Room 105 is open for business

Okay, so I know this is a little late in coming, but in my defense, I have been busy. So here it goes, the REAL adventures of Tana the Teacher.

First up, here is a random picture of my door. They finally put my name on it!



Let's see, where to begin. "Let's start at the very beginning. A very good place to start........" Sorry, I've been a music nerd for too long. Anyway, I guess you could say I started my teaching career last Monday, Aug. 22. On the 22nd and 23rd I had a district new teacher orientation I had to go to all day. I will be getting paid for them, so I consider them my first days on the job.

The 24th and 25th were the first two days of actual school, but they were only half days. At the Junior High, we went through all seven classes, each one only being about 20 or so minutes long. I also didn't start at the elementary schools until the following Monday, so I had it pretty easy the first two days. I taught three classes each those two days, had an hour or so to myself, got fed lunch by the school, and then spent the rest of the afternoon in faculty meetings. The third day of school, Friday, was a regular day (at least for the Junior High). In the morning we have a class called AAA/SEA. It is pretty much a 15 minute advisement period where I check up on them and try and help them stay organized and on top of their homework. The goal of the school is for all the teachers to be teaching the same lessons every day, but I'm still kind of lost as to how exactly I'm supposed to be running that class. Oh well, I'll find out eventually. After that class, I had my regular three classes and then the rest of the day to myself.

This past Monday (the 19th), was the start of my first full week of school. I once again taught my normal class at the junior high and then went around to the elementary schools giving a little "join band" speech to all of the 6th graders. Since then I've just been doing pretty much the same thing except I've been demonstrating instruments to the 6th graders to help them decide which instrument to play. Also trying to teach them a little bit about the basics of reading music.

Overall, I guess things are going well. Obviously it all kind of started out rough, but I'm slowly getting into the swing of being a real teacher. Hopefully it continues to get better and easier.

My biggest concern/frustration is never feeling like I'm caught up or like I know what I'm doing. Imagine if you were trying to teach a little kid to swim by throwing them into the middle of a lake and telling them to swim to shore. The instinct to stay alive would probably kick in and the kid would eventually make it to shore. Well, that's kind of what I feel like. A little kid in the middle of a lake that doesn't know how to swim and I'm just flailing my arms and legs to try and stay above water.

Well, that's enough of my rantings for one post. I'll hopefully post more here in the next few days. And by the way, don't get the wrong idea and think that I'm hating my job. Yes, I feel inadequate at the moment, but I've been looking forward to this moment in my life for 10 years and it's finally here! I went into it knowing that the first year was going to be hard.