I am not doing well today with patience.  I lost my temper (well, in a child friendly way) two to three times during my morning classes.  I was TRYING to do something nice and play games—we played “Violin hangman” and I even added a true element of randomness to it by having the students draw for a song and then roll the dice to determine which line of the song to play.  It makes a nice challenge, having to start in the middle of the song rather than the beginning.  (What happens is, they do this, then get to choose a letter for the hangman game.)  But I asked them to follow one rule:  when somebody is playing, everybody must listen.  Evidently this was too difficult.  GAH!  Group classes are starting to drive me insane.  I see so much I could address with each child on a one-to-one basis…but that’s just not possible in this setting.  And as I’ve mentioned before, my discipline skills are sorely lacking.

I did manage to run 5 miles at the gym—I am working on my speed, so I was doing intervals of running/walking, but running much faster than I ordinarily would.  I believe I ran out my frustrations and I am now ready to face my later students.  At least there are no more group classes this week.

And I feel that having patience is one of my strong suits and helps me to be a good violin teacher.  I guess everybody gets a bad day?  I’m feeling like I really failed my morning classes…but maybe I just need to be clearer about the rules OR be more relaxed about them to myself.  I am not being consistent enough with the students and I probably confuse them.

Some of the students did play really well!  So that’s good.  Maybe I’m not a total failure in the class setting .

Music stand (Tower Grove Park) in the snow