Last Saturday, Lettie competed in the UIL Music Memory program. Those of you who know me know that I dislike competitions where someone has to win and someone has to lose, however, in this program, there is a standard, and theoretically, everyone can win. All they have to do is know the music, the composers, and how to spell the names of the music and composers.
Lettie actually came in 1st place at the school level, and this was with leaving off 3 of the pieces. Prepping for the District Meet, Lettie listened to the music every night before going to bed, and often as we drove home from school from my iPhone; she knew every one of the pieces and the composers. In the coaching sessions, she told us she was consistently making 100’s, which means that she knew all the names and pieces and spelled them correctly. We even did some research on the composers and found out how they all died, and it was interesting, from Mozart to modern times. For Language Arts, Lettie decided (OK, at my suggestion) to do her biography on the only woman composer in the bunch, Amy Beach. (Turns out, Ms. Beach was quite interesting to Lettie. She had a condition called “synesthesia”- which means she saw colors when she heard certain keys, for example, if she heard a song in G Major, she saw the color red, Ab Major was blue, and so on. Lettie found this very interesting, as did I.)
We didn’t check Lettie’s spelling (OK, sometimes we did ask her to spell Tchaikovsky, Gabrieli, Humperdinck or Zawinul, but we didn’t drill her.) I figured if she wanted to do a good job, she would study them, as she loves spelling and the harder, the better.
After the “test” on Saturday, Lettie told me she forgot the movement on the Hayden 88th Symphony, which surprised me, as she had really studied it and the Handel “Hornpipe,” because she’d been getting them mixed up. I’d played snippets of each of them for her several times, and she’d gotten them both correct, down to the movement. (It is “Alla Hornpipe”, not just “Hornpipe” as I’ve known it for years.:)
When Lettie came in 4th at the district meet, I figured she’d either missed more than just that one piece, although she insisted she didn’t, or misspelled some of the words, which she also insisted she didn’t. It would have been possible for the other children who finished 1-3 to have gotten everything correct and then 2nd & 3rd to have misspelled 1 and 2 words and finished in those places. However, yesterday in the UIL ceremony at her school, they were giving special awards for those who did spell every word correctly in the Art and Music Memory programs, and neither Lettie nor the child who finished in 2nd place got them (the other top finishers were from another school.)
Lettie was so disappointed on Saturday, she thought she’d come in 2nd, for missing that one. We’d told her that to place high for this district meet, she couldn’t miss any, that everyone will have been studying hard and the winner would likely have perfect paper. She insisted she didn’t misspell any words, but since she didn’t get a spelling award, she must have- or her handwriting was so messy they couldn’t read it, which happens more often that we’d like.:(
I used to do floral design competitions, where, rather than an exacting standard of “perfection”, the judging was a lot more subjective. I won some contests I thought I should have lost, and lost some that I thought I should have won. Early on, I came to the conclusion if I was going to do competitions; I had to find the “winning” within myself. My standard of a “successful competition was this:
1. Did I learn something?
2. Did I do my best?
3. Did I have fun?
If all three of those were “yes,” it was a successful competition for me. If I won, that was just icing on the cake.
We’ve tried to instill that into Lettie, too, but at age 10, it is a bit harder of a “sell.” As tears welled up in her eyes Saturday after they posted the results, I reminded her that one of the school’s team didn’t even show up, so she showed courage in just doing that! Somewhere I read that half of success is just showing up, and that was certainly true on Saturday. We told her we were proud of her for having the courage to extend herself and do this competition. She could have played it safe and not done it, but playing it safe is not always the way to have a great adventure, especially in education.:)
I’ve asked her teacher if we can get a copy of Lettie’s test, so that Lettie can see her mistakes and learn from them. While she won’t need to list these pieces from memory any more, learning how to learn is so important. Learning how things are graded is also important. If it was sloppy handwriting, then hopefully she’ll learn that she needs to take more time, if she just outright misspelled some words, then she’ll learn that she needs to practice spelling more, if she missed the names of the music, then hopefully she’ll learn that she needs to work on the big things, too and not to get too cocky or nervous (she was a bit of both on Sat. morning.:). I know she’s only 10, but learning from our mistakes is how we “fail forward,” as Herb Mitchell used to say. We all make mistakes, but the difference is those who learn from them and don’t do them again do better than those who continue to make the same mistakes over and over. At age 10, trying to stop the repetition of mistakes is sometimes a bit of a merry-go-round, but we’ll continue to work on that.
