We're Back with More Character Ed

A quick apology for the many months since I've blogged. I have a cardiac defibrillator implanted in my my chest, and it fired for the first time at the beginning of February. (In case you're wondering, I honestly thought the room suddenly exploded. Not much fun.) This led to many months of doctors running every possible test on me and arguing among themselves on whether I did or did not need a heart transplant.

Fast forward to September. I still have the heart I was born with, and I feel fine. So let me tell you about Bad Wolf.

Our spring release, U.S. Constitution, was held up for months until I was able to complete it. It came out in May, which was too late for most teachers to use it. A few managed to put it on, and we've heard some very good things. John and I really like it.

Over the summer we worked on a sequel to our best-selling Character Matters, and a few weeks ago we released Character Matters II. Here's the URL:
http://www.badwolfpress.com/charactermatters-II.htm

Like all of our plays, you can read the first one-third of the script and listen to four sample songs.

I think the script is very funny, and I think this is the best set of songs we've ever recorded.
I'll tell you more about it in the near future. For now, please go check out the script.

Are There Bullies At Your School?

Here's a true story. When my daughter was a freshman in high school, she hated to walk to school because one girl taunted her every morning. The daily bullying made for a difficult year.

After my daughter graduated from college she mentioned that she recently found out what happened to that bully. That girl, at the age of twenty-two, had two children, from two different fathers, both of whom were in jail.

I think there are two lessons here. One is bullies often have miserable lives, and the other is those who are bullied find it really, really unpleasant. Reliable studies show both of these things to be true.

So if your school has bullies, they're making some kids truly unhappy and at the same time practically assuring a bad future for themselves. As teachers, we don't want either of these things to happen.

What can we do? There's a bunch of anti-bullying programs available, and some of them are probably somewhat effective. And then there is "Bullies Anonymous," our most recent musical, which is guaranteed to have catchy melodies that get stuck in your head and dumb jokes from the fertile mind of lyricist John Heath.

Will "Bullies Anonymous" solve your schools bullying problem? It's too new to really know. But after 80,000 productions of Bad Wolf Press plays over the last thirteen years, an awful lot of teachers seem to trust us.

You can read the first third of "Bullies Anonymous" and listen to sample songs from it here:
http://www.badwolfpress.com/bullies.htm (Copy and paste into your browser if the link doesn't work for you.

And you can see the musicians and singers who performed on the recording here:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/22402091@N03/sets/72157603780804596/detail/

Let me know if you have any questions.
Best wishes,
Ron

Bullies Anonymous

If anyone reading this liked our play "Character Matters" then you owe it to your self to check out the brand new "Bullies Anonymous."

This wasn't easy to write---how in the world are we supposed to talk about bullies and not be preachy or boring? But I think we've done pretty darn well. The first third of the script will be posted at our website in a couple of days, and there are already four sample songs for you to inspect.

I know you want to know about the whole play, but as the music guy, I have to tell you about the songs. We decided to go all out for this show, so we wound up hiring six different singers and players to bring as much variety as possible. I'll have photos of the players in the studio soon, but for now let me tell you about them and let you do some listening.

We were very lucky to get Dana Shaw again. This singer actress has moved to New York City, which isn't convenient to southern California where I am. But she came back to visit her family for Christmas and we managed to record her during her stay. Here she is with a song about the girl who refused to be pushed around by bullies.
http://www.badwolfpress.com/becky.mp3

Brenda Tzipori has sung on the last 26 Bad Wolf shows, so most of you have probably heard her voice. I really appreciate how she finds a way of acting out every song she records. I really like how on the song about the bullyometer she sounds so pompous at the start and then relaxes as the song picks up tempo. (John and Mike also took part.) http://www.badwolfpress.com/complete_bullyometer.mp3

Tanya Wright returns for her second recording and she managed to sing after hosting a million out-of-town guests for Christmas (and suffering through a car crash just a few days before the holiday.) Here she is singing lead (and you'll also hear Mike, Sam and John) http://www.badwolfpress.com/dont_step_in_BG_vocals.mp3

Mike Fishell played multiple electric guitar on three songs and Dobro on another. Mike is another Bad Wolf veteran, as well as a sixth grade teacher in Oxnard, CA.

Sam Coleman played drums and percussion on a couple of songs, which is the first time I've ever been able to record a drummer for any of the shows. His hand-drumming on "Don't Step In" really woke the song up.

John Robinson played trombones on "Don't Step In" and "The Bullyometer." He arrived at the studio with three different trombones, and experimented with each until he found the right instrument for the songs.

I'll leave these mp3 files up through January, and I'll soon tell you more about the play itself.

Teaching Teachers in Madrid

John and I have just returned from a two-day workshop in Madrid, where we worked with music teachers from international schools from all around Europe.

This was a big deal for us because no one has ever let us out of the country before.

Our assigned task was to teach how to write and produce a musical. So we selected a traditional Spanish folktale (The Three Golden Oranges) and we asked the group of twenty-one teachers to turn it into a short musical by the end of the second day.

This sounded quite difficult to us, and we were worried that the whole thing would turn out to be a fiasco. But the group was so talented and enthusiastic that they pulled it off.

At the end of day two they performed the show in the auditorium at International College Spain (a K-12 school built around the International Baccalaureate program.) The 30-minute show featured seven original songs as well as an extended dance sequence. We had divided the teachers into groups of twos and threes to write the songs, and each group not only wrote music and lyrics, but they then found other members of the class to sing their solos, chorus parts, and play percussion.

