Term one was chaotic. After arriving I had 5 days to tidy up the music room, make my year outline, rough sketch what I thought would be teaching the first two weeks and call a music teacher meeting with all the private music teachers working with the school. The first eight weeks flew by and are sort of a blur now. I know I learned a lot during that time. I revised some of my ideas on what it meant to be a music teacher to middle school students, I had to organize all the forms, time tables and teachers for after school music lessons, I began assembling a list and prioritizing what was needed in the music room to expand the instrument playing opportunities students had.
November brought on a whole new set of challenges as I tried to handle an impossible teaching load and organize a small part of international weekend and plan two large Christmas productions for the month of December. Extra rehearsals, new after school clubs, tension from the lower secondary students about the change in the way they would do music to prepare for the events, ordering equipment and improvising when it did not arrive. November and December had many many late nights. I didn't get home before 6:30 pm ever. Except once on a Tuesday afternoon when I went home sick (Lost my voice and had a bad headache) and the entire day I missed on the day that the primary Christmas Production was happening in the evening (I was out with Togo Belly). Both performances went well but I learned A LOT! From the necessity of dress rehearsals to the art of compromise to the importance of a good sound system. I crashed during December break exhausted.
Term two started in January. My teaching load had been reduced in order to facilitate growth in the music department. I now had time to do admin tasks like working with the local private music teachers, dealing with paperwork and organizing the music room so it looked much better and made more musical sense. I went home at 5:30pm most days in January. Forcing myself to leave even if I had not finished everything I set out to do. Every once in awhile there are still days where I have to stay late like this past week (until 7:30 Monday-Wednesday) but things are getting done.
The program still has a long way to go. As a teacher there are still things I need to learn, but overall it isn't bad. I enjoy the teaching part of the job. Sometimes if I walk through the playground I hear songs or rhymes that students learned in my class. During lunch and after school students are now coming into the music room to practice piano, recorder or xylophones. Some of them eagerly showing me what they have learned to play since last week. Right now recorder club is so popular I have to turn kids away because I don't have the time to add another recorder club. But kids are playing their recorders and taking their recorders with them everywhere. A few weeks ago I had a student (who is not taking private music lessons) create his own piece on the xylophone because we had been exploring improvisation using pentatonic scale pieces. Seeing how proud he was of his creation when he performed that song at one of the primary school assemblies made me proud as well.
But there are days when it is tough. Sometimes the lower secondary students push boundaries to the limit, refuse to participate or vandalize music department property. It is after those classes that I am reminded that this job has its downs as well as its ups. But I carry on knowing that 90% of the time being a music teacher rocks.
*How do I know the exact day? In the younger primary grades some teachers make a big deal of reaching day 100 of school because the significance of Day 100 can be tied in to the math curriculum through numbers or the concept of time learning outcomes. There are also quite a few children's books linked to the 100 days of school concept.
