Visiting a Middle School

With this being the beginning of a new school year, I have definitely learned several things.

1) Getting up to be in class by 7:45 every morning SUCKS.  I actually already knew that, but it bears saying again.

2) Getting to bed between 10:30 and 11:00 every night isn't so bad.

3) Driving in Provo is a nightmare.

4) My schedule is intense, for lack of a better word.

5) Junior High/Middle School students are really funny.

Let me explain the last one.  I was at Centennial Middle School on Wednesday morning.  The band teacher, Dr Rothlisberger, was teaching these kids how to make sounds from their mouthpieces.  Keep in mind that this is a beginning band class full of 7th graders.

He taught the brass players that the shape of the mouth should be tight and they should make the sound "emmm" to practice having the proper form.  Since I have never played a brass instrument before, I thought that that piece of information was pretty cool!  So they practiced it and got a few rather interesting sounds to come out of their mouthpieces.

Then he moved on to the flutes.  He went over the same kinds of things with them, getting them to have the proper form so that they can make a sound come from the instrument.  This time, instead of giving the same instructions as he did to the brass sections, he told them to do something a little differently.

"You're going to put your flute up on your lip and say 'poo'."

..........................................................................................................................................

Pause for a moment.  Do you hear that?  It's the sound of twenty 12-year-old boys busting out laughing because their teacher just said "poo".  Wait, you hear something else?  Oh, that's the 15 college-age boys doing the exact same thing.  The girls were laughing too, but they were just laughing at us.

That's why I love kids that age.  The dumbest things are hilarious.  And we have many similarities when it comes to humor.

Oh look, Obama thought it was funny too.

So even with all of the things that terrify me about teaching, I'm very excited for this part of teaching junior high.  It makes me laugh already.