Feeling: drained
Listening to: --
Reading/Watching: Fringe, season 2

Today was about baby-steps of progress. I've spent twelve weeks in this new job, finding either complete allies or frustrated would-be mutineers in my students.

The bulk of them are working with me. My first day of school, students were telling me, "Miss, you're really cool." It was a complete one-eighty from my old job (particularly my first day of said job).

One aggravating factor remained: a class of Advanced Choir students, all girls, used to two years of a different teacher, with different methods, and a much more relaxed discipline and sense of structure. And some of them liked me, but most of them hated my guts with a fiery, hair-tossing, eye-rolling, diva-tastic 'tween passion.

My class of thirty-five went down to twenty-two. They threw fits about everything, from the warm-ups I chose to my assignment of voice parts according to their ranges and vocal timbres (and not according to their egos). They talked constantly (and I do mean constantly). A lot of it seemed to be in a harmless way, a sort of scatterbrained, "let's sing oooh shiny thing and what was that did she say oh right singing SQUIRREL!"

It has taken me twelve weeks, fifty-seven tantrums, a dozen calls to parents, a few dozen lectures, some subtle bribery in pivotal moments, and a couple borderline-passing grades.

But today, we ran through our holiday music, and they knew it. We worked out a few kinks in a song, ran it from beginning to end, and actually enjoyed ourselves. The bell rang, they started to hop up, I stopped them, and they paused expectantly (they didn't just run out the door!). I was speechless, unsure how to say all the incredulous things crowding my mouth.

So I just said, "...Good job. I'm very happy with today."

I hope that was enough. I hope this wasn't a fluke. I hope a lot of things. And I'm finger-crawling toward Friday.

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