Guess who figured out the Juneau healthcare system this week?!

If only tea could fix all my problems.

Well, you may have guessed by the title that I did not, in fact, get better by Friday last week! My voice remained lost until Thursday, and it is still working its way to sounding back to normal. The thing that has really been bothering me, though, is my sore throat! It has not gone away! The pain lessened for a couple days and then just came back with a vengeance. I woke up Friday morning, feeling a giant lump in the back of my throat every time I swallowed and was convinced I had strep. So I decided that it was time to face the music by leaving the music at school halfway through the day to visit the lovely UAS health clinic. And I’m not being sarcastic here- it was actually lovely! The doctor was nice and helpful, and all the services were free (well, I guess if you don’t factor in the thousands of dollars I’m paying in tuition!). She apologized profusely for having to stick that unpleasant swab all the way in the back of my mouth, and I joked about how she must see a lot of disturbing-looking faces from these strep test experiences. She gave me some free over-the-counter medicine and some awesome throat lozenges as we waited for the strep test results, which made the visit feel at least a little worth it after I learned that I did not, in fact, have strep. Part of me was relieved, but I was mostly bummed! I could have had antibiotics prescribed, then and there, that would magically take away my symptoms, but instead she reassured me that it’s all “a viral thing” and I just needed to keep drinking tea and sleeping. Awesome. So I made my way back to school, taking the bus for the second time ever. I only got on two wrong buses before finding the correct bus stop. How did I survive in Chicago again?! After my unfortunate bus adventure, I waltzed into the music room just in time to give a presentation on a new music program Lorrie got a grant to use with the JAMM kids, called SmartMusic. Lorrie had been telling us about this awesome new program since the beginning of the program, and I finally got to see it in action a couple weeks ago when she showed it to some of her JAMM orchestra classes. SmartMusic makes practicing and assessment significantly more easy and fun, as it has thousands of pieces and several methods books available for students to pull up and play along to. Students can record themselves and hear an accompaniment part to everything, including the often-dull methods books exercises. Teachers can assign certain exercises to students, pull up submitted quizzes, and actually listen to the recording students did and see what mistakes were made. It’s fantastic, and I’m excited to use it as a tool to assess students’ playing levels! So Lorrie had told us early on in the program as well that two of our awesome GV third grade teachers are teaching an Ed. Tech course as part of the JAMM afterschool program on Mondays and Wednesdays. Neither of them are familiar with SmartMusic, but they will be showing the kids how to use it and helping them record themselves. So I took one of the four school-provided iPads we will be using this year home with me on Thursday night to become familiar with the program and make a teacher and student account in order to demonstrate to the third grade teachers how taking and submitting a quiz works, showing them what it looks like on both the teacher and student end. I was glad that my doctor appointment went so quickly so I was able to be back in time for the meeting, and Lorrie was so appreciative of me learning how to do it and showing the other teachers. She has deemed me the “tech guru” of the quartet, which I think is totally hilarious because I would have never thought of myself like that! But I guess I have developed certain basic (and I mean, basic!) skills that can be useful, and it feels super great to be able to contribute those to help the program. So while my throat still isn’t feeling better, all the good things that happened this week, like that meeting, make me feel better.

And it really was a good week! The kids were adorable, especially because I started to look at them more as humans again instead of walking lice/bacteria factories. And teaching went super well, which was so encouraging! Sophia and I team-taught some ukulele classes (did I know how to play ukulele before this year? NOPE!) that went great, and we felt so victorious after the last class of the week that we couldn’t help but cheer and high-five each other. It was a really nice moment! And a significant reason for why I came to the first part of school on Friday was because I was actually being officially observed for the second grade cello class I taught! The four of us have been assigned a wonderful man who has decades of experience teaching and a lot of experience mentoring new teachers who will come to our schools and observe us a couple times a month. So I felt very determined to push through and make sure I was there for that cello class so I didn’t miss that opportunity! And the class went great! He had some great feedback afterward, and I’m excited to learn a lot from him. I tell you, that’s a total growth mindset thought that is newly-developed in me. The “old me” would have been terrified of feedback, not wanting to admit any of my faults or areas that need growth, but now I am trying to really welcome those critiques because I know they will help me be a better teacher! It also helped me be receptive to his critical feedback when the first thing he said once all the kids left the room was, “That was so great. You have such talent as a teacher”. Yeah, that’s nice!!! So it was a great week full of good learning experiences and more cute encounters with kids. I’ve decided to keep record of some of the cutest anecdotes and one-liners I’ve been hearing, so here are a few.