In the meantime, we’re very proud of our daughter- she knows these great pieces of music (one of which she’ll be working on in piano in the spring.) She knows about Amy Beach, who was a remarkable woman, even back in the late 1800’s, when it was pretty difficult to be a “remarkable” woman. Music Memory gave Lettie some knowledge, and hopefully some skills that will help to sustain more learning as we go. Our thanks to Beth Schuman, her music teacher at Rooster Springs, for the time she put in coaching the team for the past 2 months, and to Mollie Tower, who started the Music Memory program many years ago. What a nice gift for our children.
I hope that even with the additional $3.1 cut DSISD will suffer next year, it is possible for the elementary schools in DSISD to still compete in UIL next year, but I wouldn't bet on it.
Looking at the faces of the children called up to the stage for the UIL Awards Ceremony, from those who had “participated” to those who “won," it was clear that each one of them was a winner. That is how education should be.
Wednesday, November 23, 2011
Wednesday, November 2, 2011
What's Important: our stuff or our kids & future?
While Dripping Springs is locked in a tough battle to keep from having to cut an additional $3.1 million out of our budget (on top of the $2.1 cut this year,) the truth is, with the same Legislature going back in 2013, it won't get any better. I'm angry that we've come to this- I'm really angry at Jason Isaac and the so-called "leadership" of our state. We should never have to be in the position of having to raise our taxes this much, but since they cut Dripping Springs more than most schools (only about 10 got cut a larger percentage,) despite the fact that we've had top financial ratings, (meaning we have little to no "fat" to cut,) we've got 2 choices:
1. We can vote to raise our taxes or
2. We can vote to greatly diminish our schools.
Raising taxes is really hard right now, but I know that the School Board will lower them the minute the Lege steps up to the plate and does their Constitutional duty to fund public schools.
(from the Texas Constitution)
"It shall be the duty of the Legislature of the State to establish and make suitable provision for the support and maintenance of an efficient system of public free schools."
Does anyone think the Lege made "suitable provision for the support and maintenance of an efficient system of public schools" this last time? I know we're in a hard place, I get that, but this Legislature made NO EFFORT to fix what got us into this funding mess- the "tax swap" of 2006. When they passed that bill, they knew that, barring some pixie dust making magical things happen, there was no way the "Margins Tax" would raise enough funds to fund schools at the level they'd been promised in past legislation. Yet, they passed it anyway, kicked the can down the road, and this year, they kicked it down the road again. They didn't fix the funding problem in legislation, and the first thing they will have to deal with then they return in 2013 is to pay 2 delayed bills that were put from this biennium's budget into the next one- 1 for a school payment & 1 for a big Medicaid payment, so we start with a huge deficit in 2013, too, not to mention that the margins tax STILL won't have brought in enough funding, so there will be even less money in the budget then.
So, now we're to this: many of us are hurting, and asking us to pay more taxes won't be easy, but when I realize that it is less than $10 a week for us, I can certainly justify $10 a week for our daughter's education. Then I realize that won't just cover her, but all the over 4,000 children in DSISD and it becomes something from which I can't walk away. So, we'll cut something from our budget, and it may mean that we literally eat beans and rice one a week or so, but the question becomes- what do we value? Our kids? Our future? Our stuff?
I'm working on a devotional for our church's Advent book, and just about all the scriptures I was given are about transitoriness and/or justice. Could these verses have come at a more opportune time? I look at them in the context of this tax election and see that this sacrifice that we're being asked to make is just a short term one, but the investment we will make may well make a difference in the lives of these kids. Indeed, we may be nurturing the next Steve Jobs, or the next great artist or musician or researcher who may discover a cure for cancer, or just a lot of productive citizens. If we have to cut all classes that promote imagination and originality, if we have to pack science and math classes with more children that a teacher can ever hope to help individually, what level of disservice are we doing not only to our kids, but to our future? Psalms 90 is titled "God's Eternity" and Man's Transitoriness"- I think that about says it all.
