A New Chapter

Hello again, world!

Much has happened since my last post. I'm now a Mrs. (still getting used to that!) and more pertinent to this blog, yesterday morning I accepted a full-time non-maternity leave job!! I just got an email about signing paperwork on Wednesday and coming in for the new teacher meetings at the end of August so I'm not afraid about jinxing it as much as I was yesterday. 

So a little about the job. It's at the middle school in the district where I went to high school. I never attended this middle school because my hometown has a Pre-K - 8 school district then we get bussed to this district for high school. Anyway, I will be teaching the 6th grade general music cycle during which I will get to teach every 6th grader for one marking period (quarter) and be the 6-8th grade band and chorus teacher.  I'm also directing the school musical that goes up in the end of November (aka super soon in terms of production/rehearsal time).  

I have always had my eye on this position and used to describe it to people when they asked about what my "perfect job" situation would be because of the blend of band and vocal music. The 6th grade general music component is awesome and I'm excited to be able to reach all of those students. Another cool thing about the band part of this  my job is that I get to work with my high school band director and the elementary band director who I knew from high school pep band and from playing shows/gigs with him.  I have so much respect for the work that the two of them do and I'm honored to be able to be a part of the system. Now time to make lesson groups, schedule band and those lessons, plan rep for all ensembles, pick a musical, and much much much more. 

Just on a side note, I believe that everthing happens for a reason but it was so bleeping hard to do that when I was taking interviews and hearing nothing. But given what you just read above about my history with and passion for this position, I think it's pretty hard to not think that in some way, shape, or form I was supposed to end up in this job at some point. Thank God I have a job - especially this one!

End.

Hello from the same place where I was when I started this blog - the lovely world of unemployment. Well, that was a moderately pessimistic way to start this post. Anyway here's the scoop. 

Monday was the last day with the kids.  I went to school for just a few hours on Tuesday to sign out and then I went back to my old home school (from when I was doing the part-time gig) to return a book and say hi to my old friends. After student teaching was over, I was really emotional - maybe because it was the end of my first time really teaching in a school and maybe because I had just conducted my first concert which made me realize that teaching was what I was meant to do and I was good at it... Regardless, I knew that there was a chance I'd be emotional on Monday saying bye to the kids but I really wasn't; I was more sad about leaving the colleagues I had grown so close to and about the fact that I don't know where I'm teaching next year. 

I have a few leads about what jobs will be open in the future but only have 1 active application out at the moment. I've had 3 interviews so far and from what I've heard, most districts won't start interviewing again until the middle/end of July. Guess what else is happening in the middle/end of July? My wedding and honeymoon! Sigh/yay. I've had to put in the final paragraph of my cover letter that I'm unavailable for contact between July 20 and 29th and I really hope that it doesn't deter employers from calling me. If not, maybe I can sue for discrimination? I'll work on it. 

I guess I should have some kind of summary of how I felt this year of teaching and what I've learned. Well I already did that kind of thing for my general music gig and I feel like I've already been keeping up with what I've learned in the band gig, but here goes. Alls I really knows is I'm a good teacher and I want nothing else in the world than to teach. I also stand by the fact that if you have good rapport with the kids and stay true to your personality at any age level they will work with you.  Being real with kids helps them achieve more so why not be yourself? Yeah I guess those are my nuggets of wisdom from junior high band. 

Here's hoping I'll report back soon with a job.

Blah

Two posts in one week? Crazy, I know. SPOILERS: If you want to know the theme of this blog, just take a sec and look at the tags at the bottom. 

Yeah.

