R-E-S-P-E-C-T

Today was one of those days that makes me want to quit being a music teacher. Not because of the students, but because of the other teachers. Last week, for the first time, I allowed a fourth grade class to take their recorders home. My gifted students (some in that class) had been doing so all school year, and the rest of the students were really excited to do the same. I had made them recite to me, and to their classroom teacher, the rules about take recorders home, I told them what to practice, and sent them on their way.

Admittedly, I should have talked to the fourth grade teachers first, but I feel like their response shows no respect to me. Some of the students (I know of one specifically, the class told me less than 5) hit another student with a recorder. Under my procedures, those students would not be allowed to take their recorder home again, and I sure hope the teacher wrote them up. Other students put their recorders in their desks instead of their backpack. Again, by my procedure, those students are not allowed to take their recorder again. But their teacher asked me to not let any of them take them home again. Despite the fact that I see them so little and try to teach them so much, and despite the fact that it is my class and curriculum and the students' recorders, this teacher (and another in her grade level) TOLD me not to let the students take them home.

I only wish I had had the presence of mind at the time to say what I should have.