I am now a music teacher!

The two grade levels getting ready for tonight's show...there's sure a lot of them...

Whoa. Crazy, crazy week. I got a phone call at 6:30pm on Monday night from my principal. She basically said the music teacher is gone for now and the less I know about why, the better. The music program for the 1st and 2nd graders is still scheduled for Wednesday night. Could I please take over?

Um. Sure. I guess. Holy crap.

So I get into work on Tuesday to assess the situation. My God. We couldn't find any music, the kids said they knew some songs, but not enough and they're really lame songs, and there's no scenery, programs, order, or anything. The kids didn't even know where to stand.

I've spent every waking minute for the last two days downloading music, printing/creating programs, organizing over 250 6-8 year olds, coordinating with parents, the principal, the other teachers, the custodians, and oh yeah: teaching them one new song and dance for the performance. I would have LOVED to recreate the whole bloody thing from scratch, but there was just not enough time. So I added some dance, some props, some movement, and some more music.

Tonight will be my first time directing any sort of musical program since I was in Milan, Italy in 2002. That was easy because the kiddos were singing English and no one understood them anyway. :-) And we had 2 weeks to work on it. And it was all mine: created from scratch.

That's the hardest part: to stand up in front of all these kids, parents, and my fellow teachers to perform this when I KNOW the kids could have done better. We could have nailed a super amazing program if I had just had more time. But...something is better than nothing.

And it's been super fun. I'm incredibly worn-out and exhausted, but it's been a hoot. We'll see how it goes...

I kinda like being a music teacher.