First of all, to accompany my horrific-sounding voice at the beginning of last week, I also woke up with a completely bloodshot left eye that remained an eerie shade of red for two days. Beautiful. So I stuck to wearing glasses, partly to help my eye heal from whatever that was and prevent irritation, but also to try to hide that as much as possible so I didn’t scare the kids. So I go to help a little kindergartner during violin class for a few seconds on Monday, and she immediately asks me if I am new. And I say, “No, I’m not. I’m Miss Ruth!” And then she asks, “Then why are you wearing glasses and earrings?” I just found that so amusing, not necessarily because it’s super funny, but it reminded me of the developmental level at which five year-olds are. Their recognition of people is probably based on main characteristics like jewelry, hair color, basic face structure, etc., and wearing glasses and long, dangly earrings just threw this girl for a loop! It’s so crazy that I looked like a different person to her just because of those things. During those two glasses-wearing days, I also had a second grader ask me if I can see without them. What was funny about that was he was asking me loudly in the middle of class! And I just said, “No, I can’t!” and moved on! And the last funny one of the week was when I was walking from one violin row to another in the first grade class, and as I passed a young boy, he asked, “What’s in your nose?!”. I was not expecting that and was so surprised that I forgot how to answer that one and eventually just said, “It’s a nose stud,” and watched his face remain just as confused as it was when he originally asked his question. So I just walked away. HA!

JAMM is officially starting this week, and I wanted to give a brief overview of what this El Sistema-inspired program looks like, now that I have a better picture of it. Something I love is that Lorrie strives to form as many connections between the school/its teachers and the program as possible. So having teachers like the two third grade tech. teachers helping out is amazing, and that’s not a rare occurrence with JAMM. So, we have over 130 Glacier Valley kids signed up for JAMM, and these students will stay after school for four hours a week (two hours each on Monday and Wednesday) to receive group and private instruction in their instruments for an hour and take some sort of exploratory class during the second hour. The exploratory classes throughout the year will include ed. tech, ukulele, viola, chamber music, and improv. So kids are gaining experience with SmartMusic while learning more about their instruments and other ones during those after-school hours. And then Friday during school is JAMM day, so all the kids signed up for JAMM will come into class by grade level and have orchestra for 45 minutes. We have been breaking into different classrooms by instrument in order to catch the new players up and also because it’s quite hard to fit all the students into the music room! But eventually, all the students of that grade level will be together for orchestra, so they will gain ensemble experience as well. It is a great system, and I am excited to see how it all goes, starting tomorrow! And as far as my involvement with JAMM, I will be teaching bass group classes (have I played bass before...today? NOPE. Have I been googling a LOT about bass technique this weekend? YES.) and cello group classes and will possibly be helping with the ed. tech classes, as I am now familiar with SmartMusic, and might also be coaching chamber groups. These are great ways for me to help out, but I am also learning so many different instruments and skills in the process, which makes me doubly excited!

And one more development I wanted to share, now that it is official: I will also be learning how to teach high school Spanish this year! The low-down is this: there are four of us who all need student teaching experience in a music classroom but not enough hours to go around between the two music teachers who are our host teachers, Lorrie (who is at Glacier Valley Elementary) and Rebecca (who is at Riverbend Elementary). So Lorrie talked with our UAS advisor about it, and he told us that if we are interested, we can put some of those hours into a classroom of another subject and take a test once we are certified teachers to be “highly qualified” to teach that subject. And for those of you who know about my Peruvian adventures, I love Spanish, and I love Hispanic culture! And I greatly enjoyed teaching in Spanish, so why not teach Spanish too?! It gets me very excited. And it works out because we also learned that we need to have some experience at the secondary level (middle and high school), since we are being certified to teach music, K-12. So I have organized a schedule where I am teaching orchestra at Thunder Mountain High School (TMHS) three days a week and following the orchestra teacher, Tyree, into his Spanish classroom (oh looky there- someone who already teaches orchestra and Spanish!!), where I will be observing and eventually teaching his two Spanish I classes. So I actually got up in front of the 40-person TMHS orchestra last week, awful voice and all, and conducted 10 minutes of the rehearsal and then sat in the back of Tyree’s Spanish class right after to get a feel for it. And the rest of the week I spent at Glacier Valley! So I will be at TMHS and Glacier Valley every day, which will probably end up being very stressful as I travel around and teach at extremely different levels, but at the same time...I am learning sooooo much! I get to work on my conducting skills (as much as I hated learning conducting, I know I need to develop that skill!), while learning to work with high schoolers, teach a core subject, use music technology, and teach instruments I’m eager to learn, like violin, ukulele, xylophone, recorder, and bass! Wow, that’s actually a lot when I write it all out there. But when I don’t think about it too hard, I still feel really good about my schedule. And when I think about how knowledgeable I’ll be by the end of this year, I feel even better! So it’s all good! I might also throw some ESL classes at GV next semester into the mix so I’m getting a language-learning experience from the opposite end. How cool is that?!