They were dazzling performers who improvised vocal harmonies and movements on the fly. The performance took place on Thanksgiving Day (not a holiday in Europe) and now four days later I can't get the songs out of my head.

A big thank you to the music committee of ecis.org and especially to the participants who made our time so fulfilling.

We're Back...and with Eleven Holidays!

Hi, I seem to have taken the summer off from blogging, but I'm back and ready to report on the exciting inner world of an tiny independent school publisher.

In my last entry I was asking for suggestions on what John and I ought to be writing about. We received at least a hundred emails and phone calls telling us what you need in your classroom. The tricky part is there are a lot of different needs, and it's difficult to tell how many other teachers share your specific problem.

So we talked about it endlessly over a couple of months and came up with the three plays for the 2007-08 school year. The first one is coming out in a couple of days and I want to tell you about it.

Bad Wolf's Holiday Song's for the Classroom isn't a play at all, but brief songs and skits for eleven school year celebrations. It's specifically aimed at grades K-2, which are certainly the age group we tend to ignore. But not now.

The celebrations include Halloween, Martin Luther King Day, Thanksgiving, the first and last days of school, Presidents' Day, Earth Day, and Memorial Day. We wrote two songs for some of the celebrations and just one for most of them---we've a total of 15 songs here.

Would you like to hear one? Here's Dana Shaw singing about the first Thanksgiving: (You might have to copy and paste this address into your browser.)

http://www.badwolfpress.com/three_day_harvest_feast.mp3

Did you notice that the instruments are just piano, bass, and percussion? I decided to do this entire recording this way. I'd never done this before, and that seemed like a great reason to try it. I think some of the arrangements are pretty interesting, and hope you think so.

Here's one of our Halloween songs, sung by Tanya Wright, who is new to Bad Wolf:

http://www.badwolfpress.com/whatcha_gonna_be.mp3

And how about a song for Martin Luther King Day. This is sung by Brenda Tzipori, who has been performing on our recordings for several years:

http://www.badwolfpress.com/there_was_a_time.mp3

Let me know what you think of these songs. I'll be telling you more quite soon.
Ron

New Photos/Brain-Wasting Disease

This month's piece has two completely different subjects, although they're both connected to the coming year of plays at Bad Wolf Press. Topic one is our request for photos, and number two is help the poor writers decide what to write.

First of all, our spiffy catalog has pictures of students involved with our plays. They might be performing, or rehearsing, or putting on a costume, or maybe their teacher is showing them how to do something. Did you think all those kids were professional models? Not at all, they're kids at a couple of schools near my house.

Would you like any of your students to be shown in the next Bad Wolf catalog? It'll be printed in July, so we're gathering photos right now. We'd love to see photos with you and your kids!

Here's what you need to know to about pictures:

*  My graphic artist tells me that it's crucial to get up close to the kids
  when taking pictures.Big groups don't work well---aim for one to four or
  five, at most.

*  Be sure the digital camera is set to highest resolution. (That's a big
  deal for reproduction.)

*  Often the best time to take the photos is before the performance or 
  during a rehearsal. It's almost impossible to get great photos when 
  the play is going on.

*  We're not interested in fancy costumes or sets. What we want to see
  are the faces of the kids. (Did I already suggest getting up close?)

*  Oh, one more thing. We need to have parents sign a release form to
  be able to publish the photos.
  Here's the wording we use:

I give permission for photos of my child _________ rehearsing and/or
performing in a class play to be used in the catalog or website of the
plays publisher Bad Wolf Press.

Information about Bad Wolf is available at their website:
www.badwolfpress.com

Signed and dated: _______________________

On to our second subject, which is the writers' inability to decide
what to write next. We've been asking teachers recently, and a few
topics have repeatedly come up. What do you think?

*   The U.S. Constitution
*   Basic Chemistry (including liquids, solids, gasses)
*   Physics
*   Astronomy (more advanced than our solar system play, and discussing 
   stars, galaxies, and other cool stuff)
*   Something for English language learners
*   A sequel to our best-selling "Character Matters" play
*   How to write an essay

Okay, it's your chance to tell us what the world needs. You can email us:
ron@badwolfpress.com

We'll look forward to hearing from you!

Shakespeare is Out, Out, Out!

Just a quick note to tell you that the long-delayed play about the life and times of William Shakespeare is finally shipping.

This play is for two different groups of kids. The obvious group is the one that is already studying a Shakespeare play. Those kids could have a great time reading our play aloud and listening to the songs. Have them read it once and you've committed about 35 minutes to an entertaining activity that'll really help them understand who Shakespeare was and what his world was like.

(You could of course read it two or three times---changing your casting each time. That way the students will be singing along with the recording and the learning will be deeper and more permanent.)

So much for group one. The second group of kids that this play is for are those who are NOT studying Shakespeare. Why? Because spending some time with this play will give them a solid and fun introduction to the most important writer that has ever worked with the English language. And then when they eventually see or read a Shakespeare play, they'll understand what to expect, and be able to appreciate it.

If you are teaching a group of kids that don't fall into one of these groups, please contact me.

Grade level? We're thinking fifth grade through high school.

I know what teachers are always asking: is the music upbeat? Yes it is. There's punk, pop, jazz, dance, and even a dixieland tune. You can hear samples from all the songs and read the first third of the script at http://www.badwolfpress.com/shakespeare.htm

Where else will you get to hear from William Shakespeare's third grade teacher?

I'll look forward to hearing from you soon.