Student Teaching - review as of now

Hello again all!

Wow, what a fun last few days!  I am very tired but am very fulfilled also.

Student teaching has been really fun!  I am on my planning period right now on my 6th day.  Last week was mostly a follow week, but I also started working on my piece in the Symphonic Band (the more select group).  It is a march called "The Florentiner" and is has been a lot of fun to work with them.  The students are responding well to what I have to say on it and my "bag of trick," while still growing, has proven efficient.

Yesterday our jazz bands partook in a jazz festival that our school also hosted.  The students all helped host the visiting bands and I was in charge of orchestrating the moving of the chairs and stands for the various bands.  It ran very smoothly and logistics were cited as being a strong point of the festival in the online paper for Grand Island, The Independent

Here is the link :-)
(http://www.theindependent.com/news/local/jazzfest-a-learning-experience/article_7414fb5c-5154-11e1-bab8-001871e3ce6c.html)

Next Tuesday I'll start my work with Jazz II and focus on solos and developing a more "quintessential" jazz sound.  I am looking forward to that a lot.

My selection for the Concert band is a lyrical piece called "The Willows of Winter" and the students really like it.  I conducted it with them yesterday (I taught more than my cooperating teacher) and they sounded really good.  There are a lot of good things to work on still, but overall the students are responding to what I have to say which is really cool because that was my biggest fear.

I know that I have been hard to get a hold of lately but I assure everyone reading that I will make time to catch up with everyone.  I am running on fumes in terms of sleep (2 duty nights in 3 days) and really need to catch up on that.

Fortunately, our days are shorter this week and Thursday there is an inservice which will involve analyzing data that was collected today and will be collected tomorrow over general comprehension of musical terms, and Friday there is no school.

Thanks for putting up with me and my busy schedule.  It will pay off, I just know it!

Love to all
Ben