Tomorrow is the Big Day!!!!

Man the 20th got here fast!!! Tomorrow is my very first day of school!!!! This post will be short because I still have about 13,972 things to do and only a few hours to do them (I need to get some good sleep tonight, sorry Andrew, no on-line cribbage this evening.)

I set up my listening area/recording studio in the classroom today, and it's pretty sweet! My computer hooks right into the system for easy access to music playing and recording. I also received a LCD projector from the school so we can watch videos on the big screen! Tonight, I need to finalize seating charts and prerecord some midi tracks for accompaniments. Piano is not really my forte (get it...piano forte?), so I am using cakewalk/sonar to play back the accompaniment for me. This way, I can be in front of the choir instead of behind a piano. I can also separate parts so if the choir wants/needs to hear just their line they can, or I can play just the piano accompaniment, OR I can play piano and voices together to help students hear how everything fits together. I LOVE TECHNOLOGY!! (I got this idea from a wonderful teacher in River Falls...you rock Lori Moe!!!) I would like to thank everyone in the music department at Meyer Middle School in RF for all of the help and support during these stressful days of preparation. Also, I need to thank Darrin (the other Supertonic.) He has hooked me up with a TON of resources for getting my string program off to a running start! I should probably be more nervous than I am, being a first year teacher, but due to all of the help from my friends and fellow staff here at Randy Smith, I am WAY more excited than scared. Things should go very well!

OK, I'm off to get some work done. I will post here tomorrow letting my "Faithful Blog Readers" know how things went.

Keep your fingers crossed!!
Rock on
~Mr. Lockwood