I've been thinking a lot about what the future holds and why it's so upsetting to me that I might not have a job next year.  I ended my last post with this semi-optimistic statement - "But at least my fiance has a job and at least I can leave this position knowing that I did a good job in the time I was there."  Well I think that the problem with that statement is that I can't just leave my current position with the confidence and knowledge that comes with being told my multiple people that you do a good job. (That last sentence sounded cocky. Whatever.) I think it's in the human condition to want to be better and to improve as much as possible. If I was not "in to" teaching, hated it, or was doing a bad job then maybe I wouldn't get sick at the thought of not teaching. However I know I'm pretty good at teaching and this year has shown me that I was meant to teach.  The money stuff will sort itself out because based on the budget my fiance and I did, we can survive on his salary alone.  That's great for the future if I want to stay home with kids (way down the road) or in case something happens and I can't work, but right now I actually want to work.  It's really hard to stay positive and keep my situation in perspective with the "everything happens for a reason attitude" that I usually have but I have to stay focused on the day-to-day things I can control such as finishing writing my class final and learning to use a Scantron machine (which I'm actually really excited about). Still...about once a day I get a terrible sinking feeling that I'll be unemployed which doesn't help mitigate the stresses of moving and getting married. This is going to sound either nerdy or lame or whatever, but all I've ever wanted to do - minus when I was a in elementary school and wanted to be a comedian - is teach music.  Teaching music is my dream job.  Even on the worst days when the kids are being difficult, I still end that class knowing that this is what I want to do.  I think the other thing that is frustrating is that many job interviews might not happen until July (please...not during my honeymoon pleeeeeease) so there's no telling when this poopy feeling will end.  

So that's where I'm at - just trying to stay above the blah feeling.  

An update

Well, May came and went and I didn't blog. I think about blogging...then I don't because nothing interesting is going on. I guess now that it's June and my year is drawing to a close, I may as well sum up what's been going on. We just had a pops concert that was organized mostly by the orchestra teacher which included the 2 jazz bands and some members of the chorus.  It was a great concert and lots of fun - I got to play snare drum and hi-hat for a couple of the orchestra pieces! I also co-arranged the grand finale (Gangnam Style) with the orchestra teacher which featured the jazz bands, orchestra, a Korean student doing the rap, and dancers! 

After the concert back in April, I began a strange new journey into figuring out what the heck to teach the kids for the rest of the year. Being that this is the first year the 8th and 9th grade band kids are separated and being taught by 2 people, I got to figure out how much of the composition project that the other teacher traditionally does I would use and how much I would come up with on my own. I spent about 2 weeks doing sight reading and teaching the kids about phrase structure, doing improvisation exercises, working on ear training (more on that in a later post), one listening assignment, and a little theory as we went for the kids to understand the details of what I was teaching a little better.  After that I decided I wanted to teach them about compositional techniques such as theme and variation and assigned a theme and variation assignment - to write 2 variations on Hot Cross Buns.  I had a lot of fun writing the rubric for the composition assignment because that really forced me to realize my end goals for the students. Probably in real life, you're supposed to come up with firm objectives and then do the rubric, but it was sort of a hand-in-hand thing. I mean, I knew that the kids needed to have an understanding of how to write a manuscript so I borrowed (and was sure to credit) the 9th grade band director's rubric about correct number of beats per measure, if the key, clef, and time signature were in the correct order and were there, musical terms were spelled correctly, etc. I used that for 50/100 points then wrote the next 50 points of rubric.  It was hard for me to quantify "musical creativity" which was a main part of what I hoped the students would get out of the project so I came up with categories such as using more than 2 elements of variation for full points (changing rhythm, adding pitches, changing the time signature, altering the octave of the theme, adding in new sounds like clapping or trills) and making sure there was variation between variations.  So far as I'm grading the variations, all the kids have been getting good scores and some of them wrote great stuff! 

Besides the compositions, the students had etude testing (which is happening now) and also had a chamber group project.  That chamber project had another cool rubric that emphasized that a chamber group of any size needs to have communication, have well-thought out positioning, leaders, agree on style, basically all the stuff that college musicians still work on in chamber music. I hadn't conducted a full-group-reading-a-piece-type rehearsal in a long time until we were working on 3/8 and 6/8 this past week. Now I have to finish compiling the info for the written final and the review sheets and grade all the playing tests. Woooo! Busy busy push till the end of the year. 

It's bittersweet for sure that the end of the year is coming because I don't know if I'll have a job next year and real life approaches with rent, Internet, phone, TV, life insurance, health insurance, car payments, food, furniture, and all the other stuff that comes with moving out and on my own. And oh right, I'm getting married next month. But at least my fiance has a job and at least I can leave this position knowing that I did a good job in the time I was there. 

