Midlife Meditation

Starting in September, I'll be teaching here. I felt it Monday morning when I woke up: a slight increase in the gravitational field holding me to my bed, coupled with a tightness in my throat. The pull of the bed I put down to still recovering from a bad fall I'd had Friday while out on a run, the throat scratchiness to the flurry of floral procreation going on throughout the Willamette Valley. Bruises, allergies--yeah, that's what's up. I shaved, showered, had breakfast, packed my lunch, kissed Amy, and headed off to my last full week of school. Five hours later, the teaching portion of my day complete, I stepped into the cafeteria to do lunch duty, and within a minute, knew I had to go home. I checked with the vice principal to be sure she could handle it by herself, notified the secretary I'd be leaving early, then spent 45 minutes contradicting myself by ensuring everything was in place for my sub, and headed for home. That night, I had a fever of 100.8...

Yesterday I said goodbye to Desale. Desale is in the fourth grade. While I can't speak for how he is in his general education classes, I know that he loves learning about music, and is always the most attentive student in the room when I'm teaching. He also goes out of his way to ask me about music outside of class. He's outgoing without being chatty, readily engages teachers in conversation, and is not shy about asking me to play a particular song over the PA during my morning gym duty. Two weeks ago, I started the fourth grade's second recorder unit, teaching them to play "Iko Iko," a New Orleans Mardi Gras song that just happens to be Desale's favorite. Uniquely out of the entire fourth and fifth grades, he began bringing his recorder with him to that morning gathering time (when 2nd, 4th, and 5th graders all wait to be picked up from the gym by their classroom teachers) in hopes of getting some extra coaching from me. This morning, Desale's ...

You may be tired of my complaints. This week, we will be two months into the school year at Margaret Scott. For me, that's two months without a classroom, carrying what I can from building to building in the morning, struggling to hold children's attention in a huge echoing gym in the afternoon; two months of having just one (hopefully uninterrupted) half hour session for each class (though some occasionally get two, depending on the "tech rotation" nobody's been able to figure out), instead of the two that's minimal; two months of leading "Rhythms" and pretending it's a musical experience for the ninety rowdy children simultaneously occupying the gym; two months of having one mitigating idea after another shot down because, realistically, my curriculum takes a distant second to me keeping an eye on kids somewhere that what I'm doing doesn't disturb any other classes; two months of district administrators reminding me in their own ...

Remember this picture? This was my classroom when I started teaching in the Reynolds School District: a gymnasium. The acoustics were atrocious, the space made even the best-behaved kids a bit loopy, and I had to put all my equipment--truckloads of xylophones, metallophones, and whatever else I might be using--away in a storage room every afternoon, because I couldn't trust either the after school program or the evening basketball league to treat it with respect. That was my reality in two different schools for the entire year 2013-14, and led me to seek employment elsewhere during the summer. I didn't find any. When I came back to Scott Elementary a year ago, I found that my situation had partially improved: I was in a classroom now, though I had to share a third of it with a computer lab/English Language Development program. Most of the time, this wasn't too challenging: I could've used more room, and sometimes the more challenging kids would run to the oth...

School's in! And I'm in--in the building, that is. All last year, my increasingly discouraged educational refrain was "I teach in a gym." To be more precise, I taught in two gyms, because I divided my year between two schools, both of which had phased out the music room when they cut back music during the recession. Last year, the Reynolds district partially restored music education, putting half-time teachers in every building but one (more about that later). At Scott and Hartley, they also restored PE half-time. Having the PE and music teachers trade places at the semester worked out conveniently for the schools: no need to force anyone else to move! Music could be in the gym when PE was in the other school, schedules did not have to change midyear, administrators were happy, teachers were happy... And I was not. Initially, just the chance to teach elementary music full-time carried me through the challenges of having a space that was far too big, far too lo...

The good news? I get to be in just one school next year, instead of splitting the year between two. The bad news? I'll most likely still be teaching in a gym--if I'm lucky. Since I'll be at that school all year, there will be at least one semester of overlap with a PE teacher, who will have a better claim on that space than I do. The sad news? On June 11, I will say goodbye to all the students at Hartley School, and probably not see them again. This is a sad reality of being a music specialist in an economy that does not support arts education. When core curricular concerns take all the top priority spots in a budget, music quickly takes on a vagabond status: we'll find work for you if we can; if not, we can always use good subs. And when we do find work for you, be happy to have a job. Keeping you in one building long enough to form relationships, giving you an adequate work space, providing you with all the materials you need to do your work, giving you a daily sc...