When The Music Starts - My Choir at the Toyota Center! 3/9/14

It was the busiest of weeks.  I define 'busy' as any length of time where your focus is required to be on something besides that which you want to be doing.  So I guess any work day is busy.  But even work days have small breaks, lunch, planning...things like that during which you can take a breath, check your e-mail, look at your phone...without other requirements panting at you like a dog.

The undertaking of an elementary field trip is no small task.  Add in the fact that the little darlings are all in different grades and homerooms, they must wear their choir shirt, they have to perform, and certain paperwork must be turned in on every one of the forty-nine students (49!), and I received a busy week.  I was bombarded by questions, papers, looking for papers, figuring how to collect them and feed them after school, figuring out how to get them on the bus and get to the Toyota Center in time....I worked, planned, e-mailed, texted, made phone calls, and typed up papers. Don't get me wrong, I didn't procrastinate; I've been working on this since August.  It's just that the last week is crunch time, and I wanted to go over every detail as many times as possible. When the music starts, we all need to be ready!  I don't like to be wrong about anything!

I must say a huge 'thank you' to our office staff and all the teachers that helped with the little details.  And I thank the principal for just letting me handle it all and staying out of my way.  I prefer to work unassisted and without a hawk looking over my shoulder, questioning everything I do.  And I got it my way!  Pure luck, I know.  The big day, Friday, rolled around and I was up early.  Packing what I would need and getting dressed and ready.  There was a five-minute space when I, the choir director, could not find my own choir t-shirt.  But it was only temporary, the shirt was found and on with the show.  Headed to school, my choir and I got a shout-out on the radio from local morning show Dean and Rog.  That made me very happy, and I hoped that a lot of our teachers and parents had heard it.  I parked at school, carried in all my 'stuff' and was late for the staff meeting.  Not only late, but had already been mentioned, so everyone knew I wasn't there on time.  I claim Rockets game excuse!

Let it be known that during this day, I taught my full schedule of classes, except when the assistant principal spelled me for thirty minutes due to having won an hour lunch with my team.  I was missing a permission slip, I had to call the parent.  I had no less than four students without their t-shirts, and only five to spare.  I typed an agenda for the afternoon to give my principal, who was riding the bus with us.  I figured out how many students I needed to place on each row for our performance from the stands. I dealt with the fact that my underwire on one side was a goner, and hoped that the effect would not be seen on the big screen.  The day went by.  I left during planning and picked up their pizzas.  I was ready for the crowd immediately after school.

They were wound up, to say the least.  I kept them corralled, with the help of precious friends that volunteered to stay for the pizza portion.  They ate healthy portions, and then the orange things appeared. Those obnoxious blow-up noise makers were springing up all around the room!  I outlawed them immediately.  Do not blow them up, put them away, I do not want to see them.  Little did I know that one parent had supplied her child with enough orange things for every one of the 49 kids to have two!   That's a new rule to chalk up for next year.

We loaded the bus.  The principal, me, the bus driver's family and 49 kids.  We told them:  same rules as always.  The bus driver turned on the radio.  The kids sang and took selfies.  I had to trust that all those ten and eleven year olds were taking decent pics!  It got loud.  We had to tell a few to sit back down.  The principal looked unhappy most of the time.  Half-way there, she informed me that we had a "seat-hopper", so she went and sat toward the back.  I frowned at my children (they know if my smile is gone, it's a biggie) and we rode the rest of the way there.

When you take 49 students on a 90 minute bus ride, restrooms at the destination are of the utmost importance.  When that was taken care of, our escorts took our group up to our spot via the freight elevator! There were some scared little darlings, but I, the fearless leader, told them if they want to be a famous singer or actor, they have to learn about arriving the 'secret way'!  Once in our rows, we waited to sing.  Parents were arriving and bringing their child some food, the arena was filling up, kids were clapping noisy orange things and asking for the restroom again... one mom (who has been precious and helpful and kind for six years now) handed me a bottle of water.  "For you, Mrs. McCarty".  True kindness exists.

