SMS 2010

So after all that background we get to this year.  When I moved to England for grad school I was planning on doing the whole 14 months in one shot.  Around November I decided that it would be best for my mental health to come home at least a little during the summer.  I emailed the SMS director and asked if I could come and teach, I was really missing teaching.  She said yes and I figured that would pay for the plane ticket.

So I arrive home from England Friday night a bit jet lagged and am due to start teaching at 8 am Monday morning.  Woo hoo!  I hadn't picked music yet, which I tried not to panic about.  Picking music is one of the most important things that a music teacher does.  My plan for the first day was to teach them a song by rote that I had learned from the Pete Churchill workshop in February and it actually went pretty well.  After that I tried a few things out before committing but we ended up singing Hard Road to Travel, Galway Piper and How Can I Keep From Singing. Every year the same thing happens.  The first week you get a little lift from the novelty of it all.  I love introducing a new song.  Then the second week they all glaze over and or glare at you.  You want me to do what? Then usually at the dress rehearsal they just bust out with this sound that you've never heard from them before.  As this is the fourth year I've seen this pattern, I try to remind myself during week two to hang in there and keep feeding them the music.

The jazz choir this year was particularly adorable. I finally got it into my head last year that this is essentially a mature elementary jazz choir and that helped with the music choices.  It's all about a great melody and everyone wants to sing it.  This year they sang an arrangement that I did of One Note Samba which is pretty groovy harmonically but the part leading is so smooth that it doesn't feel hard.  Later we added one of the girls on tenor sax which just really was the crowning touch adding a great texture.  Our second tune was Too Close For Comfort from a  Dave Cross duet version that shares the melody equally between the two parts.  

The biggest headache this year was probably solo auditions.  I like to have solos to feature kids and give them an opportunity to shine and learn through the process even if they don't perform the solo but with four songs with solos and LOTS of eager kids it was a bit to keep track of.

For the first week of musical theater we did drama improv games while I tried to find the right music/show.  Wendy and I raided the library at EW and the first medley out of the drawer was a winner- Music Man!  A great canon musical with classic songs, ballads and up tempo that is easy to stage and important for kids to know.  It was an older medley and I ended up bring down the keys so they'd fit in the kids' ranges better. After a day and a half of singing and talking about singing with animated faces it was time to get down to choreography.  I had some ideas and the first day of blocking went swimmingly.  The second day not so well but we managed to get the hang of it.  In the end our 6 minute medley brought the house down and we had a great time. Both Musical Theater and jazz choir had some seriously amazing kids.

Two of those kids were my assistants.  Two of my EW students who are going to be seniors next year came as counselors and were my gophers.  They were amazing and we had a great time.  While I've been doing the choir for the last four years the band post has been rotating through directors.  This year my bff from HS, Amy, had the job and it gave us some time to catch up on all the things that have been going on in her life this ear including her two adorable children and moving into a new building for the high school.

For my last hour kids this year I got most of them farmed out to work on instruments and then coached my pianist who's also on her fourth year at camp.  I also helped some 6th grade trumpet players. It's always funny to take my trumpet into band and have campers turn around and ask, "You play the trumpet?" The unspoken issue being,'but you're the choir teacher!'

I had a lot of fun this year.  Maybe because I missed teaching and was ready to go, maybe because I'm finally figuring out how to pick the right music and maybe because I decided that I was going to have a great time and reach out, jump in and do a little more.