Anecdotes and Happenings from Student Teaching! Week 1

So, as many of you know I have begun the final chapter of my undergrad and am now student teaching.  My assignment is Woods Cross High School and I will be studying with Todd Campbell.  I've decided that I should start chronicling my adventures via my blog, which also means I will start consistently writing again.  I may also skip a week here and there but I will do my best to be punctual about writing.  So here is what happened this week!

This was my first "official" week of teaching.  I say "official" because I've been heading up there several different weeks over the summer helping out with band camps and such.  This year was unique for WXHS because they started later, and since Monday was Labor Day, they started on Tuesday.  My first day really didn't start differently than most days, because we have super early morning jazz band, at 6:15 AM every day of the week.  But I started going last week when they started class early and so I was already used to waking up and hanging out with those kids at that super early time.  Plus, most of the kids in my bands already know me from the summer so my first day didn't really feel like one.  However, one of the things that made it complicated was that it was my first full schedule, classes all day.  Tuesday was an A day and it consisted of Jazz Band, Jazz Lab, Wind Ensemble and Music Theory.

Jazz Lab is a really interesting class that not a lot of high schools do.  Basically, the kids learn how to improvise, they listen to a lot of music and develop essential skills to make it into the Jazz Band or as a professional musician.  Wind Ensemble is pretty cut and dry, except that we mostly played pep band music in preparation for an assembly on wednesday.  And finally Music Theory, another self explanatory class.

Wednesday was assembly schedule, which if you don't remember means that every class is shorter to accommodate the assembly.  The Assembly would feature our pep band so we had to frantically prepare the band to play, which was quite a disaster.  It was pure mania; the band was trying to get shirts, music folders, actually play the music and then on top of all that we had to manage getting all the kids into the right places for the assembly so that it wouldn't be a total disaster.  Luckily, it went pretty smoothly and they played extremely well.  My B Days consist of Jazz Band, Percussion Ensemble and Symphonic Band.  Again, nothing too crazy to write about for these days.

Thursday was pretty exciting, because it was like the actual first real day of school.  In high school, the first two days of school are pretty much just talking about and going over the disclosure.  But Thursday and Friday were definitely more fun than the previous days, as now we can start working on real music.  Or just pep band, because we had a game on Friday.

And let me just say it went quite well.

That was just the first quarter too.

Another picture of my band :)

We ended up winning 41-14 over Skyview.  Looks like it might be a good year of football.  Well, at least for one of my teams..

And for the less exciting parts of my week, band directors have to a LOT of stuff to prepare for the coming year.  This week and the previous I've done more than my fair share of grunt work for the program, such as calendar stuff, instrument rental, repair, attending faculty meetings and tons of other not fun teacher stuff.  But hey, at least I know what I am getting into.

And now the best part about student teaching: I am actually happy for once.  Like, that never happens.  I'm just so stoked to go to school every day even though this week I've gotten no sleep adjusting to a new schedule and am just constantly tired.  I've also been having a hard time finding out my discipline style as a teacher and also with the 100+ names I need to learn.  It's also been a ton of driving too and just feeling like I don't what I'm doing.  But all of that being said, I'm having a great time.

I think if someone would have told me five years ago that this would be the best part about my education, I would probably call them a fool.  But student teaching has really made everything I've had to endure over the last five years totally worth it, and I'm glad I stayed in school long enough to get to this point.

Anyway, I'll have more to talk about next week.  Hopefully, more awesome, funny, awkward and totally interesting stuff to read.

According to my supervisor, this is the honeymoon stage of teaching so I guess it really hasn't started yet.  But I'm sure there will be much more to come.