We got our three minute warning and the kids put away the orange things and focused.  Once the music started, they were in auto-mode.  They got a little distracted by the big screen, but the sound was amazing - on key, energized and sweet.  I realized that I don't focus on bus behavior or how they interact with each other.  I touch on those things - but what I really teach is how they should act and what they should do when the music starts.  They did it.  I was proud.

The rest of the evening was a nightmare of restroom trips, loud clappy orange things in my ear and a few that couldn't behave. It was also a big win for the Rockets, so that made it fun.  What I am going to choose to remember most is the sound that came from my choir, because what you do when the music starts is really important.

Where My Brain Goes During Staff Development 1/11/14

It is the bane (or blessing, if you choose) of any teacher's existence:  having to sit through hours of staff development.  Usually occurring at the beginning of the year, prior to students returning from holidays, or on the odd Monday holiday - students off, staff in session, teachers sit for hours to be what; taught new methods?  inspired to change everything they do? be told we're valuable no matter what the world thinks?  If you assume that I've met my quota of staff development hours every year I've taught, then at the end of this year, I've sat through 575 hours of these lovely meetings.  How am I not perfect yet?  Besides the fact that nobody is perfect, the other answer is that over a span of thirty years, the exact same ideas are being implemented, but they are packaged with different wording.  If I say the words from twenty years ago to praise or remind, I'm not doing it right anymore. Same ideas, different words.  I recently sat through a day of listening to a speaker that was guaranteed (by our administration) to be wonderful!!!  You will learn so much! Be excited!  Let me bring out my inner Yoda as I say - "Exciting to me, meetings are not."  I decided to bring a pen and let my thoughts flow onto paper to keep myself looking engaged.  Here's a little view of where my brain went from 8:30 a..m. to 11:30 a.m., with one twenty minute break:

Go ahead, inspire me.  Try to tell me something that I haven't heard.  The first try - telling me I'm older, smarter and I have skills.  As I've said many times before, 'There's your "duh" for the day.'  Keep trying.  Next, you tell me to put my phone out of sight (not a bad thing) because every time it goes off, some chemicals are released in my brain.  Yeah, chemicals are released for me every time I smell the pizza from the cafeteria next door, too.  That's life.  So, you got our phones put away.  Now you go over the handout.  Thank you so much for telling me what is contained in the papers that I'm holding in my hand  Oh good, a new power point slide!  Please read it out loud to me because I'm a teacher and reading is hard.  Also, I do not agree with the quote.  From famed teacher and child psychologist Haim Ginott, it reads:

“I’ve come to a frightening conclusion that I am the decisive element in the classroom. It’s my personal approach that creates the climate. It’s my daily mood that makes the weather. As a teacher, I possess a tremendous power to make a child’s life miserable or joyous. I can be a tool of torture or an instrument of inspiration. I can humiliate or heal. In all situations, it is my response that decides whether a crisis will be escalated or de-escalated and a child humanized or dehumanized.” 
― Haim G. Ginott

I do agree with most of that, but not the crisis escalating part.  I have personally seen situations escalate even when I'm at my personal best.  Dr. Ginott's observations are from the 1950s through the 1970s.  We need to keep the valuable and do away with what has changed with time.

Oooh!  Time to take notes! No, not really, just time to read the note-taking paper to me.  Once again, I guess I can't read.  More of the comedy routine (this is a fairly entertaining speaker, as they go...)about how tired teachers get, and how they go to happy hour together.

Finally!  We take notes about how our classroom looks.  And then about behaviors - we are supposed to tell them (the children) in all our gestures and behaviors that we want them here, we believe they can learn and we'll keep them as safe as possible.  (Good points, I've heard and used them for 23 years.)   Comedy moments were demonstrated concerning how our behavior is communication. (Example - a teacher yelling "What have I told you about yelling?"  haha)

Next we're asked "Do you get mad?"  Discussion (one sided) of what we do when we're mad.  All leading up to the point that we do not choose to sit in time out when we're mad.  So here we are, being told that we are doing it all wrong.  Don't say "don't hit".  Tell a kid that flips everyone off to do it in their pocket.  I don't know if I think that's ridiculous or I'm jealous because I didn't think of it.

