A funny time of year....

Finally, i have the chance to write something new on here. It has been a strange term so far. We've been unbelievably busy which has been exacerbated by the fact that most of the staff have been off sick at some point when we are short staffed as it is.

We've got into the swing of things now with or new conductor who came to us in October. We tried to create a complicated timetable to rotate leading that would let all 3 of us conductors lead each group at some point - mainly since we wanted to ease the new conductor into things, but also (dare i admit it) because we remain quite protective of the children we have in all our sessions, many of whom we've been working with for nearly 6 years.

Having tried and failed to make this timetable work i am pleased to have admitted defeat and having now assigned conductors to lead specific groups permanently (for now anyway!), i feel massively more motivated to start the 2nd half of the spring term. In particular i think all the moving around between groups has simply confused both the kids and the assistants, and whilst all three of us conductors have similar styles of leading and similar 'conductive perspective' if you like, even with a task series in hand the inconsistencies were making it difficult for the children to learn.

I suppose this is not such a problem when you have only conductors in the group, but since this luxury is not one we can afford we have had to sacrifice a bit of control in order to make sure the kids move forward.

I think this time of year is a funny one... lots of people seem a bit down, maybe its the weather, the dark days, i don't know but it seems to have impacted the kids a bit too. Hopefully a half term break will refresh everyone and we can go into the next half of term with more motivation - staff and kids alike.

I myself, somewhat the eternal optimist, remain motivated and am glad to continue to have a job that i adore. I just wish i had a bit less nonsense to deal with and had a bit more time to concentrate on the real 'conducting'!

Since spring is on its way lets hope a spring-like attitude begins to emerge with the new growth!

A Conductive Upringing in YouTube

Sad as it is, on a friday night over a glass of wine with a conductor friend we started looking up CE and other terms on YouTube and in doing so came across lots of links from a woman called Ellen Moore - who i assume is the mother of the child in the videos - Catherine.

There are a number of clips:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RuI1EF60ZD4
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RMaMbA5Lgsg&feature=related
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N_Mpb3ZCEdQ&feature=related
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uuL_stPkfYA&feature=related
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UJnL4s0y2eQ&feature=related
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WP8-M-NkxZk&feature=related
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lBCL3hZShsY&feature=related
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iP1v_FwXq7g
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9oIgdrcS9u4&feature=related

... and i think there may be more too.

We were so impressed by the way in which Catherine's mother gave her help when she needed, motivation, rhythm and praise - a model of of a parent practicing a conductive upbringing.

I think, from one of the descriptions that Catherine accesses CE at OMOD in which case i think there must also be praise to the conductor(s) that helped this parent to discover a conductive upbringing.

as for our friday night - So much for a CE-free evening!