Anyways, that ended up being way longer than I expected! I always sit down and think, “Okay, it’s already late, and I need to start off this week well and go to bed early. So I’ll just write a short post and try to sound as peppy as possible so nobody feels worried about me”. And then I just EXPLODE with actual, genuine peppiness over all that I’m doing here, which actually makes me sleep a lot better anyways. WIN-WIN! Or as my beloved twinny and I would say, “TWIN WIN”.

When every kid becomes a potential threat

Little violins sound a lot better with clogged ears.

This week, I had the privilege of being introduced to the next part of a teacher’s wonderful journey of changing and shaping lives: getting horribly sick from your students. It all happened so quickly, too. There I was, chugging along through Monday and Tuesday, helping out with paper violin nights at Riverbend Elementary and having a blast. And then the moment I got home on Tuesday night, I realized that I really didn’t feel well. Uh oh. All defenses were down. By the time 9pm hit, I felt drowsier and more out-of-it than usual (I mean, I usually feel pretty dead at that point these days!) and drifted off to sleep...only to wake up at the beloved hour of 2am, feeling very hot, achey, and disoriented. The two-day fever of 101 began. Buh buh BUHHHHHH!

So I unfortunately missed the bulk of the week and was able to muster up the strength to return to class on Friday, even though I was feeling only 60% better (at least my fever was gone and I wasn’t as much of a walking Petri dish of bacteria?!). It’s really funny that I have a terrible immune system. I get sick with a fever usually about 4 times a year, with a cold or two sprinkled around those, just to even it out. So you would think that I would be used to being sick and would actually accept that I need to rest and sleep in order to get myself better quickly. But I’m awful at that. It comes from one of my main shining and dooming characteristics: not being able to relax. Being bedridden for even a day sounds like my worst nightmare. I get super lonely and bored, and by the time the sun goes down, I’ve convinced myself that life is terrible, and it will always be this way (my flair for the dramatic really doesn’t change, no matter my physical or mental state). It’s the combination of being alone, feeling helpless, not feeling productive, and not feeling physically well that really puts me in this hopeless state. So even though I still had a booming headache and a very sore throat, I went into school on Friday so I could feel better about not being able to help out the past couple days and to just gain a peace of mind that order had been restored and I would, in fact, be back to normal life soon. I’m not sure how much help I actually was on Friday, though; I was pretty much a zombie! I also learned once I got to school that a lice outbreak had ensued in my absence, and I was warned to not come into contact with kids- especially with their heads. And then I had two kids come and hug me, putting their precious heads on my shoulder, right where my hair lays. Perfect! I was very paranoid after that and refused to touch anyone. There was no way I was getting lice on top of all that!! So I may not have been as interactive and friendly as usual. Ha!

