9/10

Mrs. D wasn't in the mood to hear more paired student "auditioning" this morning, so we worked on a song for a little while.  I don't blame her.

It took me longer to review the elements of music in Theory than I thought it would, so we barely touched on definitions of music.  That's ok, though, because I was able to use a "give consideration to this over the weekend" closer.  I've devoted Monday's lesson to this.  I'm including here a link to a rap song that I played as they were leaving, so no discussion was applied to it, and I plan on using it on Monday as well.

Sagaba - Blue Scholars (iTunes)

We did our first lesson on guitar in GM today.  I taught one class...and don't know how to play guitar except for what I learned from Mrs. D teaching the first class.  I totally pulled it off.  I had to do a fair bit of one-on-one teaching as the class practiced in chaos, which was partly good because I got to build more individual rapport with some students, and partly bad because it's frustrating when I've done the necessary number of demonstrations and explained the same thing in multiple ways and the student still doesn't absorb what I've taught until I baby them.

I did my first of five required observations today.  I visited an 8th grade American History class.  The students were very attentive and the [buff!] teacher was very prepared.  This was textbook teaching in a rather admirable form.  On a depressing note, he used the first 10 minutes of class to discuss explain 9/11, doing so with the aid of a history channel video clip.  These students were about 4 in 2001, and I think that there was not only value in discussing this history, but also very much in politely explaining to them what aspects of the world have changed since then.