Decided that when Mark went to work that I would have a nice night in and have a bath. Once I got over the guilt of using allllll that water I set up the candles and got hot chocolate and my book and settled in. As I laid back I bumped the plug and thats when I found out that the plug I had was slightly too small. So after a run down the hallway to get the laundry plug I resettled.
Both my cats were very weirded out by the whole thing. They've always seen me in the shower, never in the bath. Chicky couldn't figure out what all the water was for. She likes to play with the water coming out of the tap, I watched to see if she would fall in, but alas she didn't.
Monday, June 30, 2008
Sunday, June 22, 2008
Back to school - again
Ugh, week 12.
Oliver! finished last night. We had such a good show, working with those people is heaps of fun. We all agreed that working with the conductor is easy because he doesn't worry about the mistakes. Sometimes when the conductor gets too stressed then it makes the show a real drag. We had great crowds over the two weeks, six shows we did. I'm already looking forward to what the next show might be.
So I have four and a half days to claw my way through before I can have a much needed break. As much as I enjoyed the show it came during the crucial report writing period. I thought that I was just struggling to find things to say but apparently because I have two year 7 classes that I only see once a week then I have a very high number of reports to get through. I made some basic errors that took me ages to go through and fix, however next time I will have a better idea about how to fix those things in the early stages before they get into EVERY SINGLE REPORT.
So that meant that with band and reports and the show I didn't get much sleep for a few weeks. And me on no sleep, plus stress, equals brain meltdown. Stress doesn't affect me in quite the same way that it does other I think. I push it back and get through it, but this time it built up a little too much. I can't describe the feeling of relief that I felt when I finally got to Thursday morning and uploaded them for the last time. I know that there are still some errors in them, but there is only so much I can physically do when I have that many students that I am responsible for.
I have had much smaller classes over the last week, for various reasons. Especially in the year 9 classes where we have been doing a lot of practical stuff for the assembly that they are playing at this week. It is so much easier to get everyone involved when I only have 15 or so to keep a track of. I only have so many guitars! I have been finding that when I am running a prac session that there are at least 6 or 7 students who just don't get involved. They aren't always the same ones in each song, but I can only do so many things at once! Some of them refuse to participate. Only a few of them I would trust to take an instrument somewhere else to practice and know that they will actually focus on the task at hand. Makes life in the classroom difficult. Life would be so much easier if I had a BAND ROOM!
You would think that this is a necessity for a music teacher. It's not that hard to just extend on from where they current classroom is. I need three walls and a roof! One of the walls is already standing! Then we would have the space available to work with a few different groups at a time. I could work on them running their own rehearsals without needing me so much except for answering some of the music questions about how to work something out. However at the school they are all hung up on using this performing arts centre that is already standing. I maintain that it is impractical as it is for the day to day running of a music department. We don't have reliable access to it during the day, we don't have storage over there, which means half and hour to an hour of carting and setting up before any meaningful music can be made. If we were able to use it it would still be impractical because all the resources are fragmented and then we would have to run between buildings constantly to get something from one place or the other. It's a terrible situation as it is because we are suffocating in the space that is available for us. Or not available as the case may be.
Anyway, to bed now and worry about classes and stuff in the morning.
Oliver! finished last night. We had such a good show, working with those people is heaps of fun. We all agreed that working with the conductor is easy because he doesn't worry about the mistakes. Sometimes when the conductor gets too stressed then it makes the show a real drag. We had great crowds over the two weeks, six shows we did. I'm already looking forward to what the next show might be.
So I have four and a half days to claw my way through before I can have a much needed break. As much as I enjoyed the show it came during the crucial report writing period. I thought that I was just struggling to find things to say but apparently because I have two year 7 classes that I only see once a week then I have a very high number of reports to get through. I made some basic errors that took me ages to go through and fix, however next time I will have a better idea about how to fix those things in the early stages before they get into EVERY SINGLE REPORT.
So that meant that with band and reports and the show I didn't get much sleep for a few weeks. And me on no sleep, plus stress, equals brain meltdown. Stress doesn't affect me in quite the same way that it does other I think. I push it back and get through it, but this time it built up a little too much. I can't describe the feeling of relief that I felt when I finally got to Thursday morning and uploaded them for the last time. I know that there are still some errors in them, but there is only so much I can physically do when I have that many students that I am responsible for.
