One Down!

I am very thankful it is Friday.  This has probably been one of the most whirl-wind weeks of my life.

As I sit here in my new apartment, I can still hardly believe that my new home is here in Virginia and that I have a full-time teaching position.  Basically, I have come to realize that I am officially a GROWN UP. And that is quite the pill to swallow. Along with all the medicine I have been swallowing to fight off whatever germ-filled-kid disease I picked up at school this week, bleh.

It is one thing to be a new teacher starting the school year with everyone else. It is yet another thing to be a new teacher starting the school year months on in.

Last week I spend a lot of time going through books and supplies trying to figure out what in the world I was going to do with my students.  The previous teacher left absolutely NOTHING behind. No files. No lesson plans. No nothing.  So I had no clue where the students are musically.  I decided the best thing to do was to work with various name games.  Turned out that my lessons were very similar across each grade level, but that almost worked out for the better because it really helped to see what abilities the students have.  I asked many of the classes point blank what they have been doing in music.  It was really upsetting to hear that nothing musical was really happening.  I could tell that the students really want to do more in music, and that was a good sign to me.

Overall, all of my classes are on the large side.  There are at least 30 students in each of my Kindergarten classes.  Thankfully I have an aide that comes with them because otherwise, I do not know what I would do.  Pull my hair out for sure.  Yes, I quickly learned who my "problem" students are but for the most part all of my students behave very well.

Thursday was ridiculous.  It seemed to be the day of pain in the rear students.  My 4th grade class that day was by far the worst.  I had to play big-bad-music-teacher.  The students were rude, disrespectful, and just all around awful.  And I let them know it.  There teacher has only been with them since September (there was an extra 4th grade class added once the school year started because there are soo many of them, and that teacher was hired for this new class) and was thrown in like me.  We are about the same age and we are both happy to have someone in the building going through the same situations.

Everyone in the building is beyond nice.  So many teachers come in and check up on me everyday.  It a very family oriented atmosphere.  I know I am lucky.

Doing my best not to become overwhelmed.  Which I know may happen soon enough.  From learning curriculum to starting up the first elementary band program in the ENTIRE county.  Things are going to get incredibly crazy incredibly fast.

Everything in life happens for a reason.  And I know that there is a reason why this job came my way now.  I know that I am more than capable to do this job and I want nothing more than my students to have fun and learn some great things about making music and to let my administrators know they made the right decision.

Oh, this month we are learning all about Tchaikovsky.
Next week I am going to do some recorder with the upper grades, sing some songs to review pitch recognition, and even start some holiday songs. I stayed at school until about 5:30 this evening to get the room set up for Monday.

More importantly, I am making sure to take time for myself.  I do not want to let myself get sucked up into only doing work-related things.  Need to keep a balance.

Seems to be a trend lately but...

NEW LIFE!

<3 RMK