PLAYOFFS?!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7qZzqrhJ7Y0

The guy to the left is Jim Mora, Sr. and if you follow the link above, you will get the joke behind the title of this post. That guy was truly an original in the world of soundbytes! Yes it's true, the Mighty Badgers are for all intents and purposes on their way to the playoffs. We beat up all over our latest competition last Friday and there's basically no way to avoid going. So, I will at least be stuck with one more week than normal of hauling all kinds of equipment all over this God-forsaken state and unloading, reloading, herding, disciplining, playing, joking, marching, watching, etc.

On a happier note (say a C#); Kayla, Brenna, and I took off on Saturday afternoon for a trip to Sea World. This was some much needed family time after a week of not being home very often. In fact, I feel very guilty that I'm spending a ton of time with other people's children and not very much at all with my own. I realize it has to be this way during this time of the year, but I still don't like it. Yet another reason to dislike HS football season (notice I said HS football, did you see the UGA-LSU beatdown? Makes me nervous for next weekend, I digress...)

This week Kayla and Brenna leave on Thursday morning for a great trip that I am glad to say I don't have to be a part of: A Quilting Show weekend! I don't see how that could be any fun at all, but she (Kayla) really seems to enjoy it and appears to have a knack for all things sewing. If you have one of her creations, you know what I mean. Anyway, they are gone until Saturday evening, so that means that I get to be a bachelor once again for a few days. However, you shouldn't have to worry about me getting bored or slothful (not sure if that's a word, but I'm going to act like it is) because on Friday night I will be in charge of around 145 band students ranging in age from 11 to 18. Quite a task, but I think I can handle it. I'll let you know how it goes!

Let's Get Ready to RUMBLE!

So I couldn't decide what to call this one, so I finally chose to do them in an order that counteracts one another. We had another fight at school today. I say another because it's the third or fourth one we've had in about three weeks. I think it's just getting to the time of the year when kids are getting a little cabin fever and strike out at one another. Anyway, this one happened right as I was taking my assigned kids out the door from lunch. Fortunately, most of my kids had already left the lunchroom, but I still had to deal with a few stragglers who wanted to stay and watch the spectacle. That's really the part that I find unsettling about all the fighting that happens at our school: when we've had these fights break out, we haven't had any kids try to step in and break it up. Mostly we get kids that crowd around with their cell phones in hand trying to catch something to put onto YouTube. It's pretty frightening that they won't even stop to help their fellow peers or the teachers try to break them up. It's like they've spent too much time watching the talk shows and think that's how life is supposed to be. What a world we're living in. The more that I'm here, the more I think we're in the cycle of civilization where we're getting ready to fall flat on our faces so that God can humble our country. Speaking of God...


My classes were watching Finding Nemo today and answering questions about the music (it was the day after marching contest, I didn't feel like teaching too much, okay?). It's very interesting to me the things you notice as you watch a movie in the same section six times in a row. You tend to pick up on a few things you didn't really notice were there. I wanted to call this part: The Bible According to Nemo. For anyone who's seen the movie, you probably remember when Marlin and Dory (left) are at the trench that the moonfish just told Dory to swim through, not over. Marlin describes the trench as having "death written all over it," so he decides to swim over it. When Dory objects, but doesn't remember why, Marlin distracts her by telling her he saw something shiny and it just went over the trench and they should follow it to see what it was. If you remember the movie, what happens next is they get caught in a forest of jellyfish and Dory ends up hurt to the point that she is scarred from the encounter. Does anyone see where I'm going with this? How many times do we as Christians have God tell us something that is for our own good (either through His voice or someone He sends to us), but doesn't necessarily explain why it's for our own good, we get to what He's warned us about and either we get distracted by someone else or we let somebody talk us into thinking we know better than what God's told us and decide to go our own way because it looks easier? Then often times we end up paying a high price for our disobedience, when we would have been better for having listened to God in the first place. Just a thought. Go back and watch that part of the movie and see if you think I'm right. Like I said, when you watch a movie six times in a row, you pick up on some things you might not have seen before. And finally, the reason I watched a cartoon six times in a row...


Marching contest went okay. It was pretty hot when we went onto the field at 2:15 to play, and we had gotten to the school we were playing at about two hours earlier, so we had some time to not only get set for what was about to happen, but I think some of our kids had two hours to let nerves settle in on them really good so they didn't perform as well as they have in the past. Their nerves came through in their performance and we ended up with a III rating. For those not of the band world (or those who've forgotten because it's been a while since their kids were in band), a I rating is the best, a V rating means you should've stayed at home, so we were right around average. I think, however, if the judges had been at our game on Friday, we would have received either a I or a II for that performance, so it's all about how you perform when you need to, and we didn't do as well as we could have. Anyway, thanks to everyone who was concerned for my kids and how they did and thanks for all the prayers.

One final thing, homecoming went okay, as I said before, the halftime show went really well. The next two weeks get a little busy for the Jones family here, as I have a junior high football game, two high school games; one of which will showcase our entire band program from 6th-12th grades (all 150 students), Kayla has a quilting show she's going to in Houston with her mom, I'm leading music at our church for the first time on the first Sunday in November, and that evening Kayla and I along with some others from the church are starting the youth group back at the church that hasn't had anything of significance at the church in several years. We're going to try and take it in a Compass-type direction, so we're pretty excited to show the kids there are different styles of worship than just standing and singing hymns and listening to a speaker, so I'll try and keep everyone posted here about our goings on, but it's going to be a little crazy. I'll type again soon!

