chugging along

Things at school are basically going well. I wish I had a more supportive administration. Chimes meets after school on Mondays, chorus meets after school on Tuesdays, and starting next week the musical rehearsals will be after school Wednesdays and Thursdays.

Chris has been super busy working part-time as a school photographer (think picture day and yearbook stuff including sports teams) and doing his own photography stuff on the side. Last weekend he shot a horse show for the whole weekend and I helped out on Saturday and Sunday. I had an awesome time. I do have to admit I'm not the biggest fan of dressage (where the rider has to make the horse do certain things like walk and canter and turn with the least amount of movement as possible). I'd much rather go to a rodeo (something I still haven't done out here). The best part was that I got to pet a bunch of horses. It made me realize even more how I'm completely happier when I have animals around me (nice animals, that is). So I've decided I want to take some horseback riding lessons for a month or so just for fun. Hopefully my friend Katie, who owns some horses, will be my teacher. I really hope it works out.

Also, I've joined the Nashville Race for the Cure. I'm running (err, walking... err, crawling) in honor of my mom's mom, my granny, Alene Bohanon. She had breast cancer when I was little and had a mastectomy. I'm on the Wilson County Educator's Association (county my school's in) team, so I'm hoping I'll get to know some other teachers and people working in the county. And I'm hoping to raise some money for breast cancer research. If you would like to help me reach my goal of $1,000, you can go to my website for the race. I'm super excited about this!

stupid finale registration

I just spent about 6 hours working on some hand chimes music. I basically had to take 4 songs and cut them apart (musically/notationally... if that's a word... speaking) and rewrite them all in Finale NotePad. I would have loved to use the version of Finale I bought back in college, but I loaned it to too many people and can't register the software on my newish laptop.

I will probably never want to hear Jolly Old St. Nicholas, Jingle Bells, Up on the Housetop, or We Wish You a Merry Christmas after the chimes group is done with them.

We're working on getting the musical approved by our principal. I hope it's approved. My team teacher really wants to do it (and I don't really but that means I'll be able to do the one I like when I'm teaching solo). It's a new kids' musical called Dreamcatcher. The teacher I work with is all into Native Americans and ghosts (she says she can communicate with ghosts and wants me to go with her to the Bell Mansion to see if she can communicate with the Bell Witch Ghost... on halloween). Last year's musical was some spinoff of The Wizard of Oz and it was almost not approved because there's a witch/evil/scary stuff. Mostly evil. I mean, this is the first year where if the chorus sings a Christmas carol (We Three Kings, for instance), we also have to sing a secular Christmas song (Jolly Old St. Nicholas). We weren't even allowed to sing any songs with the words Christmas or Jesus when I was in elementary school. (Sidenote: apparently this school system drove out the ACLU a couple years back, and when we do the moment of silence we actually have to bow our heads and close our eyes.)

Next week is my first observation and I'm not too excited. The state of Tennessee has so much paperwork for observations that it's taking me longer to do the paperwork than prepare for the lesson! And I don't know what this administrator wants so I'm not positive what kind of lesson will make her happiest. From what I can tell, anything that connects to other subjects is good. Basically involve as little music as possible, and as much social studies as possible.

But I'm finished for the afternoon, so that's good! I learned that a new teacher spends an average of 70 hours per week working. So it's great to have a little break!