School of Rock? Kind of, but not really.

There haven't been a lot of substituting assignments available this month, so even though I was very hesitant I accepted an assignment as a Elementary School Vocal Music substitute. No, I do not have any real music training (I had a year of piano lessons and I played trombone in high school, at which I royally sucked). So its all the more humorous when I found out that in addition to teaching the general music classes I would also be teaching 5th grade woodwinds and 4th grade violins.

If I would have known about the squeaking clarinets and the shrieking violins I would have brought ear plugs today. So how does one teach music lessons when they have no talent themselves, they place a CD into the school's boombox and tell the students to follow along. The CD that the students played along was hilarious, because all the students are really capable of doing is playing the same 2 or 3 notes over and over. So to make it sound more exciting the CD has an accompaniment with these rocking guitars. It works, because the kids thought it sounded cool.

Another interesting thing about working as a music sub is you work with a wider range of students. I taught a kindergarten class, 3rd graders, 4th graders, and 5th graders. Even though I was completely unqualified to teach this class it was easily one of my easiest sub assignments ever. I would "teach" for 40 minutes, and then I would get a 30 minute "planning period", also known as a break. Plus, I had 1.25 hours for lunch instead of the usual 45 minutes or hour lunch that I get when I sub as a regular classroom teacher.

Oh and today I learned that I can't say the word "accompaniment". It was on one of the word puzzles that the 5th grade music class had to complete. I tried saying the word about five times and it comes out gibberish. I keep trying at home and I still can't say it. There is nothing quite like showing your incompetence to a room of ten year olds.