Part 1: Some thoughts from the last weeks of school

Two sisters at my table the second to last week of school were competing (apparently) for who can tell the lamest joke. As their ‘jokes’ devolved to the point of, “What do you call a chicken that’s been burned by the sand? A hot chick!,” one of the other kids at the table had all she could take. “Guys, those aren’t even jokes, they’re silly questions!” she said full of exasperation. What made this really funny to me was that this particular kid is generally not the ‘sharpest knife in the drawer’, so for her of all people to get fed up with that sort of silliness was pretty funny!

I got a good laugh out of one of my third grade students labeling the Sousaphone on his music test as a “head tuba.” Never thought of it that way, but hey, I can see where he was coming from!

Part of my craziness during exam week was having to go into a local school with out three ninth grade students to participate in a mock grade 9 music exam. I spent an hour working through and correcting the exam paper with two local music teachers, and then spent a very interesting next hour helping to administer it. The 6 D batteries in their keyboard gave out right as we went to give the exam, and the new ones they had didn’t work, so while one teacher did part of the listening test on the recorder, the other one tried to make the batteries work.
Eventually the head teacher of the school came back with a long tube of cardboard rolled around 12 D batteries, and the wire inside the keyboard pulled out so that the one music teacher could stand there and hold the bare wire ends to the ends of the battery tube to provide power. As they came into the classroom to get the keyboard set up, the head teacher turned to me and said, "Ah, we have had to improvise; we MacGyvered it!"
I couldn't believe that a) he knew who MacGyver was, and b) that someone was willing to let their bare hands be part of an electrical circuit! Never a dull moment guys...

Parting shot: My grade 3 and 4 girls with their handwork bags. A big part of this term was getting their cross stitched initials finished up and sewn onto their bags.