Another Thing To Do

So this week I started my somewhat humiliating endeavor into Student Teaching!!! (BUMP BUMP BUM!!!)

If you don't know the story here is the condensed version:

I was teaching elementary instrumental music at two schools for two years.

In may I was pink slipped because of our state's tanking economy (even though I was not the lowest splinter on the totem pole, but I am not bitter).

And since I was barely not done with my credential I could not find another job.

So this fall I had to substitute teach to earn some kind of meager income (worst job I have ever had, hands down, 4th graders.... they should just skip that grade)

and now.... with much anticipation, I have begun the final chapter in the ridiculousness that is our education system. The CSUB credential program is a joke! but the punch-line comes in that they control my immediate destiny... so I jump the hoops and do the assignments that have nothing to do with teaching music with methods music teachers would never use (nor most regular teachers that I know.)

So the student teaching has begun, one week down, nine more to go. The odd thing is I am student teaching in the very band room that I spent my Jr. High years escaping from the torment that is Jr. High School when you are a kid that the only thing you can do is play the trumpet and throw air balls.

I take over fully on monday, so I have to spend the weekend writing lesson plans (which I have yet to meet a music teacher that writes lesson plans, but that is neither here nor there).

The interesting thing that has spurred my first post in almost two months is this: I have enjoyed many of the students energy for playing music. They may not be the best players, even for their age, and they don't always like the music they have to play, but they do the best they can, and generally speaking, they are a very capable group. It has caused me to think back to when I was that age and try and remember what it was like, what was my attitude toward music then? Was I that excited about it, did I have that much energy to put into this stuff? If so, where did that energy go? grant it, it was twenty years ago, but hey, I should still have that mental energy right?

Not to mention the oddity of being back in a somewhat familiar place from a time I barely remember seeing my name engraved on plaques hanging on the wall for the last twenty years. Odd indeed!!

anyhow, I have a band piece being played this may and I am beginning work on another extended song cycle (ultimately, it may end up to be not so extended, but for now, my intentions are bold and ambitious).

and on top of it all, I begin for the third year in a row, the waiting and waiting for Ph.D. program decisions. Fantastic....!!