This week, on my vlog I mess around some more with, “When the Man Comes Around.” I also share some memories from a school play in which I had the opportunity to be a producer.
Media Logs
Vlog
Github Study Respository
Link to my Github repository containing music notes.
General Session Records
| Date Session | Duration (Minutes) | Public Notes |
|---|---|---|
| 2025-10-27 | 10 | Sliding lip trills, sliding octaves, low notes, When the Man Comes Around. |
| 2025-10-28 | 20 | Vowel study, sliding lip trills, low notes. |
| 2025-10-29 | 5 | When the Man Comes Around. |
| 2025-10-30 | 20 | Sliding lip trills. Low notes. Vowel study. |
| 2025-10-31 | 5 | When the Man Comes Around. |
| 2025-11-01 | 30 | Sliding lip trills. Vowel study. Low notes. When the Man Comes Around. |
| 2025-11-02 | 120 | Sliding lip trills. Vowel Study. Low notes. When the Man Comes Around. Guitar Accompaniment. |
Memories to Share
A School Play
When I accepted the position to teach English Language Arts for the 2025-26 school year at Chinook, I was informed that by tradition, the 8th grade class holds a school play. The students are the stars of the play and the families buy tickets to see their performance.
The funds from the performance go towards buying tickets and covering the costs of a significant trip to a far away and exciting location. For example, this year the students are going to Dallas, TX.
The interviewers explained to me that I would have a lot of responsibility in this play. The number of staff members at our charter school is limited. This means that there is no dedicated Drama teacher.
Instead, there are two teachers per each two grades, and in the seventh and eighth grades — wherein students start to branch out into myriad subjects — the two teachers have to cover all the topics. I am the ELA teacher, and I also cover History, Geography, and Drama; there is another teacher with whom I am paired who teaches Math and Science.
Since ELA has the closest resemblance to Drama, I was asked if I would take a leadership position in producing this year’s play, and I accepted the challenge.
This year’s play was called, “The 33 Little Pigs,” by Brian D. Taylor. It’s a story about a big bad wolf who comes hunting for breakfast in a meadow full of pigs. These aren’t ordinary pigs, however, and the wolf finds out that catching them will be anything but easy.
I have no notable experience in dramatic stage productions, as I made it known during my job interview. That said, I do enjoy anything that has anything to do with the study of storytelling, so I was happy to explore this pathway.
The play is always scheduled towards the beginning of the school year, so that the event is completed and the funds are available for the trip later in the year. This year, our play was scheduled for October 30th. Seeing as how school started on August 20th, and since neither myself nor the students had ever done this before, we had a little over two months to figure out what we were doing.
As I discovered during the assembly process, the play is a matter of pride for the school. Families come to see their children learn how to present themselves in a professional manner, explore their creativity, and conquer their fear of public speaking.
In August, after one or two attempts to run a practice session, I could see that I was not going to be able to figure everything out on my own, speaking from a leadership perspective. I needed more people to be in charge and making decisions, and I needed to be giving the leadership authority to people whom I felt I could trust.
There were several students who had presented themselves in the first few weeks as likely being able to hold a position of authority. I picked two students from among them and asked them to act as a director and assistant director. They kindly accepted and set about organizing many of the aspects of the play that I did not understand. As the development of the play continued, their parents also generously dedicated their time to helping the performance along.
A few weeks before the play was set to take place, the play itself was still in its assembly process. We had not yet memorized all of our lines, the props were still rudimentary, and there was a sense of incompleteness in the way the scenes carried from one to the next.
One of the other teachers in the school is married to a man who has a lifetime of experience in the dramatic arts, and he volunteered to share with us his experience. He visited on several occasions and helped the students understand important concepts, such as having a purpose when your character enters the scene, as well as when he or she leaves. He encouraged the students to practice speaking slowly and loudly.
Another person with drama expertise also came to help. She shared with the students warm-up exercises and energy-building games. She gave notes to each individual student on what they could do to improve their performances.
As students completed the memorization of their lines and became confident in their performances, some of the students switched to assisting with many other tasks.
One group organized a dinner that acted as an additional fundraiser, where each plate cost $10 above the base ticket. Another group dedicated many of their recess and physical-education breaks to staying inside and creating a printed program. The program had a unique element in that each of the students in the class created hand-made drawings of their characters.
The last week of practice, everything seemed to magically come together at the last moment, helped along by many community members who saw a need and came to assist.
Some family members organized the backstage area so that students had dedicated places to sit, and placed labels on their seats that informed the students of their scene numbers. The progress also continued as a variegated collection of completed props and other miscellany appeared on tables behind the backstage walls. Students were frequently at the front entrance of the building, often wearing their costumes, with picket signs and money boxes for selling tickets. One of the seventh graders even jumped in by creating cue cards to help with the last few lines of memorization.
The big night came and everything went off without a hitch. There were two performances. During the first performance, I was backstage helping to keep students on track and focused. The students behaved so well, however, that there wasn’t a need for me to be there anymore. My supervisor suggested that I enjoy the second and final performance in the crowd with my own children.
The play ended with the students bowing together on stage. The families clapped and the cameras stopped rolling. Students exited the stage, took off their pig costumes, and cleared out for the evening. My children hopped on the folding-chair carts and made choo-choo noises as we pushed the chairs to their storage location. The families who brought food for the dinner retrieved their slow cookers and juice tanks. Within an hour, the school returned to its normal self.
Here I am again, the dust has settled, and I am plunking way at the computer keyboard, and the guitar, and humming to a few familiar tunes.
Artificial Intelligence Transparency Report
No artificial intelligence was used for the writing or performing portion of this blog post.
I used Google’s Gemini AI to help me create and manage my sql database for tracking relevant data. For example, I used Google Gemini to write a script that exports my singing data records from my custom PostgreSQL database and format the data as an HTML table.
How You Can Help
I need your help to become established as a teacher and storyteller.
Here is a link to a blog post that describes how a supportive reader can help me in my quest.
In short, you can…
Buy a copy of my children’s novella, Westly: A Spider’s Tale
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