I6 students from Fountaindale will be attending the first ever elementary arts festival. I have recently received all of the music and practice CDs. I sent home a packet of the music, information, and CD so that the students can practice and memorize over the long weekend. I intend on holding two after school practices with them to make sure they know their music and are prepared for the festival.

Today I joined my colleagues for a time of learning about twitter and professional learning networks. I added many co-workers to my twitter and I'm excited to see what kinds of new things I can learn from them!

I had the opportunity this afternoon to participate in an ESL workshop presented by one of my friends. She is working on her masters in International Education and had to present as a part of her final project for her degree. It was an interesting opportunity to learn more about English Language Learners, since I do not have much training or experience. It was most interesting to me to think about how cultural differences can really impact student learning and learning experiences. I thought it was also interesting to see the stages of language acquisition and be able to connect several of my students into each of these language categories.

We actually ended up having 5 teachers get together yesterday on the half day! It was great to collaborate and realize that we are all struggling with similar things (even teachers that have been teaching 20-30 years!) What a relief!! The 'younger' teachers are really excited about doing some sort of curriculum map to group objectives and place them in a logical order for the school year. Yeah!!

We've had so much great PD about expanding our thinking about how we are teaching our students. I've felt a little bit like 'an island' all alone in my content area. I thought it would be great to have some productive sharing time with other music teachers. I emailed the other elementary music teachers and suggested we get together on our next half day. I only got one response! I'm thrilled to meet with the one other teacher and hopefully I will feel a little less alone, but it would be exciting to collaborate and share ideas with more teachers. How do I make that happen if they aren't interested?