We are told to ask ourselves:  "Can I be a perfect role model 100% of the time?"  We are told to remove "appropriate" and "inappropriate" from our disciplinary vocabulary.  Easier said than done.  A little contradiction is going on here. we can set a "parameter" and validate that a child has the urge to [hit, fight, curse, cheat....] and re-iterate the parameter for school.  But when you set parameters at school, isn't that because the action is not appropriate? Does simply changing "inappropriate" to "not ok" change the brain chemical?

So much of what this presenter is saying is the same thing I've been taught - on the job - for years.  And I personally use a lot of these techniques - maybe even in a very excellent, exemplary way.  Many teachers at my school do all these things well.

For the past 2.5 hours, this is what's been said.  It boils down to frame of mind.  She is saying "I did not say there are no consequences".  But she only gave examples of non-working consequences.  She didn't give concrete, usable examples of what to do once it's a necessity.  Consequences are seriously downplayed in the district, though, so that's probably a grand scheme.

Lunch is in six minutes and all I can think about is the pain in the bones of my rear end, as I've been sitting on a 12-inch diameter plastic disc for four hours.  And while I sit here contemplating whether this pain in my rear (literal, this time...) affects my bursitis, the speaker is making some of her most hard-hitting, serious, dynamic points and I'm not hearing a word.  Money well-spent, district?


Thus ends my free-write from my day of learning.  The afternoon session was another three hours of the same thing. My hand wouldn't write anymore.  But you know what?  The next day, students walked into my room.  I let them know that I was happy they were there, that I believed they could learn and that they were in a safe place.  I didn't do that because of the speaker. I did that because I love kids, I love teaching my subject to kids and I naturally adjust to the atmosphere and the basic needs of those kids to get them to learn and love music.

The Hardest Questions of All. Thanks, Santa. 12/12/13

Little ones ask so many questions.  Personal questions - "How old are you?"  Silly questions - "Can I have that bracelet?"  Blunt questions - "Are those real diamonds?"  But the two hardest questions of all occur this time of year:  "Mrs. Rush, is Santa real?"  followed by "Mrs. Rush, do you believe in Santa?"  Elementary teachers have to face the fact the there are as many levels of belief in their classroom as there are students.  We also have to face the fact that those students believe whatever we say.  We are the teachers.  We speak wisdom and truth!  I bill myself as a teacher that only tells the truth.  So, when I was asked these difficult questions today, as I have been so many years in a row, I gave an answer that has been many years in the making:

"Is Santa real?  Jailynn says he's not."  Oh boy, here we go.  Carefully worded truth. These were second graders.  I personally found out the truth from a kid in my class in third grade.  I was angry and disappointed.  Considering this little questioner was about the same age, I spoke very cautiously:

"Now, my little friends, you might be hearing all sorts of things about Santa from your friends here in your class at school. I think that Santa is very much alive in the spirit of giving.  Different families have different ways that they share that with their kids, so please believe whatever your parents tell you.  This season is about love and giving.  Sometimes we give gifts, sometimes we give a song, sometimes we give our time to help someone.  Santa is one of the leaders behind all that giving, but we are all involved in it.  I hope that you have the chance to give a little bit this season and see how it makes you happy.  Even if what you give is your best smile." (The room erupts into smiley faces.)

"But what about what Jailynn said?"  "Well, her family still believes in giving and being sweet.  Her parents just explain it in a different way from your parents.  But that's ok if the real purpose is being nice."

