First Time for Everything - Christmas Concert 2021

-

     Today is my first Christmas concert of my teaching career! With COVID, our school is doing a pre-recorded version to share with our entire school. I spent my whole week dreading today! I was so anxious about how the kids would perform, how I would perform, what people would think about our performances.... I have some thoughts that I want to take into account for next year.


START SOONER

    Catch me racing the week of November 22nd, finally deciding on a theme for the concert.... I have learned that is a little too late! I didn't realize so many classrooms would want to get involved with the creation of the concert! We have a ton of Nutcracker art pieces for decoration in the room, there was talk of students creating a back drop, other classrooms (who I don't teach) wanted to be involved... I hadn't considered any of these things! So when I didn't have a theme chosen, I didn't know what to tell all these people (and students!). I think next year, I would like to have a theme/idea by Halloween, so every class who wants to be involved has time to create and be prepared. Most of my classes were able to handle their part of the concert which was good, but I wish I gave some classes more time - especially those who got really tricky parts. They did their best performance, and I want them to feel proud about all the work they put in!


THERE'S A FIRST TIME FOR EVERYTHING

    Is the Christmas concert a big responsibility? Yes! But, think of the hard work the students (and myself!) have put into it! I was so anxious leading up to this day, and I had dreams about it every night. Something was going wrong, some one was missing, the camera crew didn't show up... All these ideas entered my head at night. I'm hoping that now that I've gotten my first concert out of the way, next year I will feel more confident and not so anxious. One of my students in our first performance this morning, said to me "I am so nervous" as he was going up the stairs, and I felt the same way! All I said was that it was totally normal to feel nervous, and I was so proud of all the work that they have put into their performance. I want next year me to remember that anxiety is normal, and as soon as I see the kids it will melt away...

 

THEY'LL LOVE IT

    Kids don't have to be "perfect". As a musician, of course, I practice for perfection, and it will never be perfect. I felt such pressure to have a PERFECT concert with PERFECT kids and PERFECT decorations.... But once I got working with the kids, the stress about being perfect went away. Things don't have to be perfect to be appreciated. I am so proud of all the work my kids have done, and if this is how I feel, I can imagine their parents must be even MORE proud! Even if it is not a perfect performance, they will LOVE it!


Have a Merry Christmas, Happy Holidays, and a Happy New Year!! Thanks for reading!

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Tech Task #6 - Twitter

-
Image
For this Tech Task, we are asked to discuss our Twitter experience! (Click here for my educator account, in case you are not following me already...!) Personal Use I've had my personal twitter account since 2009 and now have a collection of 16,000 tweets from over the years. I couldn't tell you how I managed to tweet that much, other than the character count used to be much shorter than it is now. I liked Twitter for the simplicity - the short little thoughts that someone may be having. For example, here is a screenshot of the first tweet in my feed at the moment: This is the quality material I enjoy from Twitter I use Twitter as a platform to share the small thoughts I have that I don't think are "important" enough to constitute as a Facebook status (read more about that here  under the "My Digital Identity" heading). Facebook is for things I want to share with a wider circle of family and friends, and Twitter is for things I may want to j...
Read more

'A Nutcracker Christmas': Winter Concert Reflections

-
Image
 What is a blog? It's been a minute, folks. Lots has changed since I posted about our spring concert awhile ago. And like I mentioned in that blog post, I wouldn't post again until December.... surprise, I'm not posting until January! I took the time to really enjoy my holiday and NOT think about work. St. Laurent School presented "A Nutcracker Christmas". Each performing group (K/1, 2/3+3/4, 4/5+6) had at least one song to sing, and a 'routine' act to a piece from the Nutcracker suite. K/1's sang Gingerbread Cookies , I Want to be an Elf , and a scarf routine for Dance of the Reed Flutes . 2/3+3/4 sang Don't Eat a Poinsettia  and performed a flashlight routine for the Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairy . 4/5+6 sang Here Comes the Snow  and performed a cup routine for Trepak . Then we had all K-6 students on the stage (or in front of it) singing Jingle Jive . In between each performing group, we had a storytelling session presented by two high school st...
Read more

Spring Concert and Year End 2022

-
Image
 Hi folks!       We performed our spring concert a few weeks ago and I'm finally ready to share my thoughts and things that I can think about to do for next time. I found my last post about the winter concert was helpful so I thought I should make another one after our spring concert!      It took me awhile to really sit down and brainstorm about what I wanted the spring concert to look like. We could have worked with a spring theme, but that felt boring and predictable.... So off I went on Teachers Pay Teachers, and reading others blog posts about concert planning, and finally I came up with the theme.... Food! My parents always said I had an obsession with food - I could tell you what I ate for breakfast on a specific holiday, when asked about birthday parties I would talk about the kind of cake they had.... things haven't really changed since then! I got the idea from Leah Wanner 's Teachers Pay Teachers shop where she has a few items with conc...
Read more