I decided to speak up

In my last post, I mentioned that I had gotten another job. I know what stresses me out, so I asked to shadow the teacher who is leaving for his last two days. This way I could meet the kids and see what kinds of things they're working on. This is the first time I've …

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Restart

Since I started this here blog as a way to chronicle my return to work, I guess it's fitting that I should have to start (again) at the beginning. I'm back to square one, and BY GOLLY DARN IT ¹, I'm gonna chronicle this shit.² Knowing my track record, I'm probably going to fail. It's okay …

This WILL be my low point

I've made the decision that Friday WILL be my lowest point of the year. It will be, because I feel like I'm making clear steps forward and learning from my own mistakes. Has my school frustrated me? YES. I'm a music teacher with no instruments, no piano, no sound system to even PLAY music for …

CITWGEATTF

When I'm tired, I love to laugh. I NEED to laugh. So, in honor of my frustrating week, I decided to start planning a "private" collection of "Concert Ideas That Would Get Even a Tenured Teacher Fired" CITWGEATTF for short. I've got four so far. I may have a fun conversation with students about hilarious …

Deep Breaths, Girl

Tomorrow is my first day back since 2003. Crazy, right? What's surprised me the most this last week is how much I'VE changed since then. It seems like an easy "of course you've changed--you've had four kids!" kind of moment, but it's fascinating to see the changes against a standard. Yes I've changed, but let's …

I shouldn’t celebrate, but…

It's Friday evening and school starts Monday. Well, school was *supposed* to start Monday, but our start day was just pushed back to Wednesday since I work in a new building and it's just not ready. I may have seen a teacher cry with relief. NO, it wasn't me. 🙂

Bad Day

I really wanted to keep this kind of upbeat, but I don't want to forget this part, either. So sorry in advance, but this wasn't a fun day. Here's a necessary reference-- I have four kids: E (early teen girl), K (tween girl), D (6-year-old boy), and L (preschool girl) Got it? 🙂 Ok.... After …

It’s a Choice

I went up to the roof of my school today to watch the Great Solar Eclipse of 2017. There were maybe 15 of us up there at one point. We all, before the school year has actually started, shared this cool moment together. We only had two pairs of eclipse glasses for all of us, …

First week down

My first week (of professional development) is done. I don't have students yet, so I spent the week (the first of two) in professional development with tons of other new teachers. Most were over a decade younger than I am, but since I stopped maturing around the age of 19, this was not a problem. …

TIRED

I wanted to write yesterday. And the day before yesterday. But I'm TIRED. I'm not going to lie: today kind of hit hard. We were handed file after file after file of curriculum, along with forms we need to use for assessments, lesson planning, year planning, etc., and I kind of hit a wall. I …