I have had much smaller classes over the last week, for various reasons. Especially in the year 9 classes where we have been doing a lot of practical stuff for the assembly that they are playing at this week. It is so much easier to get everyone involved when I only have 15 or so to keep a track of. I only have so many guitars! I have been finding that when I am running a prac session that there are at least 6 or 7 students who just don't get involved. They aren't always the same ones in each song, but I can only do so many things at once! Some of them refuse to participate. Only a few of them I would trust to take an instrument somewhere else to practice and know that they will actually focus on the task at hand. Makes life in the classroom difficult. Life would be so much easier if I had a BAND ROOM!
You would think that this is a necessity for a music teacher. It's not that hard to just extend on from where they current classroom is. I need three walls and a roof! One of the walls is already standing! Then we would have the space available to work with a few different groups at a time. I could work on them running their own rehearsals without needing me so much except for answering some of the music questions about how to work something out. However at the school they are all hung up on using this performing arts centre that is already standing. I maintain that it is impractical as it is for the day to day running of a music department. We don't have reliable access to it during the day, we don't have storage over there, which means half and hour to an hour of carting and setting up before any meaningful music can be made. If we were able to use it it would still be impractical because all the resources are fragmented and then we would have to run between buildings constantly to get something from one place or the other. It's a terrible situation as it is because we are suffocating in the space that is available for us. Or not available as the case may be.
Anyway, to bed now and worry about classes and stuff in the morning.
Thursday, June 05, 2008
Winding Up
Once again I have arrived at the part of the term/semester where we are winding up the work and writing reports. I am starting to get a feel for the cycle of work, making sure that I have offered the students a chance to show me that they have learnt something or have done the things that I need to report on.
I ran a test today, which went well. There was one question which I decided that I didn't like, so I have taken it off the other classes exam, and put a different one in its place. I feel like such an idiot, I asked them about a thing we've only talked about a few times and the other question about chords I forgot to include. So I adjusted the marks on it to give the students a better grade. Oh well, it's all part of the learning curve.
We had a concert with the junior and intermediate bands which was a fantastic day out. We played on stage and then went to maccas. Music kids are so much fun to take places. They enjoy themselves, they are mostly polite and well behaved and they have a fantastic sense of humour. After maccas we took them for a few hours to the local playground, which is a huge place of mazes and slides and swings. I bought along a suprise for them to run around with, little mini bottles of bubbles! I went around with my phone and took lots of photos of the band kids which I plan to put up on the wall soon in place of some of the older photos. It will make them feel like they belong to the music department, especially for the new junior band students.
The best thing about the day out was watching the friendships starting between some of the more loner students. They seem to not have a lot of friends, or not get along with the people they've known. Anyway, they start to develop new friends when they go on a day out. Friendships are based mostly on experiences they share together. That's why band trips and excursions are so important.
A bonus of the job is that in week 11 they have organised some events like breakfast and manicures for staff. Even though I work hard most of the term I really like my job. Today I went to another school for VCE assessment, after which there wasn't enough time to go back to school so I was able to go home early and get some marking and reports done.
Nearly holidays.
I ran a test today, which went well. There was one question which I decided that I didn't like, so I have taken it off the other classes exam, and put a different one in its place. I feel like such an idiot, I asked them about a thing we've only talked about a few times and the other question about chords I forgot to include. So I adjusted the marks on it to give the students a better grade. Oh well, it's all part of the learning curve.
We had a concert with the junior and intermediate bands which was a fantastic day out. We played on stage and then went to maccas. Music kids are so much fun to take places. They enjoy themselves, they are mostly polite and well behaved and they have a fantastic sense of humour. After maccas we took them for a few hours to the local playground, which is a huge place of mazes and slides and swings. I bought along a suprise for them to run around with, little mini bottles of bubbles! I went around with my phone and took lots of photos of the band kids which I plan to put up on the wall soon in place of some of the older photos. It will make them feel like they belong to the music department, especially for the new junior band students.
The best thing about the day out was watching the friendships starting between some of the more loner students. They seem to not have a lot of friends, or not get along with the people they've known. Anyway, they start to develop new friends when they go on a day out. Friendships are based mostly on experiences they share together. That's why band trips and excursions are so important.
A bonus of the job is that in week 11 they have organised some events like breakfast and manicures for staff. Even though I work hard most of the term I really like my job. Today I went to another school for VCE assessment, after which there wasn't enough time to go back to school so I was able to go home early and get some marking and reports done.
Nearly holidays.
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