Oh, I didn't explain the itinerant part well.

You see, our school is the largest in Chesterfield County. I am the resident music teacher, but I can only give a weekly music lesson to about 700 of our 1,100 students. We have a music itinerant with whom I work, and she picks up the classes for the other 400 students.

Chesterfield guarantees that elementary school-aged children will have a formal music lesson once a week.

You must realize that this is not enough. To have a well-grounded Kodaly program, for instance, the children would need music at last twice a week.

But I'm happy to meet with them weekly and try to make best use of the time by dividing the lesson this way:

Orchestral listening...8 to 10 minutes
Applied music theory through singing...15 minutes
Dance related to musical concepts...about 15 minutes
Reading exercises...5 to 10 minutes

(In 4th and 5th grades, we study recorder for approximately half the year instead of singing.)

I'd say our music offerings (elementary level) are probably about average for the nation. Since I do not have the luxury of reinforced lessons that classroom teachers have in that my lessons are a week apart, I salivate over the thought that somewhere in the US I could have met the same group of students twice a week.