Very pleased to see the music ed fam appearing on here over the last week or so!! This is excellent.

Still buzzing from yesterday's Soul band rehearsal where the BV's nailed the Bb major chord on 'sing' in 'We are Family' every damn time; it's always been a tricky transition.

Oh, and before anybody says anything, we do the song a semi-tone up.

Was told by some of my year 11 students that other students around the school find me scary.

Genuinely thrilled over here and think this will on my appraisal documentation reviewing my previous year's achievements.

Scary teacher: unlocked.

Perhaps a controversial opinion: wasting time at the start of the academic year doing "ice-breakers" and "get to know each other" activities in class not only limits access to the curriculum but it soaks up the best time to establish your authority and climate 4 learning.

3 days until I'm back at the coal-face after a 6-week break.

For the 1st time in many, many years I'm sat here thinking: "I've got to do it all again".

I'll be fine, but after the busiest year of my career, next year will be easier, but it doesn't stop that feeling of dread.

I've gone back to writing today.

Nothing like staring at a blank document.

When the music dept is filled with music and sounds, I listen to ambient music on headphones to drown it out and create a 'bed' or a 'wash' of sound so I can concentrate.

I used this today:

youtu.be/9QJcPfFi3ls?...

So many important albums from my childhood are 30 this year: Grace; Superunknown; Purple; Jilted Generation; Dummy; Crow OST; Throwing Copper; Burn My Eyes; Downward Spiral; Betty; Vitalogy; Monster; Jar of Flies.

Don't even know if this was genuinely a classic year, but they were sooo good to me.

Yesterday was my 1st day for me this holiday:

Sketched out ideas for a book chapter I'm co-writing; did a vocal mix fix for a prog band; and put a cat tree together in under an hour! Epic.

Today, I'm back with the family and we're doing Calke Abbey NT style.

Solidarity with all parents of ASD kids who have spent most of the holidays preparing and managing new school uniform and shoes.

A sensory nightmare with weeks of talk, planning, discussions and trying things on in small steps.

Shoes are next.....

I thought I'd put together a blog post linking informal/formal learning and Star Trek via the music classroom. Might be relevant to all creative teachers.

nickisgrate.wordpress.com/2024/08/14/i...

Here I am! Looks nice so far... trim decor, clean and decent feed, sensible and balanced thoughts, and familiar faces.

Nice.