Marching Contest and Other Miscellaneous Updates

Sheesh! I go for around a week without updating this thing and you people jump all over me! You know, sometimes I have to actually live my life before I can blog about it.

I'm just kidding, although this past week has been really busy. I don't think I've made it to the computer more than twice. Why, you may ask? Because this past Saturday was pre-UIL Marching Contest. This is the warm up to the main event next Monday for the actual UIL Marching Contest. In my opinion it's a good and a bad thing because you get one final run-through of all the things you need to work on with actual judges telling you where to start, but at the same time you work so hard and put so much in to just have to get yourself up and ready to go about a week later. The same principle applies to the UGA-FL game followed by the UGA-AUB game. You get yourself so hyped up for one that there is often a let-down for the other. I'm extra worried, though because we earned third place at the competition and our color guard earned the "Outstanding" award. I hope we can keep our kids focused for one more week.

I would say we've got one more game to fine tune our performance, but that's not entirely true, because it's time for one of the oldest traditions in HS football this week:

That's right! Homecoming. That means a week of trying to get our kids to stand in an arch or a heart or two columns or some other kind of sappy shape so that around 10 kids from the football team and the cheerleading squad can come down the field while we play freakin' "Beauty and the Beast" or "Can You Feel the Love Tonight" or some other kind of Disney crap ballad forty-thousand times until finally announce a winner and put the rest of the court out of their misery. Can you tell I'm ready for HS football season to be over? By the way, in case there are any of you out there who are unsure how I feel about marching season, let me be clear: I HATE MARCHING SEASON! I'm just glad I was able to get that off of my chest and can now go on with the remainder of the season which is only about another month long so long as the football team does their job of losing enough games to feel good that they accomplished some of their goals, but not enough that I have to go to anymore games!

On another, happier note:

I received Brisingr as a gift for allowing my wife to travel to Houston to help with her grandmother and mother and general clean up from the hurricane a few weeks back and finished it today. It is somewhere in the ballpark of 750 pages and I finished it in just over a week from when I got it. The worst part to me about getting new books that are a part of a series is that you are so excited to get the next chapter and then you breeze through it because of your eagerness and then you have to wait another three years for the next installment to come out. I remember reading the Left Behind books and wanting to tear my hair out because they kept continuing it. As a matter of fact, the joke in my family was that the rapture was actually going to occur before they finished the series. I did enjoy the book immensly, however and am always amazed that someone can write that much at such a young age, even if it is heavily influenced by other works of fantasy. Now I'm back to my annual reading of the LOTR trilogy until probably Christmas when I will receive another influx of books.

I think that about does it as far as updating for me for now. I had an in-service today, but I think I've said all I need to say about in-services in a previous post (http://nathan-musicalmusings.blogspot.com/2008/08/thank-lord-for-good-in-services.html). Hope everyone is well, and I'll let you know how HOMECOMING 2008 goes!

Reasons to Pause and Reconsider Teaching College

"After years of alleged misconduct, school chancellor John Wiley (13) placed the band on probation after a bus trip to Michigan last month apparently turned into an outbreak of Nerds Gone Wild. The school said band members "routinely engaged in hazing involving alcohol and sexual behavior."

The above quote was from an article written almost two years ago. The following link will take you to a story posted almost two days ago: http://rivals.yahoo.com/ncaa/football/news?slug=ap-wisconsin-bandsuspended&prov=ap&type=lgns. I've always said that when I get far enough into my career, that I would like to teach in a college music department. My reasons for this are chiefly that the majority of the students actually want to be there instead of being forced to go, the talent level is more advanced than at middle school age, and I could have more thoughtful conversations about music and how it works.
It seems, however, that I have glossed over the one HUGE downside to this line of work (see the above stories). It's not quite like teaching middle or high school students where if they do this kind of thing you can have get their parents involved immediately, or tell them they can't walk at graduation or some other type punishment. I'm sure these things are done at the college level, the difference is generally speaking these thoughts don't enter the minds of middle and high school students, and if they do the kids are too afraid of the consequences to act on their thought because those consequences are immediate due to mom and dad being right there. Put several hundreds or thousands of miles between mom and dad and said scholar, and the consequences of your actions don't seem as immediate and therefore are not really something to be overly concerned with.
Another aspect of this story that concerns me is the conduct of the assistant band director that is mentioned. It's something that is becoming all too common in the teaching field, I'm afraid. Although, more often than not, it's with a student, not a colleague that the teacher is involved with. These are some of the things that scare me as a teacher. To be wrongly accused because of some action that was misconstrued or a flat-out lie. It's one of the reasons I'm always super careful when talking with and dealing with students especially outside of regular class times.
On a different note, I was without internet here for about three days this past week. It's amazing how much e-mail and facebook junk can accumulate in your inboxes when you don't clear them out almost daily. I was happy that it only took me an hour and a half of phone time to get it back up and running. My girls were gone to Houston this past week, and I missed them dearly. We're all back together now, and we don't really have any more travel plans until the end of the month when Kayla will go to a quilting convention. Sounds like a rip-roaring time to me, but who am I to judge, I go to marching competitions! Speaking of which, we have our first one of those on Saturday, followed by the actual UIL event the following Wednesday. I'll let you know how we did. Guess that's all for now. Happy beginning of Fall from South Texas where it's still over 90 degrees during the day!