Take a Break: Scheduled messages during school vacations with ClassTag

I try really hard not to do a ton of work during school breaks. I really need the time to rest, and I want to spend time with my family and friends, not worrying about work I could or should do. However, I also like to encourage students to practice their instruments over breaks, since many of them have more relaxed schedules. With ClassTag, I was able to set up messages to be sent out over break before I left school last week. It's super easy to schedule announcements for any time in the future. After clicking the giant plus sign in the right hand corner and choosing "Announcement", this screen pops up. Fill in the fields, then click "add send time" in order to schedule it for the future.

Scheduled announcements are super handy for many different purposes, and make it easier to maintain work-life balance while communicating with families at a time that works for them. ClassTag's stats let me see how many families read my announcements. I notice that they are more likely to get read if I schedule them to go out during evening hours (likely because many parents aren't working at that time), so adding a send time is an easy way to improve communication with families.

Ready to sign up for ClassTag and level up your home-school communication? Sign up here !

--I am a ClassTag ambassador. I receive ClassTag coins and referral incentives for sharing how I use ClassTag in my teaching, but really do believe in their service and think it's useful for teachers.

I hope all teachers are having a relaxing, enjoyable break!

Teaching Through

It's been quite a week:

• I had to go on antibiotics because of a case of an infectious disease at my school
•  My school got a bomb threat on Friday (unfounded and non-credible, the same ones sent to schools across the country)
• I got observed 4 days before break
• I have a whole-school singalong to run on Friday

And I just keep teaching... Teaching through a headache and other bad side effects so I don't get seriously ill (get your vaccines!). Teaching through police searching for suspicious packages. Teaching while two administrators watch me try to keep the lid on a boiling pot of first-grade excitement for break. Teaching while trying to find the hours in the day to do all the other parts of my job besides teaching. 

Just keep teaching... just keep teaching... just keep teaching...

December Singalong!

I, like many music teachers, do more than just teach classes and put on concerts. One of my favorite school events is an all-school pajama day singalong right before December break. I teach K-5, so it's a wide range of ages to appeal to, and a diverse student population. Because I have students who cannot participate in anything holiday related due to religious beliefs, I try to keep the singalong primarily winter based, but represent Christmas, Hanukkah, and Kwanzaa with one song explicitly about each holiday. That way, students who want to can sing about the holiday they celebrate, or another holiday, but those who cannot are still able to be included on songs about snow, penguins, and other non-holiday related fun. Rather than sit and sing, we add lots of movements and other fun activities to keep everyone engaged. I've built a few new traditions in my 3 years so far at my school, and it's always amazing to see the kids remember songs they've learned in years past.

I can't share my slides for all of the songs due to copyrighted lyrics, but here's a list of what we'll be doing for our singalong this year:

• Jingle Bells
• Sleigh Ride (we use the Pentatonix version)
• Do You Want to Build a Snowman from Frozen
• I Have a Little Dreidel
• Penguin Polka from Music K-8 (we stand up and dance while singing this one)
• Kwanzaa is Here
• Fur Elise winter movements (from the Feierabend Move It DVD)
• Snow Day! Snow Day! Hip Hip Hooray by Sally Albrecht and Jay Althouse
• Frosty the Snowman
• Rudolph
• When the Lights All Shine from Music K-8 (SHINE is our school rules/character building acronym and we do sitting choreography to this one)

The Hills and Valleys of December

Teaching in December is:
a. exciting
b. exhausting
c. frustrating
d. all of the above

Today was a long Monday, and last week was one of the toughest weeks of teaching for me ever. Teaching in December is different from the rest of the year. Not worse, exactly, it's fun to see the kids excited and there's lots of cool events happening, but it's tiring. That hundredth time asking kids to quiet down isn't quite as gentle as the first time. The fifth time kids start randomly singing jingle bells in the middle of another song isn't as endearing as the first time. There's so much joy, so much energy, and so much to do in too little time. December is like a microcosm of the school year, with lots of highs and lows and sugar crashes and drinking too much coffee (or is that just me?).

The best moments, though, come at those times of exhaustion and frustration. I've been using the last few minutes of my music classes to work on songs for our December singalong. We do a big all-school pajama day before break, and I like to do a few non-traditional songs that require the kids to learn a bit of choreography and some short tunes. It's fun, no pressure, and gets us all dancing our way into break. And just when I'm about to remind a student about behavior for the tenth time, they'll perk up and join us in snow hands or "shine fingers" (yes, I renamed jazz hands) or some other silly movement. There's magic in all that energy, in having 20 kindergarteners shove peace signs as close to your face as they can from their seat because they're SO EXCITED about a song they're doing with the "big kids".

I'll be spending the next 9 school days looking for those magic moments, and surviving the frustrating times in between. And then I will take a very long, well deserved winter break nap.