A Day in the Life of a Music Teacher

I wake up a little after 6:00 and leave my apt. by 6:40 in order to catch the 6:50 bus. I get to school at 7:30 and then teach until 3:00. The bus leaves at 3:30 and I'm home at about 4:15 (on a good-road day).
During the day I deal with obnoxious kids as well as a few nice ones. Lately they are ALL getting on my nerves. I blame this on pregnancy, stress, the changing weather, and the end of the school year being less than 2 months away.
Our final performance of the year is in two weeks from today and it is going to be a serious disaster. I'm not kidding. I realize I'm critical sometimes, but practices this week have been nightmarish and I can only pray it will "come together" like everyone tells me it will (those people are kinda annoying because none of them have ever prepared for something like this before). I am stressed and SO tired! I have felt lots of energy through most of this pregnancy but now.....there.....is.....none.....left.

WARNING: This next part is long and somewhat boring but there are funny parts and for some reason it helps me to be less stressed to tell other people all this stuff. :)

The Elementary part of the program is called "Lighten Up" and it's all supposed to be really funny and takes place in three different locations. I bought this script but then decided lots of it was dumb so I modified it quite a bit... the audience doesn't have to know (that way they won't know the stupid jokes came from my own brain).
K-1 sings three songs that all take place in an Australian swampland and they are CUTE (of course). First they introduce the "crocodile guys" (think crocodile hunter) by singing a song about them. Then they sing about a lean, mean, whacky ogre while playing boomwhackers (plastic tubes cut to different lengths to make different pitches). Then they sing a song about making funny faces to scare the ogre and they, of course, make funny faces during the song with the help of the pre-schoolers.
But today we started practicing on stage.... those kids go NUTS when they get on stage. It's all I can do to keep them in their spot let alone keep them singing and pray that none of them fall off the stage while they're running around like crazy. Yikes!
2-3 sings two songs that take place in the Austrian Alps. One is the classic "Oh an Austrian Went Yodeling" and they each dress up as and act like different characters that interrupt the yodeler. They each have instruments to play as well (for example, cows play cowbells and woodpeckers play woodblocks. We also have rattlesnakes..... don't ask me how they ended up in the Alps). The second song is a mixture of yodeling and rap.... imagine: "Yo, yo da lady. Yo da lady, Who?" for the rap part. That song is actually quite funny. :)
But every time we practice, there are fights between the "yodelers" and the "rappers" with the rappers screaming their rap parts in the faces of the yodelers while the yodelers yell at them to stop yelling and..... *SIGH* And then the 4 boys who are the rattlesnakes tend to actually fall off the stage (half the time on purpose) and one boy even slithered underneath a little girl's skirt..... aaaah!
4-5-6 sings three songs that take place "back home" in the "old west." First, they sing about being cowboys who are saddle sore and there's a lot of acting that is SUPPOSED to take place. Then they sing Home on the Range while playing chords on guitar. They close this part of the program with 2 girls singing "Cowboy Joe" while the rest of the class accompanies on recorder... this is also quite funny when they actually do it correctly.
Unfortunately there are 11 boys and only 4 girls in this class... the boys will NOT sing because they are "too cool." There is also one boy who insists upon mooing loudly during the saddle sore song. When we practice with recorders it's all I can do to keep them from squealing on them or throwing them at each other and if I take one away then another kid will do something bad on purpose because he doesn't want to play and wants me to take it away. Plus on Monday I somehow lost two kids and found them hiding behind the curtains... a boy and a girl... I didn't catch them in the act but they certainly broke apart pretty quickly when I found them.

Now do you believe me that it is going to be a disaster?