"Why doesn't Santa bring presents to grown-ups?"  "Well, it's not because all grown-ups are bad.  I'm certainly not bad!" (giggle eruption).  "I think it's because when you are very little you only know how to get stuff.  When you get older, you learn how to give yourself, so Santa doesn't have to give you things to teach you that anymore." (Can we please sing now?)

Then, the granddaddy of them all:  "Mrs. Rush, do you believe in Santa?"  Dead silence.  They think they've got me.  "I have to say yes, my friends.  I believe in Santa as he represents the spirit of giving.  I believe in Santa in the idea that if you are good, good things come to you.  I try to practice that all year long on you boys and girls by giving treasure box goodies to the well-behaved children.  I believe that once you really know Santa as a grown-up, you understand that giving is so much more than a present.  Giving can be a smile, saying someone looks nice, visiting someone, calling them, writing them a note, or singing them a song. This is the truth that Santa represents and in my heart I know it's true.  Believe what your mom and dad tell you. That will be different for everyone in here, but don't we celebrate differences at our school?" (Nodding heads) "Santa wants you to grow up to have a giving heart, so he sets the example."  (Quiet.....)  "Now let's sing - please give me some beautiful songs with beautiful voices today!"  Smiles - music - action.  Thanks, Santa.

Summer - or broken engagement? 7/16/13

Teacher like to enjoy summer.  Jealous?  Then try teaching.....that's all I have to say about that.  What do teachers do in the summer?  Plan one nice vacation, if they're lucky.  Relax?  Maybe.  Enjoy their families?  Of course.  Search pinterest for classroom ideas?  Some do.  Plan how to decorate next year's room?  Yes, some do....you see, a teacher is always looking for the best ways to engage students.  "Engage" is one of the latest buzzwords in education.  It was preceded by "on-task", and "focused" and many others.  It simply means that the teacher has worked enough magic to get the students all doing what they are supposed to be doing.

Summer!!  It's a running joke that the teachers count down for summer more than the students.  In some cases, it's true.  A lot of students don't look forward to staying home or going to day care while Mom and Dad go to work.  Being at school all day with their friends is much more fun.  Other students are privileged to know that sleeping in, Disney vacations, visits from Grandma, trips to the beach are all on the calendar.  Between those that are not anticipating summer, and those that can't wait, the last few weeks of school are extra-tiring for the teachers.  We are expected to use whatever is in our bag of tricks to keep the students on-task and "engaged".  We all preach the same sermons; "The rules are in effect until the very last day". "It is not summer YET!" We all find extra-special ways to reward good behavior, in order to stave off the mean talk, hitting, etc.  On the last day that teachers are in the building, that "clean-up and get out!" day, teachers are exhausted.

But the other side of that coin is - summer does arrive!  No more morning alarm, unless you choose to schedule yourself for something.  No more waiting 90 minutes or more to use the restroom, because you just can't walk out on a room of seven-year-olds! (Not my favorite part of teaching, truth be told.)  No "show" to put on all day long to cause "engagement" by those around us. Have you ever seen a teacher take their own kids to a museum during summer vacation and constantly read and show everything as if they were a guide?  Turning off the engagement mentality is not always easy.  Even worse, the teachers in an adult group - Vegas vacation, concert outing, grown-ups at the beach - that insist on everyone playing the game, or going to the restaurant, or seeing the show, etc. etc.  A teacher's instinct is to include all, engage all! Not always relaxing.

All careers have their pressures, their busy seasons, their horrible bosses, their deadlines....that's a fact of life.  And many careers have a small portion of their day or week where they have to present an idea, pitch a product, and keep the attention of others for a period of time. I do dare to say, though, that teaching is fairly unique in the realm of having to keep others engaged during all working hours.

