Dropouts

I guess I don't normally talk that much about my experiences at school. For the most part I really love my job. It isn't stressful and the kids are fun to work with. However, one thing that is always difficult about teaching strings is that sometimes kids drop out. Even if you are super fun and creative and you give out donuts every day some kids just decide to quit. It is hard to not take this personally.

Two kids have dropped out so far out of about 70, but both drops were a little hard on me. Since I am not a terribly mean teacher most of my kids drop because of "the workload" that is involved with strings. Kids have to practice for my class and that gets in the way of other things. Now is when I am particularly nervous about my kids leaving because things are getting a little harder. At the beginning of the year in the music they wrote the names of the notes on the note heads. They don't do that any more. Now they have to actually read music! That gets some kids a little frustrated. Especially the ones who don't practice.

The other thing that I am worried about is that I don't give out candy. One kid in particular is always telling me how the band gets candy and that they get metals when they learn certain stuff. I don't give out candy because we aren't supposed to at my schools in order to teach good health habits. Does that make me a lame teacher? Maybe. But they are starting to sound quite good and I am excited about what they are going to show their parents in their upcoming concerts.