Wk 3 Comment on Alicia Kalb's post

Alicia Kalb said...

Kelly,
I really admire how you can take a horrible situation and turn it into a positive one. To have such high expectations of what you would be getting and then to have it all of sudden yanked away, would be bad enough. But then to have things crippled further would be devastating to anyone. But you are right giving up or complaining how unfortunate the situation would have not accomplished anything. You thought of your students and made the situation work to your advantage. Not many people would have been able to think positively in this situation. Honestly, I do not know how I would have handled it. This turned out to be a lesson for you and one that you could share with your students. As teachers we constantly tell our students to make lemonade out of lemons, but do we ever show them. This is a great example of your lemonade. Sure it’s not the ideal music classroom, but I’m sure there are people who have it a lot worse. At least you are still teaching music and there is music in your school. Too often in life we get so weighted down with the things that we can’t control that we do not work on all the things we can control. Life isn’t fair, that’s what everyone says, but why complain about it when we all know it’s true. As you said “Make it work!”

Is that the stage in the picture? Are you still on the stage or did they find you a new home? At least it looks like you have a fairly large space available to you.

May 20, 2010 11:12 AM

Kelly McKinley said...

Alicia,

I am still on the stage. There was a moment, though brief, where I was told that I would have the music room back next year. I've since been told that I will be back on the stage. Who knows what will happen? Things are changing daily in my district.

The main problem that I have right now with the room is that, although there is a partition, the stage opens up to the cafeteria. Two of my classes are forced to listen to the cafeteria noise as we have class. The stage is also the home for the band instrument cages. Kids come in during the last ten minutes of my class to get their instruments. Most of them are pretty good about coming in quietly, though.

To quote "The Art of Possibility" that is just "the way things are."