This is a link to an editorial from Channel 2 in Houston, about what our Lege did in terms of not funding our schools and what it means. While Dripping has an election on Tuesday that means a lot, the primaries in March and election in November mean a great deal to all our children and to our future. Whether you homeschool, outside private school or public school, public schools educate the majority of our children and having good schools are important to our future. We can get into discussions about what the Lege has done to public education (or test taking training, as so much of it is now) but that is our next mission, once we get past this one- going back to letting teachers teach!)
IF you're in Dripping, the elections are Tuesday, Nov. 8, Election Day (Tuesday, November 8) - DSISD voting precinct locations are as follows:
Precinct Voting Location
440 Henly Baptist Church, 200 Henly Loop
441/449 DSISD Administrative Bldg., 510 W. Mercer St.
442/448 Driftwood Community Center, 15100 W. FM 150
443/444 Sunset Canyon Baptist Church, 4400 E. Hwy 290
Polls are open from 7:00 a.m. until 7:00 p.m. on Election Day.
1. We can vote to raise our taxes or
2. We can vote to greatly diminish our schools.
Raising taxes is really hard right now, but I know that the School Board will lower them the minute the Lege steps up to the plate and does their Constitutional duty to fund public schools.
(from the Texas Constitution)
"It shall be the duty of the Legislature of the State to establish and make suitable provision for the support and maintenance of an efficient system of public free schools."
Does anyone think the Lege made "suitable provision for the support and maintenance of an efficient system of public schools" this last time? I know we're in a hard place, I get that, but this Legislature made NO EFFORT to fix what got us into this funding mess- the "tax swap" of 2006. When they passed that bill, they knew that, barring some pixie dust making magical things happen, there was no way the "Margins Tax" would raise enough funds to fund schools at the level they'd been promised in past legislation. Yet, they passed it anyway, kicked the can down the road, and this year, they kicked it down the road again. They didn't fix the funding problem in legislation, and the first thing they will have to deal with then they return in 2013 is to pay 2 delayed bills that were put from this biennium's budget into the next one- 1 for a school payment & 1 for a big Medicaid payment, so we start with a huge deficit in 2013, too, not to mention that the margins tax STILL won't have brought in enough funding, so there will be even less money in the budget then.
So, now we're to this: many of us are hurting, and asking us to pay more taxes won't be easy, but when I realize that it is less than $10 a week for us, I can certainly justify $10 a week for our daughter's education. Then I realize that won't just cover her, but all the over 4,000 children in DSISD and it becomes something from which I can't walk away. So, we'll cut something from our budget, and it may mean that we literally eat beans and rice one a week or so, but the question becomes- what do we value? Our kids? Our future? Our stuff?
I'm working on a devotional for our church's Advent book, and just about all the scriptures I was given are about transitoriness and/or justice. Could these verses have come at a more opportune time? I look at them in the context of this tax election and see that this sacrifice that we're being asked to make is just a short term one, but the investment we will make may well make a difference in the lives of these kids. Indeed, we may be nurturing the next Steve Jobs, or the next great artist or musician or researcher who may discover a cure for cancer, or just a lot of productive citizens. If we have to cut all classes that promote imagination and originality, if we have to pack science and math classes with more children that a teacher can ever hope to help individually, what level of disservice are we doing not only to our kids, but to our future? Psalms 90 is titled "God's Eternity" and Man's Transitoriness"- I think that about says it all.
This is a link to an editorial from Channel 2 in Houston, about what our Lege did in terms of not funding our schools and what it means. While Dripping has an election on Tuesday that means a lot, the primaries in March and election in November mean a great deal to all our children and to our future. Whether you homeschool, outside private school or public school, public schools educate the majority of our children and having good schools are important to our future. We can get into discussions about what the Lege has done to public education (or test taking training, as so much of it is now) but that is our next mission, once we get past this one- going back to letting teachers teach!)
IF you're in Dripping, the elections are Tuesday, Nov. 8, Election Day (Tuesday, November 8) - DSISD voting precinct locations are as follows:
Precinct Voting Location
440 Henly Baptist Church, 200 Henly Loop
441/449 DSISD Administrative Bldg., 510 W. Mercer St.
442/448 Driftwood Community Center, 15100 W. FM 150
443/444 Sunset Canyon Baptist Church, 4400 E. Hwy 290
Polls are open from 7:00 a.m. until 7:00 p.m. on Election Day.
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