Teaching is just one of those careers that have the human element woven in to all the pressures, deadlines, and busy seasons. I truly believe that nurses and first responders fall squarely in that category as well.  I also know that there are many similar "human dependent" careers that I am not mentioning, because I am focusing on teachers.   Not only are teachers expected to mold, hypnotize, enthrall and engage between 20 and 150 different humans for 7 hours a day, the humans are of the immature variety.  One indicator of our performance assessment is the observer ranking us on whether the students are engaged!  Thank goodness, so far in my career I've had observers that understand how random this can be.  If there's a class of thirty 6-year-olds, and two are engaged in an argument left over from the playground, one is engaged with a blister on her foot and another is engaged in asking for the restroom, chances are that the other twenty-six are not engaged in the skill the teacher is trying to convey!

Teachers juggle these situations daily.  Not just once daily, but consistently, all-day-long, daily.  It's the by-product of our educational system and calendar.  Too much togetherness can breed over-familiarity; good and bad routines can spring from such situations.  I will stop and say right here that most  (95%) of the teachers that I have ever worked with are amazing, patient, creative and overly giving.  Teachers are indeed a special group.  However, I know, being a part of the crowd, that those amazing individuals go home many a night with nothing left for their families.  Or they go home, take a deep breath, do just as much for their families in the evening, get a little sleep, and wake up exhausted only to do it all again.

So, teacher friends, say hello to summer with a smile.  You deserve a break.  A break in the consistency of pressure, deadlines, meetings, parent phone calls, evaluations.......although you're still going to run into those little darlings at the local store!  You (in my current place) have 11 weeks off to recharge, stop worrying and rest up. So be quiet, read a book, soak up the sun, see a movie - and quit trying to engage everyone around you.  Because as soon as that date to return rolls around, you have to start engaging everybody all day long once again! 

"Did you know that student over there is banging his head on the table?" 4/27/13

Yes, there was some head-banging happening.  Not hard enough to hurt, just enough to show off.  Four teachers had tried to talk to this student about the issue, but he would just scream and cry.  The main teacher of the student faces this behavior from this same student almost every day.  We know the personality well enough to let them calm down a bit first, then take care of whatever may be wrong, or may have been done wrong. 


At the place where I teach, there is a discipline "program" that we follow.  Let's call it "***".  *** involves rewards for positive behavior.  Many teacher hours go into creating guidelines for behavior in every area of the school; as well as the challenge of constantly being urged to come up with "new, fresh and exciting" rewards.  *** just doesn't work.  It also has given administrative staff the freedom to look at a teacher and say "you need to handle this yourself".

Now, before I expound upon a subject that is not only part of my everyday life, but what I feel is a huge contributor to the greater wrongs in this world, I will at least specify where my experience lies.  I teach elementary music, grades kindergarten through fifth, in a public school in a very large district in Texas.  Our school population for those ages I teach is a little over nine hundred. You may not get the impression from this particular post that I enjoy my career, but I do.  I think I'm very good at a) teaching music basics, b) understanding little ones, respecting and meeting their needs, when possible, and c) using humor and structure to keep order within my classroom.

It's not just bad or ineffective parents that are creating the little ones of today with the "sense of entitlement" and plain old bad manners.  Our schools, starting at the top echelon of each district, are bent on insisting that bad behavior of students is on the decrease.  Programs such as **** serve one purpose - to lower the number of office referrals.  In other words, students that misbehave no longer face consequences.  Therefore, those acts of misbehavior do not become part of the record.

The old-fashioned among you (I include myself) may ask - "What is the purpose of not punishing wrong-doers?  Isn't our whole society based on the concept of law and order?"  You may disbelieve what I am telling you:  that teachers are left to creatively discipline every child for every offense, without any backup or higher consequence.  And yes, it is definitely not a true statement that NOBODY gets in trouble.  If another child is harmed, there are consequences.  If other parents call and complain about things their innocent child is a witness to, or worse, subjected to, steps are taken. If it makes the news, a consequence is part of the press release.  In a nutshell - most things fly under the radar these days, without any serious repercussion for most serious misbehavior. Is it any wonder that some of our young adults that are facing the challenge of mental illness feel more free to act out with violence?

