Bring on the Von Trapp children

Today I subbed for an elementary school music teacher. Not quite my forte, but I had fun. I think the teacher was expecting the same sub as yesterday, so the directions were a bit confusing. Fortunately, I had enough time to figure them out before kids showed up. I taught 3rd, 5th, and 4th grade classes in the morning. We sang two songs along with a tape, read a book about the Star-Spangled Banner (published in 1964! first indication that this teacher is stuck in the past), and danced a Jewish folk dance. I'm really glad the kids already knew the dance because I did not understand the directions to it. I was a little surprised by the lyrics to the first song, but my mom said she sang it when she was in elementary school (2nd indication).
Check these out:
Mister Johnson had troubles of his own
He had a yellow cat which wouldn't leave its home;
He tried and he tried to give the cat away,
He gave it to a man goin' far, far away.

But the cat came back the very next day,
The cat came back, we thought he was a goner
But the cat came back; it just couldn't stay away.
Away, away, yea, yea, yea

The man around the corner swore he'd kill the cat on sight,
He loaded up his shotgun with nails and dynamite;
He waited and he waited for the cat to come around,
Ninety seven pieces of the man is all they found.

Yeah, it may be a classic, but you should have seen the kids' faces as they listened: shock and awe. Anyway, in the afternoon I taught 1st and 2nd grade. We sang the same songs, danced the same dance, but instead of reading the old book, we watched a film reel about Mozart. I'm talking the kind of film reel that has a separate audio tape you have to be sure to play at the right time, the kind that advances one photo at a time at the sound of a beep, the kind that I thought went the way of beta tapes and eight-tracks. It took me a good fifteen minutes to figure out where the film reel was and how to get it set up. When I tried asking other teachers if they knew how to use it, they each said, "We have one of those?" And this was the final indication that whoever I was subbing for has been teaching for a very, very long time :)