The three days of school I attended this week were good, though. I am still feeling overwhelmed when I sit in on the lesson planning sessions with Lorrie and my quartet mates, but I think a lot of that is just negative self-talk and fear getting the best of me. We had decided this week to take a step back in the first grade violin classes and review the basics because we noticed that the students were struggling with simple things such as posture and the string names. So it was great to be part of that discussion where we took a step back and thought critically about what needed to be readdressed. And we mixed it up by having the class split into pairs and work together to play a short song they had been working on (one played the left hand and the other used the bow!). That was a huge success! In addition to those group planning sessions, I have been able to apply things that I have learned in my online UAS education classes, including learning about the psychology of learning, and that has been a huge help when I approach lesson planning. I’ve learned that kindergarteners to second graders can only hold their attention on direct instruction for 5 to 8 minutes. Guess how many minutes adults can pay attention to direct instruction? 15-18 minutes. That makes sense to me the more I imagine my college classes or church and remember how much squirmier everyone got after 20 minutes, but I probably would have guessed longer without knowing the facts. I also learned that we all have peaks in our ability to learn and process every day based on our levels of energy, and those only last for about 90-110 minutes at a time (these peaks and valleys are called ultradian rhythms). So it’s huge to know when each of our students’ peak times of energy are, while also keeping in mind the amount of time they are able to focus on one thing. It’s helpful for me to know that I can only last about 90 minutes as well! It also gives me a new excuse to use in the future: “Oh, my silly ultradian rhythms. They’re just low right now.” BOOM.

Another motivation for going to school on Friday was because I knew that I would not be able to go to the awesome dinner/game night Sue had invited me to if I didn’t go to school (yes, I make myself go by that school rule: “You can’t do after-school activities unless you go to class!”). And by the end of the teaching day, I definitely felt tired but pumped and ready to enjoy myself (and have social interactions again!). She invited the quartet and Lorrie as well, and any friends or significant others who wanted to join! We had a blast, and the food was delicious. It was so wonderful to just walk into her house and sit down at the table for food like old times. My throat started to really agitate me, though, and after four cups of tea, it still burned to swallow. I was grateful the night ended early and enjoyed getting 11 hours of sleep Friday night!

Shopping at Fred Meyer night with my church friend, Holly!

Saturday was a productive one, which we all know I love! I got a lot of homework done and cleaned (one of my favorite hobbies), did laundry, and watched some Sherlock with Rob (Koren and Rob are my super awesome landlords) as I “read” my textbook (which I later discovered was the wrong reading. We can obviously tell how carefully I was paying attention!). And Saturday night had two big events I had been looking forward to all week, and I wasn’t sure if I was going to be able to be well enough to go to them until Saturday morning: it was Inside Out and FRED MEYER NIGHT. UAS was showing “Inside Out”, a fantastic Pixar movie I still hadn’t seen, accompanied by a $5 dinner and the possibility of prizes. So I decided I was up for the adventure and learned how to take the bus to campus (which just entailed finding the bus stop) and saw the movie. And guess what?? I won a prize, too! I won a portable UAS iPhone charger!!! Woo hoo! And then I hung around campus with some church friends until Fred Meyer opened at midnight for an annual event called College Night for all UAS students. Students lined up outside Fred Meyer’s doors at 11:15 (was I one of them? Heck to the yes!), hoping to be one of the first 100 there so they could receive a complimentary goodie bag (was I one of those blessed goodie bag receivers?! OH YEAH.), ready with their lists and coupons and selfie sticks (oh wait- that was just me…). And once the doors opened, we all excitedly ran through the store, shocked by the fantastic deals and the poor quality of the new “Greek Gyro” Lay’s chips and the corndogs that were being given out. But not only did I have a blast, I got some great deals! And there were some main things I really wanted to get, including a floor lamp (check!), groceries (definitely check!), and a toothbrush (not as exciting, but check!). I also found a beautiful sweater and some nice candles, so that was an added bonus! It was a fantastic, glorious night. Except that because I was out until 2:30am and had been talking over the loud DJ music in the store, I lost my voice.

I lost my voice in Fred Meyer and cannot find it. And now I sound like a husky man (not the attractive kind). When I laugh, it sounds like an odd bird call. And when I sing, nothing comes out. So teaching tomorrow should be interesting for me and entertaining for the students! Especially because Sophia and I might be leading the high school orchestra rehearsal tomorrow morning. But the beautiful thing about blogs, besides being able to write whatever I want and make my life sound as cool as possible, is you can’t hear my husky man voice. Hopefully, you are hearing something more pleasant- perhaps a screeching violin or someone belching the alphabet (what can I say? Elementary school students definitely find that enjoyable!). Or maybe that’s just what I hear because that’s my life right now. :)

So I am eager to get back to school this week and am hoping that by Friday, I will feel completely healed! I also really don’t want to figure out the whole healthcare system anytime soon, so that’s another incentive to keep chugging tea and sleeping. And my main goal of the week: DON’T GET LICE.