"Ms. Teacher-lady?" Who? Me?

Tomorrow I have my first concert! It's the district's Night of Jazz.  The jazz band from the 6th and 7th grade school, my jazz band, the auditioned jazz band from my school, and the high school jazz band will all play before a college band plays.  I really should have said "my" jazz band; I saw them twice and pretty much just polished what was already taught.  It's going to be a great night for the kids 6-12 to see not only their peers play, but to see a highly advanced band.  The only downside is that I haven't been able to rehearse with my kids since before spring break...so here's hoping the sound check doesn't spell disaster!

Okay, so now to explain the title of this post. It's been great having my own band classes and not really having to answer to anyone.  I have two veteran teachers that I share the room with so when I have questions, the answers are easily within reach.  Maybe that's why I never feel like I'm clueless like I did when I was doing general music. I love having preps, an office with a desk, a computer that I'm always logged in on.  I feel great.  Somehow, though, all these thinsg don't make me feel like I'm a grown-up.  Yeah, I have authority in the school to call kids out in the hallway when I'm on duty or to discipline kids in my class.  Yes, I'm getting paid to do what I have worked pretty much my whole life to accomplish. But it was a funny moment when my dad told me he'd be coming to my school to visit.  

My dad is the acting supervisor of fine arts in a school district now (he's supposed to be retired!). The high school in his district is creating a band room out of what used to be a big storage room, so my dad and the high school band director are going to visit band rooms that would serve as a good model when they design the space.  The instrumental music room at my school used to be the cafeteria (the lunch service windows are still on one wall to prove it).  Since it's a re-purposed space like what they'll have in my dad's district, he'll be coming to look at it tomorrow. Last night, my dad told me about when he'd be visiting and I said that he should email the other band director and tell him.  My dad goes "Why do I have to email someone else? You're the teacher!" 

Woah.

Yeah, I am the teacher.  I already said I do understand that.  But somehow those things didn't equal me being able to make a decision like approving a visitor to come scope out the room. I guess this whole being an adult thing is an on-going identity growth issue.  

Endings and Beginnings

In my last post, I mentioned that I had some good news to share, so here it is - I will be starting a new job on Monday! My part-time elementary general music job was only a year long leave replacement, so when I saw there was a maternity leave position posted for one of the band directors at the junior high school in my district, I applied. I ran it past my supervisor first, because I knew that it would create a problem if I got the job and he had to hire for my position.  He okayed it, I interviewed and got the job! I'm super excited because band is what I've always wanted to do.  Also, my resume looks sweet because I have K-1 general music experience and 8th grade band experience (not to mention that my position has me teaching brass and percussion lessons and not woodwinds which looks great for me as a flute player).  The other great thing about working in my district is that it has a great reputation in the state for academics, athletics, and the arts so administrators have heard of it when they see it on a resume.  Alsoooooo, the full-time pay for the last few months of the school year makes my bank account smile. 

end

It was bitter-sweet to have my last day at the elementaries today.  I've been prepping my kids for the last day since last week when it was all official that the new job was going through, but I don't think it really hit them that I wasn't coming back until today.  One class gave me an adorable card. 

I hope the kids are good for the new teacher and they don't think I did a bad job with them... Eh, but I know that I taught them well, so it's fine. 

Looking back over my first teaching job (woah), I learned a lot. I thought I'd have more things to post about with more lessons I've learned along the way to document and share.  Clearly that wasn't the case, but nevertheless I learned a lot of tips I want to share, as evidenced by the series of bullet points below:

