Well, today wasn’t as bad as I thought!  Last night I was really feeling pretty down.  I’m better now.

What happened today?  Well, most important, and unfortunately, Chris didn’t advance in his audition.  That’s okay.  He worked hard, and there are always more auditions.  I’m also glad he doesn’t seem too upset!  The longer I am in this world, the angrier I get at auditions.  But that’s another story for another day 🙂

Teaching was better than expected!  My large class this morning begged for a game, so we ended up playing “Simon Says” for a bit and that went really well.  We also worked on a fair amount of songs and did pretty well with posture.

The next school was hit and miss.  Some of the students hadn’t practiced all well.  I did a pretty good lecture about that at the end of my class.  Some of the students were GREAT!  My three most advanced students there (all girls) were just fantastic today.  I assigned them various three part Christmas carols to start learning (rotating the melody/harmony parts) and asked them to go in a different room and get started while I worked with the less advanced students.  After about 20 minutes they came back and I asked them to play through a little of what they had done.  They didn’t think they were doing very well but I was pleased!  I reminded them they were just getting started and by December would be great.  One of the girls had been concerned she would just be bored in orchestra all year but by the end of that she was GLOWING.  I’ll have to keep challenging those three this year as I think they can really do well.  The other kids need a bit more guidance, and a couple of them were being very negative (i.e. “I’m bored!  I’m tired!”) today and I did end up giving a bit of a lecture on attitude and practice that I hope will make some impression.

Tomorrow is another day 🙂