GROWTH MINDSET

One of those weeks…

I’ll be honest- this past week at school was ROUGH! And you’d better believe I was happy it only lasted four days.

There’s something that changes in the air when you start off the week on a Tuesday instead of a Monday. Everything seems lighter and more hopeful. Until you get to school and discover that the kids are all squirmier than usual and are ready for the weekend already. There’s just something about those three-day weekends. But I think a big part of why last week was so hard was because I stepped up to the bat and taught a few of my very first classes. And two of them were violin classes. For first graders. Lord help us all!

Yes, as part of the progression of the amount of our involvement in the classroom, we should be taking on 25% of the teaching load at this point. I think that because all of us rotated around to various schools in order to get a better sense of the educational environment in Juneau and to figure out our schedules, I did not feel quite at home at Glacier Valley yet and wasn’t feeling super ready to take on the task of leading the kids last week. But I am really proud of myself for still doing it!

I taught my first grade class the violin on Tuesday and Friday mornings last week. Tuesday was rather terrifying, and Friday just felt a little chaotic (both internally and externally!). I’ll share a little secret with you: I played the violin for the first time on Tuesday, right before class! So needless to say, I’m not super refined in my playing technique. But the lesson plan was simple enough: we were supposed to review their bow holds and teach them the fingerings to their first song, which was a familiar one. I went through the plan in my head multiple times before the actual day, as we had all met as a group on Monday to discuss our plans for the week and divide up the classes. But then I realized something: my ability to remember things (really anything- names, including mine, maybe lesson plans…hypothetically...) pretty much goes out the window when I’m in front of a group of 20 little kids. So I found myself looking at my “cheat sheet” I had printed out way too often on Tuesday, and it just did not flow. I didn’t feel confident or comfortable, and I think the kids felt confused about what they were supposed to be doing or how they were supposed to be feeling about that. Needless to say, I was very relieved the moment class ended in all its chaos, and I also felt super discouraged. Granted, that was my first classroom teaching experience of a subject that is still brand new to me, but I just thought it would have gone way smoother! And I have realized since then that I really love and thrive with small group interactions- one-on-one or one-on-five, maybe. But teaching a large class is completely foreign territory, and it scares me so much! So I went home on Tuesday feeling all those fun things and asking myself some thrilling, delightful questions: What am I doing?! Can I actually do this? Is it time to go to bed yet and end this day?

But you know what...I just got up on Wednesday and decided to keep going. So for one of our classes that we went through early on in the program, we were assigned to read a book about this idea of a “growth mindset”, as opposed to a fixed one. As I was reading it, the gist I got from it was that I totally have a fixed mindset in the areas of learning and education, and that was really bad. And then the author drove that point home numerous times. And then added more stories about why that was so bad. Okay, I get it- I have problems! But now that I know how to recognize a fixed mindset, I have actually seen myself change a lot! The guilting, dramatic stories actually worked! A fixed mindset learner believes that his or her intelligence is completely defined by how quickly and naturally they understand things. These people feel that they need to prove their level of intelligence often, and if they have to try hard to do it, it must mean they are not smart after all. They tend to avoid new, scary things (hmm what’s super scary that I did last week…?) because they are afraid they will make mistakes and therefore be “average” or won’t hit the mark. Does this ring any bells for anyone else, or is it just me?! So jumping into a totally new subject this year and putting myself in front of large groups of kids as I lead them through lesson plans I had never known how to make before is very new to me, and sometimes that is really hard for me to accept. I don’t like taking risks and feeling “not good” at something, honestly! I don’t like having to get back up after I feel that I have failed (which is definitely how I felt on Tuesday), but I literally coached myself on the days leading up to Friday that I could DO this and that I just needed to have the growth mindset and allow myself to learn something new, even though I can’t do that very gracefully! And while the class on Friday still didn’t go entirely smoothly, I think that I jumped significant levels (as Lorrie would say!) between Tuesday and then. My goal as I walked into that violin class with those same students was to at least work on one thing that didn’t go well on Tuesday and go from there. And my other goal every time I interact with students is to show them deep care, love, and acceptance. Check!

