At GMEA I realized several things. Each pertaining to a different group of my students. In 8th grade I realized that they don't use near enough of their bow and they lack in dexterity of lows and highs (fingers that is). Today I changed the percentage of time I talked vs the amount of time the students play. We worked on listening and matching, lows and highs, and using more bow....ALL AT THE SAME TIME! And all I had to do was play! In 7th grade, positive, kind affirmation and questioning had almost the whole class (including students who don't usually want to participate) playing the entire class! A HUGE change from last week! In 6th grade I've decided that I'm not going to get mad. I will simply smile, repeat my instructions, and move on. The students who can't follow instructions will stay after class so we can call their parents (they saw today that I was serious). Ended up having 6 or 7 students stay after class with me. The more I smiled, the more students I had asking me why I was smiling (because they knew they weren't getting to me with their disruptive inability to follow directions). IT WAS AWESOME. Over all, a super duper successful day. Can't wait to try again tomorrow! So excited for all the information I collected the last few days and I can't wait to try it all out in class!