Good thing my boss doesn’t read this, or I’d make her pretty mad. She’s got this classroom rating thing that says it would be good for children to have a listening center. Phewsh. (That’s a scoffing sound.) Have you ever seen classroom listening centers? They’re nothing like they seem in the catalogs. Headphones all a-tangle, the audio tapes that get destroyed by children jabbing at buttons you’ve told them not to jab, the actual machine being jabbed beyond tolerance, books ripping, cats eating dogs. It’s mayhem, I tell you, mayhem.
Being the rebellious type that I am, I decided to go ahead and have a listening center….. my way – the ‘re-inventing the wheel, gadgety, too complicated’ way. (Mind you, I should say that at no point did she actually say that I had to have a listening center. She was quite gracious and understanding in hearing my grievances.)
I have the recording program Garage Band on the iMac, and in addition to recording requiems, turns out I can read a story¿ add some background music, and put it on my Shuffle. A couple of cheap headphones from Wal-Mart, and we’re good to go. I think they could swallow the Shuffle and it would survive.
