Surprises

I am a student teacher at a high school. I am teaching choral music as well as a class on music theory and history. I absolutely love it. I love teaching music, and trying to inspire a love for singing, the beauty of music, and a wonder for how Western music has evolved in my students. What I think I love most, though, is my students and the things they will say or do that completely surprise me.

Here's a couple of examples:

I'm walking down the hallway in the morning. I see and greet a student who is normally pretty subdued. I expect a simple “good morning” back. What I actually get is “Miss Smidt!! Did you cut your hair!?!? It looks so cute!”

I am sitting at my desk doing work in the morning during planning period. One of my students walks into the room with a friend. I greet them.

Student: “Miss Smidt! Are you wearing cute shoes today?!”

Me: “Um...I don't know...do you think they're cute?”

Student: “Oh yeah. Those are cute. Can my friend take a picture of them?”

I am leading warm-ups in Chamber Singers. One of these warm-ups involves throwing an imaginary ball and following it with your voice. We “threw the ball” like a good high school football player, a pro football player, and a 3-year-old. Then for some stupid reason unbeknownst to myself I said “throw the ball like I would throw it...careful with this one!”

One of the young gentlemen responded in a good-natured fashion: “Miss Smidt, how is that any different from what we just did?” (meaning the 3-year old version)

Someone told him to “shut up”.

I laughed inside and moved on....he did have a good point.

These are just a few little stories I could think of right now. I can't believe I only have 2 weeks left with these students! I am going to miss working with them so much. They are mostly all wonderful young people who are so fun to teach.

And then after this I'm getting ready to teach in China, where my students will surprise me in even more ways than I can imagine! What!?! Where is the time going!!??

Peace,

爱琳