Music Is Not for Insects

I hope this Memorial Day finds you well. And for those of you struggling to get funding for your program or looking for a job next school year, here is a bittersweet cartoon from Hilary over at Rhymes With Orange:

Uploaded with plasq’s Skitch!

Now that I teach at a middle school, I am a hapless “member” of the ratemyteachers.com community.

If you have never been to ratemyteachers.com, it’s a site where students can post anonymous comments about their teachers and professors. You can then search these comments by school or teacher and get the low down about educators; the good, the bad and the ugly.

For some, this may be a liability. For others, an asset. For me, it was an objective rating from some anonymous student (or parent) about my reason for not having posted to this blog in awhile.

Note the comment and emoticon below:

At least it’s accurate. More posts on this blog after I de-stress. Question: are you “featured” on ratemyteachers.com or know somone who is?

This just cracked me up:

Do you have any forbidden music in your classroom? For me it’s “Heart and Soul”, “Chop Sticks” or that other song kids play on the black keys where they roll their knuckles along f#, g# and a# then twice on c# repeat; then in the other direction and twice on d#. I literally scream “STOP” when I hear these played.

And lately it has been the McDonald’s jingle…all it takes is one kid to discover it and the rest are playing it non-stop on the piano. I guess I should be happy the kids are learning and experimenting. But non-stop jingles can take its toll on the psyche.

Photo Source: danny.hammontree

You have to share this post with all your trombone buddies. Check out the hilarious videos at thepetersonproject.

I wish I could embed a sample video here at the post, but they are unavailable. These are very clever short videos, films really, by Houston area freelance trombonist Steve Peterson.

WARNING: You won’t understand the humor of these videos unless you were in a college band/orchestra or are good friends with a knuckle-dragging-low-brass-yahoo.

p.s. I’m a trombonist.