Six Days

Six. That is the number of days which I have worked in the month of February. The amount of snow we have had here is unbelievable, but it's not just snow days that are getting me down. No, we also have rain days, power outages, plain old icy road days, and oh, right, we're on vacation this week. Yeah... There was one day that I went to school, only to discover that school was cancelled. A bus had had an accident and the superintendent immediately sent the rest of the buses back home. I stayed at school and actually got some work done, but most of the other teachers went home. This weather is incredible, and it's driving me bonkers.

As you can imagine, no learning is really taking place at my school these days. The kids basically come on Monday's and Friday's. Well, we actually had 2 days of school in a row last week - that was interesting. The result is that my normally very sweet, kind, considerate middle school students have decided to send their unruly (and in some cases, downright evil) identical twins to school in their places. I can't get anything done, and I personally cannot wait for winter to be over. We haven't had a full week of school since early December!

I'm just glad that I am not the superintendent. None of this is her fault. She can't call delays in the morning because of a school district policy adopted years ago. Parents got upset because it was too difficult to find childcare for an hour or two in the morning with such short notice. In light of what has happened this year, the policy has been changed but won't take into effect until March 3rd. Until then, if roads are a little icy in the morning, the superintendent has to cancel school for the whole day. Her hands are tied.

Perhaps I should buy some fans for my classroom, because we're certainly not getting out before July!

The Nicest Kids in Town

When my students recommended that I watch Hairspray, I was a little skeptical. I feared that it would be similar to the movie Rent, which I feel absolutely massacred the truly brilliant musical. I was pleasantly surprised after I finally rented and watched Hairspray, and I highly recommend it to others. It was cast really well (I know, I had my doubts about Zac Efron too), and once I got used to seeing John Travolta dressed up as a woman, even that worked pretty well.

My chorus is now working on "You Can't Stop the Beat", and they love it. One of my students said the other day, "You know, it's weird. For every concert we do, there is one song that everyone loves and gets really excited about!" I smiled and said, "You know I do that on purpose, right?" I'm glad it's working!

The entire song is about 10 minutes long, so this is the short version which is pretty close to the arrangement that my chorus is doing:



Oh, and I have a group of boys singing Queen Latifah's part who are beyond thrilled.