•  it's okay to feel like you have no idea what's going on because once the kids come in the room, your planning kicks into gear and it works itself out
• you have to stick up for yourself and your classes, especially when you don't have your own teaching space
• be proactive and work to find available spaces in the building where you can teach
• always present a problem and a possible solution at the same time to an administrator
• "I know that it's difficult to find space for all the traveling teachers, but I noticed that this room is open during 2nd period. Can I use it to teach my music class on Mondays?"
• it takes WAY longer to write general music plans (okay maybe this is just me personally) than to plan for a band rehearsal or group lesson
• in the beginning of the year, familiarize yourself with delayed opening, half-day, early dismissal schedules
• aka make sure you have one that matches across multiple schools if you travel
• ask all of the questions, even if you think it's dumb
• ex: How do you draw a quarter rest and time signatures in elementary general?

beginning

I have two concerts coming up shortly after I start my new junior high  job - one the week after spring break and one the week after that. I'm excited to jump right in and go! I spent the day at the school yesterday so I could see the whole day of classes, lessons, duties, and the after school jazz band rehearsal.  I also was able to hear 3 out of the 4 pieces that the 8th grade band will be performing on their concert so I can plan what I'm doing next week.  The schedule is such that I will see the students every day for band - split into 2 sections of 8th grade band - so it will give me a good amount of time to continue to work on the circle of 5ths, rep, technique, etc. 

future

I already got a call for an interview for a permanent position for next September. Things are going well. I foresee having more to blog about from now on! Woo!

This and That

Smart Board!

So my Smart Board classroom management strategy is working really well! Since it aligns with the strategies that the students are used to in their classrooms the kids picked up on it right away.  It was nice for me to be able to collaborate with the classroom teachers, steal a few ideas here and there, and come up with something beneficial for all students.  Also, anything that's on a Smart Board is fascinating to them! With the compliment jar on the screen for them to see, it keeps them focused on getting that "prize at the end of the tunnel".  I like that way more than the constant sticker giving.  

I guess my initial excitement and happiness with technology had to wear off eventually and that happened this week.  Our district has half-days this week for parent teacher conferences so I wanted to plan a short but rewarding Halloween-ish lesson. I have the "Sorcerer's Apprentice" clip from "Fantasia" on my flash drive as an mp4.  In this lesson, we can discuss the job of a conductor in an orchestra, the way the music tells a story, how music can be inspired by stories and art, etc. I got to the first school I was going to teach this lesson at early to test that I would be able to show the video on a school computer.  It played perfectly through Quicktime, so then I made the critical error of assuming that if Quicktime was on one school computer, it would be on all of them. Whompwhomp. It was incredibly frustrating to show up in a kindergarten room, tell them that we'd be watching a video clip and then having that clip not play because this particular computer didn't have Quicktime. Luckily, I lesson planned for a Plan B and had a recording of "In the Hall of the Mountain King" ready.  We instead did an activity where the students listened to it, drew what story they thought the music told, and then I shared the actual story.  It worked well and accomplished similar SWBATs, but still, it stinks when you have a cool lesson planned but there is a problem. 

Teacher's First Sick Day

I don't really get sick. I mean a seasonal allergy here, a sniffle there, but on the whole I'm not a sicky person. This weekend I was really busy and on Saturday night I thought I was just cold from being out all night, but ended up having the chills from a fever. I was still feverish on Sunday so my mom wouldn't let me go to school; she has a one day fever free before going back to school rule. That was awesome when I was a kid, but I felt so bad not going to school on Monday. I mean I teach a half-day every day from noon-3:15 which would make me fine to teach with some acetaminophen..but my mom said I shouldn't risk getting the kids sick which is valid...although I blame them for the random fever! Anyway, it was weird worrying about if the sub showed up, if they went to the right school, the right room, if the kids were behaving, if the plans made sense, yaddayaddayadda. But then I started watching a Frasier marathon and took a nap and it was fine. 

Control and Scheduling

I've probably mentioned this before but I like to make lists, be organized, and in general be in control of my situations to the best of my abilities.  I compulsively check my schedule to make sure I'm in the right building at the right time even though I have my schedule memorized.  This week of half-days for the students made for some interesting scheduling conundrums.  Every building has different schedules - one of my schools has 40 minute specials and the other three have half hour specials.  It was difficult not knowing until a few days beforehand what my schedule would be.  One thing I've had to do my best at is remembering to not sweat the small stuff. Okay, so I might not have been 100% sure about which rooms I was teaching in or if my schedule worked quite right, but the important thing was to just go with the flow. It is pretty much opposite of what my normal organized self would have wanted, but in a school setting it's hard to be really in control of anything. I have 4 building principals who made the schedules who gave them to my supervisor and above him there are even more decision-makers.  The nice thing about not being in control, however, is it doesn't put a ton of pressure on me as a teacher to do much besides teach. 