Something that encouraged me in between those two classes was the xylophone class I taught to fifth graders in the middle of the week! That was another subject that was foreign to me, and the class was even larger, but I went into it trying to have as open a mind as possible and decided to leave the “cheat sheet” that I had so desperately clung to on Tuesday behind. :) And you know what? It went pretty well! There were some curve balls thrown at me- we had forgotten that they were a lesson behind, so instead of doing the activity we had planned together, I needed to introduce the technique of playing the xylophone and do a different game with them- but that’s the life of a teacher, as I am discovering. The activity we ended up doing involved choosing a “conductor” from the class to lead us on our xylophones. And no matter how anything else went in that class and even though my face was red and it felt like I was experiencing menopausal hot flashes, I was proud of myself for one thing: one of the students who tends to be disengaged during class and even attempts to get others off task actually paid attention and ENJOYED HIMSELF!! Victory! I had placed myself directly next to him in the circle we had formed, and as I explained the game we were going to do to the class, he turned to me and asked if he could be one of those chosen conductors. And I simply said, “If you are being a leader, are participating, and are sitting up straight, yes!”. And he immediately sat straight up and smiled, hope filling in his eyes. I kept my eye on him as we went about learning how to play the xylophone, and he was such a model student. He was my first one chosen, and as he led the class with his movements in the center of the circle, I saw his whole face change into something I had never seen before: a genuine smile. He seriously looked like a different child! And it was so amazing to watch. He loved it, and all of us teachers were gawking about it afterward. It still warms my heart; that’s what I’m here to do! So that was a GREAT pick-me-up and definitely encouraged me to stick with it and keep going with that lovely growth mindset I am learning to exercise.

Doing a team-building activity during JAMM!

So it was a difficult first week of teaching, and it gave me plenty of new things to learn, but the biggest thing I learned was how gracious I need to be with myself! It was my first week doing that, and the kids really were squirmy worms in that first grade class. So, yay for learning and growing! But man, was I glad when the weekend came! And I started it off by having a giant workday on Saturday and got all my homework done for the week! My online classes have finally started up, and one of them meets regularly for two hours every Thursday. We mostly talked about the syllabus, but our teacher also asked us how things have been going. It was actually nice to hear that I wasn’t the only one struggling last week. As one classmate put it, he was in survival mode- as in, “dropped in the middle of the Alaskan wilderness when it’s 40 degrees below, survival mode,” or something to that effect! HAHA. Some people (including him) are super funny in my class, and they type hilarious commentary in the class chat box as the teacher is talking! But also, after a long week of doing something new and hard for me, it was actually comforting to begin something very familiar to me and something I knew I was good at- schoolwork! So my Saturday workday was actually enjoyable...I’m a weirdo. One of my assignments was to actually write out my teaching philosophy, which was a good way to wrap up the week and reflect on why I am actually putting myself through this challenging year!

Once I got my work done, I rewarded myself with a little socializing time and went to my first church

MEET SAPPHIRE.

college-aged Bible study. It was great!! I met some nice, new people and had a delicious home-cooked meal. I then played Settlers of Catan with a few of them and didn’t hopelessly lose- yay! The young married couple who had us over for the game after the study also has a pet turtle that roams around the apartment. AHH!!! So I had a great time with Sapphire, the turtle! And Sunday was another gorgeous, heavenly day of hiking. A friend and I hiked 7 miles to and from Windfall Lake, which was just amazing. It got a little scary for me at times, walking on slick wooden boardwalks and bridges, but I really enjoyed it! We got to the dock on the lake just as the sun was at its highest, and I laid under its warmth for a solid half hour. It was incredibly peaceful! I have really cherished these weekends!!!

So another week begins. I will probably be picking up on where I left off with those classes, and I am prepared to learn and grow a lot more this week! JAMM afterschool programs are on Monday and Wednesday at Glacier Valley, so I will start the week with that. :) I’ve also learned that schooldays can easily become 12-hour ones when you have activities after school (which happened when JAMM and “band night” started on Wednesday last week!), so I am pretty much preparing myself for anything! If someone had told me I would be going to bed at 9:30 and waking up at 5:30 most days, I wouldn’t quite know if they were still talking about me or not. It’s been an adjustment, but...GROWTH MINDSET! I can DO this! Okay, I’m done with the encouraging self-talk for today. Happy Monday to all, and don’t forget to give yourself some grace today. :)

Beauty in the Busyness

Heaven on Earth is a thing.

