So I went to my very first pep rally today. My school never had them, which is guess is odd? Maybe they did and I never bothered with them. Well this one was the last period of the day and the whole day my co-op was dreading it. So last period we went into the gym and it started with an extended cheer thing from the cheerleaders. It kind of reminded me of Sparkle Motion from Donnie Darko. and then they went on to introduce a whole bunch of the sports teams. and then they played a giant game of musical chairs!

heck yea!

they had about 30 people playing, including some teachers. with everyone cheering them on. It was really awesome. After that they introduced the rest of the sports teams. and then they had a pie eating contest!

heck yea!

is this how pep rallies are supposed to go?
the best part was at the end. after the pies the guy who was MCing just yells "and now it's time to dance!"
someone turned on michael jackson's "thriller" and half the school came onto the floor to dance

a few students started doing the thriller dance. and then everyone caught on. it was so odd.
I'm not talking about just that weird zombie move. I'm talking about the entire dance from the music video. It's like the entire school already knew the dance. kind of like a bad musical

it actually looked a lot like this

a student of mine from student teaching just tried adding me on facebook. i honestly felt bad rejecting them.

so i was just reading through my old blog and i came across this word art stuff I kind of got into way back when. this stuff isn't supposed to make any sense. it's just supposed to be enjoyable to look at and listen to. don't try to make any sense with the connotations, there aren't supposed to be any. here are two from freshman year

the filing fresh octopus flies scales the moon in a single lept bound with a leg gone on vacation with ms gunglefur. WATCH OUT for the low down thoughts of the popular populous. they might get you. with their pompadors...

Logs of honey, dew, and honeydew roll down the hill with a force previously unheard of by our verouse ears. For the phrase would petrify our dietary think tank. The logs tinker along the lowlands to the lute of Lawrence XTaylorX. They crush sweetened logging nests with their unheard of inebriated force. But lowlands survive with ease in case of other confectioner surprises. In case of logging incident break glass for a break from other o no uh-oh watch out for shingles from SPAIN! N X X X every story ends in stone i really enjoy reading those. maybe i should get back into that

Today was my first day being observed by my supervising teacher. He observed the middle school band rehearsal and an 8th grade clarinet lesson. The band rehearsal went really well. There were of course some improvements that could be made but I was really happy with how it went. But the lesson was a disaster. These girls would not stop talking and couldn't play quarter notes in time...

On an upside, I taught a 7th grade clarinet lesson later today and the kids were awesome. The lesson was really fun and the kids knew all their music. But the best part was when I was pointing to a spot in the music and on of the students goes

"Mr. Swider? Your fingers look like sausages."

She didn't mean it in a mean way. She was just making a valid observation.

Student is pretty uneventful lately. I've had a few more stories but none that I would really be able to post on here. I'm really not doing much while teaching. Below is a breakdown of today. Each period is 45 minutes give or take

1st: Did nothing
2nd: Took attendance for study hall and did nothing
3rd: Observed the theory class
4th: Taught half of band and observed the rest
5th: Ate lunch and read
6th: read some more
7th: Observed music tech
8th: Fiddled around with what was taught in tech (importing midi samples of songs and assigning tracks)
9th: Taught a euphonium lesson

I did a total of 1 hour of work today. Now everyday isn't like this. But they're all pretty laid back. Here's the thing tho. Every time there seems to be nothing to do I ask my teacher if he needs me to do anything and he almost always says no. I'm afraid that at the end of the block my co-op and supervisor will say something like "You did nothing all semester!" I'm trying to do more work but there's none to do!

I mentioned before a church in Iceland called Hallgrímskirkja. I just wanted to post some pictures so you guys could get an idea of what this thing is




seriously, so beautiful

I'm officially the cool teacher. My co-op started teaching a 7th grade sax lesson and about 15 minutes into it he says

"alright, now mr. swider is going to take over"
then the student says
"for the rest of the period?! heck yea!"

o man. it was awesome.

then during the last period the greatest thing ever happened. I was teaching 2 beginner trombones and a student who I will refer to as Student G is really excited about playing the trombone. during the lesson Student G makes a rather sour sound on the horn and says

"o man, I'm the trombone master. Gotta catch 'em all! trombone!"

he said this singing to the pokemon theme music.

i laughed super hard.

my goal is to have at least one short story everyday of teaching. today i have a few


-an 8th grade student told me her boyfriend just got out of prison
-another student told me they were good at killing mastodons
-i gave a student an oboe at the beginning of band and they came back a few minutes later saying that they couldn't oboe wouldn't fit together. i took a look at it and for the life of me i couldn't figure out why the upper and lower joints wouldn't go together. So I put it down and come back to it a few minutes later and realize the cap was still on the upper joint. yup, didn't tell my co-op about that one.

in the past week or so I have

-canned 20 quarts of peaches
-canned 8 half-pints of apple butter
-canned 16 half-pints of pear butter
-made a sheet of peach leather
-made of a sheet of blueberry leather

tonight I started preparing to make raspberry-peach freezer jam.

canning is awesome




For dinner tonight I threw together a bunch of stuff like normal except this time it came out amazing. when my parents were up last week they left me a pound of bacon. so i started with a few strips of bacon. took them out and cooked up half of an onion and a bunch of garlic. took that out. chopped up about 4 large potatoes, threw them in the pan with some olive oil and threw on salt, pepper, and rep pepper flakes. let that cook until all brown and such. while that was going I cooked some corn. when the potatoes were done I put everything back in the pan with the potatoes and crumbled the bacon and then added a large handful of mozzarella and some cheddar and left it to melt.

It was ridiculously good

Today I actually taught and I really enjoyed teaching the middle schoolers

-today a student was complaining because her mother has gone to 4 concerts in the past month including papa roach and puddle of mudd
-the high school band started working on a blues brothers medley

Highlights from day 2 of teaching

-My co-op offered a $5 bounty to the students for every non-band kid they get to join band
-I found WWJD? graffitti in several places around school
-heard the pledge of allegiance for the first time in years
- I drew lightning bolts from like an hour in my notebook
-2 students went to europe for part of the summer on a band trip and in the process of telling their summer story they drew two stick figure men in a 69 on the board

I'm writing this down now so I don't forget it. My URL dásamlegur which means "wonderful" in Icelandic. I was going to go with Hallgrímskirkja which is the name of this super beautiful church in Reykjavík but I thought that was a bit much.

Today I started student teaching at Candor, here's a few highlights.

-a 7th grader spelled "percussion" as "procreation"

that's all really. We had one class today, Junior High Band, and that's where the spelling mishap occurred. But it was a fun first day.