved it and it helped solidify the concepts of both tempo and rhythm in the children's head.

Third grade started off great, but ended almost disasterously! As a whole group they can behave and learn well. As soon as they got into small groups, chaos erupted! They are so mean to each other. Its hard to start from scratch and teach how to act and work in a small group when you only have them for 45 minutes once a week. It would soooo help if they learned it in their regular classrooms....not that classroom teachers don't have their own problems!

Then of course there was Fifth Grade. Really?? Really??? Can you not just follow directions??? How hard is it to get in line and go 50 feet???? I ask you??? The kicker of it is that they are so talented, but they refuse to stop and listen for more than 30 seconds. What are we doing to these children in the lower grades, that by 5th, they are completely resistent to anything and everything we want to do with them? I happen to think that the younger grades are trying to strip them of ALL their individuality...not through fault of the teachers, rather the government. With this Standard Based Classroom craze, children have NO hand in their education. They are not allowed to decide ANYTHING, so as a result they become apathetic and annoyed....as ANY adult would do in the same situation...wait, isn't that where I feel I am headed some days? And who doesn't know teachers that are already there???

We MUST come together as a community and teach the government what works, after all, aren't we the experts?