what this is all about

I've been student teaching for about three weeks or so at this point and probably should have started this blog then, but I've been consistently busy with teaching and work and life as a whole. Now that I've had a little time to settle into a routine of sorts, I figured I could get this up and running with it serving a few purposes. . . . one being an outlet for me and a way to help organize and reflect on my thoughts, another being a tool for communication with others. It's hard to keep everyone in the loop with the billions of things that I'm doing in Albuquerque, so this will be a central location where I can share info with anyone who is interested.

Co-workers, friends and other teachers ask me frequently if my experience so far has been what I thought it would be, and I'm never quite sure how to answer, since I don't think I knew exactly what to expect in coming here. I think I had a very general idea of the situation I'd be in: kids who can't afford their own instruments, uninvolved parents, low test scores, etc. However, there's a big difference between theoretically knowing that a kid can't buy an instrument and turning them away from guitar class because we simply don't have enough guitars for everyone who would like to play. It's sad when a kid tells you that she doesn't have her saxophone because her dad put it in the pawn shop, and she doesn't know when she'll get it back. It's easy to talk about money issues when their effects seem distant and impersonal; it's a different story when you have to deny a 12 year-old the opportunity to play music because they can't buy an instrument and the school district can't/won't purchase more. Anyone can make a band sound good when most of the players are taking private lessons and playing on new, well-maintained instruments that they take home and practice. These kids have never worked with a teacher one-on-one, are playing instruments held together with duct tape, and have the attention span of a fruit fly. It's an accomplishment to get them to play at the same time.

That said, working here is a reality check and a challenge, but it's not a negative experience; it's really the opposite. You can enter every day feeling sorry for the students and letting the issues overwhelm you, or you can enter and decide that you're going to give it what you've got and if it only reaches one kid. . . . . well, that's one more than yesterday. At least one kid had a better day, and even though they don't let you know that it matters, it does.

There are funny moments, too. A little lizard got trapped in the band room the other day, and we tried to scoop him up and get him outside by using a cup and a piece of paper. It turns out that the edge of the cup hit his tail, and it FELL OFF. I shrieked and the little green, inch-long slice of lizard tail kept twitching on the ground. Apparently, he'll grow it back and will be just fine, but it creeped me out.

In Wisconsin, everyone screams when you get a mouse in your classroom. Here, it's lizards (and their tails).