I did a little research - very little, I might add.  I don't know to whom state education agencies are held accountable.  The federal government, for monetary aid?  The taxpayers and voters?  I do know, simply by checking a few state education agency websites, that the public can view the discipline data by district, broken down by offense, race, and economics.  Therefore, it is clear that every school district reports its "dirty laundry" - expulsions, felonious offenses, assault of faculty, even truants and in-school suspensions - to its governing state agency every year. 

Can you imagine the picture of the superintendent of each district lining up at a confession booth?  Every suit and tie business person that runs a district stepping in one at a time to confess the 'sins' of their children?  Of course, that's just imagery on my part.  But it is all reported.  There is paperwork to be done, computer reports to submit, and, eventually, one grand table to be filled in on the state website, for all to see.  Do the results affect anything at a state level?  My research didn't give a clear answer.  But when I checked the Texas Education Agency's website for discipline subjects, I did find a link to the Texas Education Code, Chapter 37, which charges each district to have a code of conduct that specifies everything that could lead to removal from the classroom up to expulsion.  The terms are general, when you look from a elementary viewpoint.  (They also have a misspelled word, which disturbs me on a completely different level.)  I truly believe, with the wording being as general as it is in "Chapter 37", that those discipline reports could be used against a district when it came to funding decisions.  A school district's best bet is to look as perfect as possible.

Perfect?  With children?  Children are not perfect.  They run indoors, they push and hit each other, they interrupt adults, they lie, they show their privates to others, they pitch screaming kicking fits, they peel paint off walls and trash restrooms.  That's just what I could say with one breath.  I've been teaching for twenty-three years.  I'm not being mean - those are the bare facts!  Most children used to be taught to control the afore-mentioned impulses before attending school, but that's where times have changed.  With the advent of more and more working parents and electronic entertainment, over half of a new kindergarten class does not know how to look at an adult and speak their first and last name.  I'm not talking about shyness, I'm talking about social skills.  Instead of being nurtured, experienced in public behavior, learning to sit quietly while be talked to or read to, and having some small responsibilities of which they can be proud of accomplishing, many new kindergarten age (5 years old) students cannot speak their name, do not know if they are a boy or a girl, and cannot walk around the corner to use the restroom alone. Instead of teaching them to start reading and counting and sorting, the first nine weeks of school are used to teach social skills.

Do I have the perfect answer?  Of course not, or I would be in every state capital, selling my "method" to every state agency for the big bucks, like so many other companies and individuals out there.  I've heard and used many methods in all my years.  Most of them are a re-bottling of a college class I took in 1983, called Educational Psychology.  The only new things I learned after that were the changing acronyms and certain gang information that I didn't learn in college!   I know from experience, though, when the shark got jumped.  I know what caused things to head down the wrong path.  It is simply the fact that consequences were removed for general bad behavior.  If a child is nothing but talkative, the teacher must deal with it.  Silent lunch, take recess, sit apart, simple little things.  For a very talkative child (yes, he may need medication, but no teacher can even imply that....or say anything if he is supposed to get it, but doesn't!) those consequences accomplish nothing.  If sending him home would go on that state record, it doesn't happen! That child is free, with only small results, to keep all the other children in the classroom distracted.  Children today are learning that breaking little rules doesn't matter.

My heart goes out to our children that have severe problems, diagnoses, whatever their challenge may be. The child that was banging their head on the table had gotten caught in a lie and was upset with himself. I did go talk to him (again), managed to let him know I would be fair with him when he settled himself and we resolved the issue about thirty minutes later. This child was a ten-year-old.  As I said, I am kind to all and respect them as people even though they are little.  I also manage to keep the terrible behaviors at bay with humor, kindness, a little wisdom (a good seating chart works wonders!!) and a little help from my friends!  But I mourn the loss of the day when teachers, administrators, parents and the community worked as one to make sure that children learned how to behave correctly before they went on to middle school or high school.  I fear that there will be many more violent lessons before we regain the strength and fortitude to actually discipline.  I pray I'm wrong.