What Are They Doing?

I can not believe that the end of February is almost here. The time just keeps going by. This means I have been back at work for a month already! I am still really enjoying my work and the kids seem to also be really keen. I am wondering if this is just the novelty of a new teacher and if it will wear off soon, I hope not. Some of the students have a lot of talent and it would be good to see this grow. Today I had a lesson with a student who got her saxophone for the first time. I love that look on kids faces when they make their first sound. In the afternoon I saw the funniest thing (at the time I didn’t think it was funny and nearly had a heart attack for the instrument’s safety), the student was taking her sax home. She had it strapped to the front of her push scooter and she was rolling off down the road! The things we do to get our instruments to and from school!

Filed under: Uncategorized, General

Well yesterday I had a fantastic day at work. I was at LSHS yesterday which is about a 50 minute drive from home. To get there I have to drive on the Ipswich motorway and then the Warrego highway. In the morning my drive went smoothly, it was lightly raining so it was a nice drive. All my lessons went really well and most of the students seem really keen. The music teacher I work with out there is great and a huge support so this I think will work out really well. Anyway after finishing everything I had to do for the day I went out to my car at about 3:45pm. My car wouldn’t start as this silly fool left her lights on all day! I then had to call RACQ to come and jump start me. I waited half and hour but was able to do some work in the car. After the nice RACQ man got me started I headed off on my way home. I was cruising along having a good drive when bam - all the traffic had stopped. As far as I could see the traffic was at a standstill, I hadn’t even reached the Ipswich motorway yet! I flicked on the radio just in time to hear the traffic report that a truck had rolled on the Ipswich motorway and all lanes were closed. Just what I needed. So I crawled in traffic for hours. I pulled into my driveway last night at 7 pm, a 50 minute trip took 2 hours 45 minutes! I love having to drive to work!

Filed under: Uncategorized, General

The second week of school has nearly passed, boy the time is going quickly. I have forgotten how organised you have to be as an IM teacher. The work can be really rewarding but it can also do your head in! It is really difficult to get everything done at a school especially when you are only there for a day and don’t return till the following week. Today my frustration came when I was chasing a principal to sign a letter that I had to get out to the kids and I was waiting all day until finally at 3:30 I tracked him down and physically got him to sign it. I then had another hour of work to do photocopying, sorting, and marking into class groups, putting them in teacher’s pigeon holes!

On a different note, most things about moving into our house are great. However, we do have interesting neighbours. They have very loud arguments probably every second day. It started the day after we moved in! Today they had a doozy (I was not home but T informed me) and 6 police turned up. They have been pretty quiet tonight so I hope it gets better. A positive to come out of it all is that it has made us appreciate having a good relationship!

Filed under: Uncategorized, General

Well reality has hit this week as I had to begin work again. This year I have gone back to Instrumental Music teaching which I am really looking forward to but it took its toll this week. My itinerary covers 4 schools so this week I went around to all schools to meet new principals and students and boy do I have a lot of stuff floating around in my head (names, photocopier codes, phone codes etc). I am also not used to driving a minimum of 30 mins to work everyday (when I was in Blackwater before Christmas I just had to walk up the road to get to work!). I think as I get used to it I will really start to enjoy work. Another reason I think I was so tired this week is that we moved house last weekend. I hate moving as it is such an exhausting job. We had some great family and friends who helped and we wouldn’t have been able to do it without them. We are now almost settled in to our new place (we still have a few boxes in the garage to sort through) and it is nice to have our own space again. We had some friends over for lunch today and it was lovely to be able to entertain! I hope to sort through the remaining boxes sometime this week but we will see how week 2 at work goes. 

Filed under: Uncategorized, General