The power in the point

I'm having the kids (6th, 7th-9th) do Power Points about band this week. This insanely smart lesson plan that I came up with in the shower last week and refined while I was talking to my knitter friend yesterday accomplishes a variety of things:

1) They get to use their laptops.

The kids LOVE. their laptops. You know the movie Annie Hall? Where Woody Allen (I'm not that old, I've seen the movie once, and I was depressed afterward, but it was really funny) tries to tell Annie how much he loves her and he just keeps saying "loooeerrrve" trying to convey the intensity of his feeling, as in, "I love you, I looovve you, I mean, I loooeeeerrrrve you!" The kids loooeeerrrve their laptops. They get to use 'em in my class all week. (My other favorite line from that movie is when Annie is parking the car and it's kind of far away from the sidewalk and Woody Allen gets out and exclaims, "Hey, we can walk to the curb from here!")

2) They are not passively watching a movie.

Most of the really awesome movies about music are about people who have some involvement with illegal substances (Johnny Cash, Ray Charles, to name two recent examples of biopics depicting the musicians' drug use) so those are out. The ones appropriate for middle school-aged students are a little bit cliche-ed, such as Mr. Holland's Opus. That leaves non-music related movies, which you can still make a case for because we can still "listen to, analyze, evaluate and describe music" a la Standard 5, but it gets complicated and I just get tired of watching them watch movies, you know? They're not creating anything.

3) They are still forced to think about band on a minimal level.

This is, after all, band class. There's really no point in having them rehearse when I know perfectly well they are not going to play anyway for the two weeks of Winter Break (otherwise known as Christmas vaCATION!!!!). We (meaning I) had enough stress last week getting ready for the performance, so it's better to have them work on something else in a summative kind of way. They have to cover the topic, "if an important person visited our school to find out about what we do, what would you put into a slide show about our band for them to watch?" They're all a little nervous now about just who that important person might be.

4) Speaking of being creative, they get to put their own personality into what they are doing.

After weeks and weeks of really traditional rehearsals where they are started and stopped and told how to sit and stand and hold their every last digit, and what to play when and how and told to check their posture every second and hold their dang trumpets up (except that I don't say dang in class), they get to lounge on the walls by the heaters, plug their earphones in, and relax. A lot of the students are using images that mean something to them (e.g. cars), colors that they like (e.g. pink sparklies), and are saying whatever they feel is important to them (e.g. "I like to eat cookies and I LIKE GIRLS").

5) I can chill.

I'm just sitting up on top of my tall chair watching the middle school kids bounce around the room saving their power points, and for the last forty-five minutes I've been posting grades and blogging. I don't have to stand in front of them and make them look at me for the whole class, I don't have to yell or talk or correct or encourage or cajole or brainwash or tease or get mad or pretend to get mad or disgusted or explain, or any of the other thousand and five things I have to do to get them to show some effort and play the music correctly. I can just keep my eye on them to make sure nobody gets a black eye or starts to bleed, and catch up on a few things, like, um, making a lesson plan for this lesson.