How 2 create a natural soundscape

It's the start of the year and I'm struggling a bit with the annual power struggle over who makes the rules in the classroom. Of course it's me, but I've never been happy with the process of establishing that, with all of its top-down implications. I like the result, but the process is very stressful - what with all of the envelope-pushing and peeing on hydrants and such. I'm coming home exhausted, grinding my teeth at night and am frustrated that I'm not doing something that shows more wisdom.

Feeling very stressed out, I started searching for some soothing music to play while grading some online homework submissions, but everything was distracting and added to my stress rather than lessening it. Then I remembered a nature-sounds LP that I used to play while studying in college (yes, I'm old enough to have taken a record player to college), so I did a google search on "nature sounds".

And I found this little bit of loveliness:

This elegantly simple miracle is called a "Free Nature Sounds Mixer" and it can be found at http://naturesoundsfor.me/

Right now I just have it playing while I work in another tab, but if I wanted to I could download my soundscape as a 1-30 minute long file.

In the time it has taken me to open up this blog post, I am NOTICABLY less stressed - I just literally felt the tense muscles in my forehead relax.

Every single one of my class openings will include a 3-minute calm-down that features this mix tomorrow. I'll report back on the students' reactions.