Fortunately, not voices in my head. My students can. not. stop. talking. in band. Many of them are great; they watch, listen, follow instructions. But some of them just can't get a grip on the concept of keeping quiet. No matter how much I ask them to stop, try to keep them engaged, anything. I can't seem to change this. Finally after repeating "Please listen. Please listen. Please listen..." six or seven times at one point in rehearsal to day, I had six or seven students shout "Listen!!!!" at their peers, which I will admit was pretty fantastic. Nothing like a little good peer suggestion to get a bunch of fifth graders to pay attention. The concert is about a week away and I have no idea whether it will sink in that there will be no talking or bathroom breaks, even though I keep telling them.
On the plus side, playing-wise they have improved tremendously. They're playing better in time, more correct notes, and we're working on watching the conductor. I figure if we can learn that and be trained well at this point they'll be significantly better off later. I just wish I had thought to focus on it more earlier on in the year in lessons, too. We're practicing it in lessons currently; now I just need to make sure I incorporate tuning more consistently, as well.
Composition Assignment #2 has gone out, and I'm excited to see what the kids turn out. Not all of them are thrilled about it, but I actually have a handful of students who were super excited when I gave them the new assignment. Who knew so many kids like composing? :)
Started picking music for the next concert. Currently I'm at the mercy of whatever is in my office, and it looks like we've got some decent stuff, though I'm not familiar with it so I'm trying to learn it and decide based on some of the things we learned in Materials for Band and program logically. Right now the pieces I'm looking at for our next concert (based on style and playability/challenge level for the students) are High Adventure, Ancient Hunters, Country Capers, and Valor March. I don't think I'm a huge fan of Valor March, but it seems like it'll be a good closer, at least. We'll see; we have a staff development day Friday that my schools are pretty much doing conferences with parents for, so I'll be spending the day in my office looking more into these pieces and other ones we have in the office. Who knows, maybe I'll get the spring concert planned, too!
Unfortunately, I found out that the district-wide band festival (not one I picked the date for) is scheduled on the same day as one of my school's mandatory fifth-grade play and another school's fifth-grade science fair. There go about 20 of my students :/ In addition, I have two more students who want to drop, and I don't know whether it's me at this point or what. Granted, number-wise for their sections their absence will honestly not make much difference, but I'm just sorry I wasn't able to motivate them enough to want to practice their instruments. One hasn't brought his instrument to lessons in a month and a half (granted two of those weeks he was absent since he had his tonsils removed), and the other one has potential if she practices more but she simply says she doesn't like it anymore and wants to do tae-kwon-do instead.
Despite this weird amalgam rant thing I've got going on here, things are going well overall and most of the students seem motivated and like they're enjoying being in the program. It really is a joy to work with the students, and it was such a relief to listen to them play today in rehearsal and hear how much they've progressed, even in just the past week. Even though I am nervous for the concert, I'm excited, too.