We took a nice walk to a different side of Mendenhall Glacier this week.

So, you should all know something about me: I suffer from a rare, inescapable disease called Sunday night-itis. Whenever Sunday evening rolls around, a deep sense of mourning falls over me, as the realization that my precious weekend has vanished. My impending case of the Mondays threatens to take hold. It's a rough one that you don't want to be around for.
So you know what the best thing about three-day weekends is?! I can write this blog post without trying to muster up all my positive, fuzzy feelings because I STILL HAVE ONE DAY LEFT!!! Woo hoo!! Can you tell how intense this past week was yet?! Let me walk you through this amazing, busy week.

The afterschool festivities of the week began with the quartet being coached by a local pianist who has a lot of experience with chamber music. It was so great to sit down and play some of our Beethoven quartet for her and receive her input! And she has graciously agreed to give us coachings whenever we need them, which will be a great resource to have. The coaching could not have come at a better time because we had a gig at the Juneau Arts & Culture Center Tuesday night, after a long day of school. But it was an amazing opportunity: we were the musical entertainment for a reception held in honor of the Chair for the National Endowment for the Arts, Jane Chu. I can barely say that sentence out loud in one breath. We talked with her briefly as we were arranging ourselves for a picture, and her warm words were delivered with an equally warm Southern accent that reminded me of extreme heat and delicious pies. Don't ask me why. We were also able to meet some other Juneau musicians, which was just a taste of what would happen the rest of the week!

Wednesday night was paper violin night, which was absolutely precious!!! After giving a mini performance for the new JAMM kids and their parents with some of the veteran JAMM fifth graders, the quartet was tasked with walking around and helping the families as they made paper violins with their children. This night was only for students who are participating in JAMM and will be “playing” a paper violin (which they have to do before they can play a real one). I ended up helping an adorable little girl whose mom had two other little ones (one of whom was an infant) with her and had her hands too full to help her make her violin!! I cut and constructed the violin, and the girl eagerly handed me the pieces of tape that held it all together. We then got to the other station that had brown glue/paint that is used to cover the cardboard violin with paper strips and give it a nice brown color. Would this brown paint be a nice permanent addition to any of my clothing? I think not. So, I tell the girl which table we need to go to, and she immediately runs up to the bowl of the stuff and picks it up. I watch this concoction sway back and forth in her hands as she smiles at me like she has a giant bowl of apple juice. I immediately and dramatically lunge for it, thankfully recovering it before she is able to dump it all over the ground. Or, more importantly, on me. I’d say from then on, the night went pretty smoothly. I walked the baby and other sister around the room as the mom helped her daughter put together the final touches of her instrument and only had to stop the middle daughter from jumping inside her baby sister's stroller twice. Success!!! I honestly loved it, though. Interacting with kids and seeing these little ones make something they could call their own brought me such joy!! And to think that this is just the beginning of their musical journey really exhilarates me.

Thursday was another fun night full of kids because we had open house at Glacier Valley! When I wasn't talking with the students and their parents, I was manning the instrument basket, a brilliant idea Lorrie uses to provide entertainment for the kids and get them interested in music as their parents and older siblings talk with the music teacher. It was fun to sit on the floor with the kids as they explored the different world instruments...until they found all the really loud ones and continued to bang on them.

After the open house, Lorrie invited us over to her place to spend time with three of her El Sistema teacher friends who traveled from a nucleo in New York to observe Lorrie’s work at Glacier Valley all week. We had a great time, eating pizza and drinking wine (even if it did spill all over the place the moment it was placed on the table), sharing stories about our students and swapping ideas about various teaching techniques. It was great to hear about how El Sistema looks in a different part of the country, and the girls were also so fun to hang out with!