Life.

We started our wedding registry, I got two credit cards, I'm going shopping for a wedding dress soon, we booked the photographer, and are getting engagement pictures taken sometime next week after this tropical storm passes!

The First Full Week

Where to begin, where to begin...

I think I'll start with my favorite story from teaching thus far.  A teacher dropped off a class to my room and didn't tell my why this kid was crying bawling out loud.  Apparently, he missed his mom.  Then about 15 minutes into the class, one other girl goes "I miss my mom, too!" and also starts bawling. Then 5 minutes after that, a third child goes "They're crying and it's making me think about my parents and I want to see them, too!" and so now I have 3 children crying out loud. I decide to do the Hokey Pokey as a review (because it was too ironic to sing "If You're Happy and You Know It") from last week and while all the kids are having fun, between versus all you hear is "WAAAAAAHHHHHHH".
I try to find one thing to make me laugh in every day so I don't go nuts and this incident has provided me with a good chuckle each time I think about it (but obviously I didn't laugh at the little ones). 

What I learned this week...

dealing with difficult students

I have a student who has been having a lot of issues in school - this student is disrespectful, destructive, won't listen to anyone, shows no real emotion/remorse when they do something wrong.  I was speaking to my mentor teacher about it and she said that I should write everything down that this child does during my class that is inappropriate so that if Special Services needs facts from each teacher, I have written documentation.  

when you have a problem, provide a solution

Okay, that's super vague so I'll explain. I teach in four schools, as I have mentioned before.  In 2 schools I teach the students in their classrooms, in one school I teach in the general music classroom while the full-time teacher is on prep time, and in the fourth school I teach some classes in the general music class while the full-time teacher is on prep and in the instrumental music room while the string and instrumental teachers are not in the building.  In this fourth school, we discovered that there is a scheduling issue - the full-time general music teacher, string teacher, and I all have classes at the same time but only two rooms in which to teach. It doesn't take a math major to realize this is an issue. Since, as I said, I spend a lot of time teaching in not-a-music room, I went to the principal and asked if I could teach the two conflicting classes in the classrooms to clear up the space issues. The principal said "Sure! It's very easy when you come in here with the solution to the issue you are bringing up." My supervisor had the same attitude when I brought it up to him. So, if you have a problem, don't go to your supervisor/principal and complain without first thinking through the options. 

Tales of a travelor

I have to be on top of the procedures for 4 schools, which can be confusing sometimes.  For example, on Tuesday, I accidentally ended a class 10 minutes early because their "bell schedule" is different than the other schools.  By the time I realized it, the teacher had already moved on to the next activity so it's not like I could have run in and said "Time for more music!!" I just chilled in the hallway until the art teacher was done with my next assigned class. I felt kind of dumb, but now I'm sure I won't forget the time again!  My name still hasn't been on any of the 4 lists typed correctly (in some places not typed at all).  All issues aside, I like my travel time because I can get some fresh air, eat my "lunch" (food bar), and listen to the classical radio station.  It keeps me on my toes. I think the second week will be a little easier (especially because it's only a 3 day week)!

 

Gettin' paaaaaid

My school districts split up each person's salary into 20 equal paychecks, received every two weeks. It works out well; some weeks you get "overpaid", some "underpaid" but at least it's a reliable check each payday.  Today's check was definitely one of those overpaid checks because we've only had 7 school days instead of 10 in this pay period. But hey, I liked the number I saw! Getting that check made it all real. Today was especially real because as soon as I celebrated my paycheck, my dad brought up the things I need to start paying for, being a salaried woman and whatnot. Kind of a buzzkill for my big moment, but whatever.

Onward and upward!