ClassTag Rewards: Perks for Parent Communication

I use ClassTag to manage parent communication with my before and after school ensemble families. One of the big benefits of ClassTag is that parents can get alerts via text, email, and/or in-app notification according to their preferences. As a teacher of a ClassTag class, you're able to opt in to ClassTag Rewards, a great program allowing you to earn classroom goodies just for using ClassTag to communicate with families. Here's a sample of the ClassTag Rewards page for one of my classes:

There are many other rewards, so I could not fit them all in one screenshot. My favorite reward available is a $15 Amazon gift card, which currently costs 2,900 ClassTag coins. As you can see, I've earned more than enough coins in this class to redeem for one with this class. The gift card allows me to buy anything I might need for my classroom (or myself) that's available on Amazon, which means there's a lot of flexibility in how I spend the reward.

In addition to the awesome Rewards program, ClassTag also has top-notch customer service. I recently had a problem redeeming a reward (my school email spam filter is a little overreactive sometimes) and their chat feature was so easy to use. The person I spoke to was super helpful and got me a new gift card code ASAP so I could shop right away. It's always nice when a company seems genuinely interested in helping its customers!

Sign up for ClassTag using my code, and you'll get some ClassTag coins to use on rewards to get you started!

--I am a ClassTag ambassador. I receive 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 Hear the World Singing (after Walt Whitman's "I Hear America Singing")

I hear the world singing in sorrow and joy,
The faithful sing for their church in Paris, Ave Maria for the history lost.
The victors in another athletics event sing their country's anthem,
And some children add "cha-cha cha" to every Happy Birthday.
They sing to their babies, their elders, their lovers,
To mourn, to comfort, to celebrate.
And yet I wonder: do those in the ivory tower, the keepers of the music
Even hear the singing outside?
If music becomes do-ti-do, I V I, it's no longer music at all
For the heart's been ripped out leaving empty notes that mean nothing, plunks of futility.
"It's just music" they'll say, or critique intonation and the tempo that never quite settles
The singing's alive with the hearts of its singers but there's no notation for that.
If "why music?" is still the question they're asking, maybe they need to come down from the tower
Music isn't numbers and it isn't on paper, it's alive in the streets and the fields
I'd rather sing with the masses than with those who can't hear the beauty.
Hallelujah, they cannot trap me in their tower any more.