50 KINDERS.

Friday was another long day full of cute kids and a lot of socializing. During the school week, we visited a few other schools in the area, including a Floyd Dryden Middle School and Thunder Mountain High School, but we spent the entire day on Friday at Glacier Valley because it was the first day of orchestra! So all the kids who signed up for JAMM came together with their grade level and had orchestra class. I spent that time taking students who were second graders and older out of the room to audition for cello with the other JAMM cello teacher, Meghan. We had over 25 students audition for cello, even though we currently have just 6 extra cellos for them to use! We are hoping to order a few more, but it was hard to choose who would get to start learning a new instrument they’re really excited about and who wouldn’t.
But my day was made by a little interaction I had during the last class of the day...and which class was that? KINDERGARTEN. So remember that cute little boy who stood outside our classroom door, repeatedly asking what we were doing, last week? Well, we had another lovely conversation on Friday. The kindergarteners are done with school an hour earlier than their regular time at the moment because they are still adjusting to being in school, so later in the Fall, they will have that extra hour of class. But because of that, for now, the two kinder music classes are combined so that they all still have the class. This means that we have 50 kindergarteners in the room for 45 minutes. WHOA. So I spent the class period in the back, trying to help keep the kids engaged and sitting as still as their little bodies could handle. That was sort of hard when the cute girl next to me kept trying to hold my hand and then the aforementioned boy (who was in front of me) wouldn’t stop trying to invite me over to his house! He literally turned around in the middle of class, completely disregarding Lorrie teaching in the front, and asked loudly and excitedly, “Do you want to come to my house this weekend??”. I told him that I couldn’t and asked him to turn around and pointed to Lorrie, but he continued to ask me until he added his big selling point: “We can have a PILLOW FIGHT!”. It was SO ADORABLE. It took a lot of self control for me to end that conversation because it was so stinking cute and I wanted to keep it going to see what he would say. But he finally gave up on his efforts and proceeded to try to grab the hand of the girl next to him. She didn’t really seem to mind. She actually told me later in the class that she was going to his house this weekend. Ouch- he had already moved on! It was the highlight of my day.

To follow the trend, Friday evening had another event! The quartet had a meet-and-greet at a beautiful hotel downtown, and a lot of people from the Symphony and others stopped by to get to know us. Everyone was so welcoming and very interested in hearing how our experiences have been so far. It feels so wonderful to be so cared for! And to sort of be this spectacle that so many people are excited about. It makes me excited!!

One of the amazing sights during our whale-watching performance!

And then Saturday showed up and tied the busy week into a pretty bow and boarded a catamaran with us. The Juneau Symphony wildlife cruise, an event I had been waiting to play for for months, finally happened! And it was as glorious as I had hoped. The quartet dressed up and played music together for an hour as soon as the boat was out in a whale-watching area and the engines were turned off. It was so great to perform while being surrounded by gorgeous parts of nature and WHALES. I saw so many of them!!! It was hard to continue playing as people gasped in amazement as whales came up out of the water, lifting their fins and tails in the air. At one point, I couldn’t resist and looked over to see a giant tail gently slide back into the water, and I exclaimed, “Oh my gosh!!!” in amazement, which then caused my other quartet members to be confused and mess up for a second. My bad! But it was so beautiful and fun. I really enjoyed it!

Our walk past Herbert Glacier.

Today was another beautiful day that was supposed to be rainy and wasn’t at all. Those are the best days! After church, I joined the girls from New York and Heidi and another friend on a beautiful walk to a beach that overlooks Herbert Glacier. There was so much laughter (I honestly love spending time with people who find my jokes to actually be funny...so I’m going to miss those girls a lot! :P) and beauty and good conversation. I chased a giant flock of seagulls on the beach, running into the tide to do it (no regrets!) and saw plenty of dead fish and a (living) porcupine along the way. It was glorious!
And the best part? I still have a whole other day!!!!! We are going to spend the morning lesson planning because this week, each quartet member is going to teach a couple classes as part of our degree progress requirement, which is both exciting and terrifying. But I have so loved being in the classroom, so I think it will be great to take the plunge and test out my still-very-much-developing teaching skills.

So, here’s to a week that had a lot more sunlight than its expected rain, a week full of 12-hour days and a lot of repeating these phrases in pretty much this order each time: “My name is Ruth. I’m the cellist. I’m in the new music MAT program. Do you know who Lorrie Heagy is? Do you know what JAMM is? I’m from Chicago. Well, I grew up in Georgia. And I’ve lived in 5 states. Well, I guess 6 now. Umm...I’m the cellist.”