HHTV 5: Straightforward Paper Making

I Need Students

Well, making lots of pieces of paper has been great but as Dr. Nolan said last week: I need students! So this week, a week late, I emailed 10 more local orchestra teachers and sent each of them 3 copies of my flyers. This time I sent a brief letter as well explaining who I am and why I sent flyers and talking about the emails I sent. That went really well, so far I haven’t had any responses but at least I’m doing something. I feel very limited in both time and resources… meaning I don’t have a car and I’m really busy so that taking the public bus is quite inconvenient. So I’d like to personally visit all of these schools, but not with a bicycle and the schedule I have now.

Not a Setback

While I anticipated becoming ill or having a crazy week and knowing that my project might suffer, my project actually flourished. But Rachel, how? Well… last Sunday I tripped off a skateboard which I was simply standing on, with cleats (terrible idea) and fell onto the concrete sidewalk. I fell sideways hitting my left knee, hip, ribs, shoulder, and finally my head which bounced so magnificently as to cause whiplash in my neck. After spending all morning at a sports injury doctor I can report a concussion, bruises on the inside along the ribs, and I sprained my neck. So actually I’m not able to play my violin for three days which gave me more time to work on HHTV. Got to always think positively!

This image shows all the muscles in your neck that you need for many things such as playing violin, checking rearview mirrors, sleeping comfortably, sneezing, running, looking up at clouds, and moving in general. BUT they are not used to type letters, emails, and syllabuses.

I Made a Syllabus and I Haven’t Even Graduated Yet

My entire four years of education at the UA, learning about music and music education can be summed up the incredibly important ability to create a syllabus. True, it’s for 8 weeks, twice a week, one hour each. True it’s not as detailed as to include lesson plans (yet!), handouts, and every material needed… but it’s a start. I realized while making this that this is just the hand out for parents and only loosely covers my actual “game-plan” for myself. I need lesson plans, procedure, a supplies list, and most most MOST most MOOOOOST importantly…. A LOCATION! I used this article which you can also find in my Teaching Tools page in order to figure out the class goals and overall objective. Click Here to see the syllabus I created for the summer group class that I titled “Helping Hands Through Violin”.

Easy as Pie… A Half-Baked Pie.

Overall, it wasn’t too difficult to make because I already had an idea of how quickly 4-6 year olds learn based on my experience with the UA String Project. I also had a lot of policies like the payment options and signature all figured out thanks to my Lesson Policies handout I created several months ago. I still have a lot of work ahead but the most important thing now is finding a location, setting up factual days and times, and then getting the word out there.

“Human spirit is the ability to face the uncertainty of the future with curiosity and optimism. It is the belief that problems can be solved, differences resolved. It is a type of confidence.”

-Bernard Beckett