The Ultimate Question

Workday - 8:15am-3:45pm

This morning in my ESL class, a student was working on a presentation for another class and had some questions. She came up to me, held up a tomato in a bag and asked,

"Is it pronounced to-may-to or to-mah-to?"

I laughed.

She had no idea what was funny.

Choir Begins

Workday - 8:05am-5:30pm

Our concert choir's first practice was actually last week. I don't really know how it happened, but we had about 125 students show up to that rehearsal. That's insane! The numbers generally drop by the second week as only the serious members return.

However.

I had at least a dozen kids approach me throughout the day today telling me they couldn't make it to last week's rehearsal and asking if they could still come out this afternoon. Of course, they were still allowed to join. I didn't think it was possible, but we may have had more students show up today.

This will be the largest choir in the history of the school. It will also be the largest choir I've ever conducted. I'm not sure if it will be a particularly fabulous choir, but at least it will have a big sound.

I did have my first jazz choir rehearsal today, though. Now I have a dilemma. I have way too many sopranos, too few altos, and a good number of guys (baritones) except only half of them can sing in tune.

Ideally I'd like to move about a third of the sopranos to alto and kick out half of the guys. Unfortunately, both of these moves would result in very upset students (I wish I knew why sopranos view singing alto as a fate worse than death).

I could also just recruit more altos to balance out the other two sections, but I'm still stuck with a bunch of kids who can't sing. I don't care about that so much in a concert choir of 100+ members, but a jazz choir is a small ensemble that also uses microphones. One off-key singer would be very, very noticeable.

I'll figure something out, I suppose.

I know this is a really devastating problem I have. Try not to worry too much about me.

I Told You There Would Be Engrish

Workday - 8:15am-6:00pm

Although we're in our third week of school now, and I feel settled into routine myself, things still aren't really settled. As usual (and as expected), I'm still getting new students in every class. I'm also losing a couple in some classes. Getting new students 2+ weeks into the semester is really annoying. I have enough already scheduled to do that period, and suddenly it all has to be put on hold for 5-10 minutes while I get the new guy/girl caught up. It's especially difficult in my beginner keyboarding class because those first two weeks are crucial as they're learning the basics. In those two weeks the class has gone from knowing nothing about music to reading notes in both clefs and playing pieces of music with both hands together (among other things). I've also explained a lot about how the class works and what they can expect over the semester. That's two weeks of talking I can't exactly sum up in a few minutes to a new student. The best "way out" is to partner them with other students who can help them catch up. Unfortunately, that rarely works. Students are too shy, don't help others , don't ask for help, don't want to be bothered.

It's actually easiest to get latecomers in my ESL careers class. I just give them the handouts they missed and say, "Finish these at home. If you have any questions, ask (name of student sitting beside him/her)".

That class is going well. It's quite low-pressure. I have them writing journals as much as I can just to get them in the habit of writing. I don't care how poor their English skills are, though the poorer ones are the most fun to read.

I'm sure there will be plenty of Engrish to come, but right now I only have one sample from their first journal. I asked what they hoped to learn from this course.

"I want to do the math teacher. I hope this careers class will help me learn to do the math teacher"

I hope she isn't too disappointed that I definitely will not be teaching that.

*snicker*

It Begins

Workday - 8:15am-4:00pm

Two days of school have come and gone. I already feel used to being back there. There's nothing all that interesting to report as of yet, but everything's going well. The ESL careers course will be rough if I keep it. Although I could have some great Engrish entries to report, down the road. It's possible that I could drop the course and pick up a section of grade 10 band instead, however. I'd much prefer that, but I'm not going to hold my breath.

I'll write more when I get to know my classes better. I'm sure something funny will happen within the next week.

---

Here's something completely off-topic. I rarely write about my personal life on here, but I figure this story warrants some attention.

I've somehow managed to lose all of my friends. They disappeared all within the last year. I don't know if it's something I did, or didn't do, or if everyone just went their separate ways all at once. What's weird is that my boyfriend's friends all disappeared, too. People who never knew my friends, and people who know us both well. All at once, they're all gone! The only people I see now are family. Although even my boyfriend's cousin (whom we normally hang out with fairly frequently) turned us down the last few times we suggested going out. I feel like I'm in the twilight zone!

So. My "social meter" is in the negatives. I need to meet new people somehow. Otherwise, this year is going to be depressing no matter how well school may go.

I can only spend so long playing with my Nintendogs.

More Timetable Woes

Workday - 1:30pm-3:00pm

I figured I'd call the time I was in school today a "workday". Considering I was at school... and working.

So I finally popped into the school to check on things. I picked up whatever was in my mailbox, including my current timetable. Unfortunately, that timetable was the same as the one I saw back in June. I'm still stuck with half ESL careers classes (the other half being music classes). Geez. That's the kind of timetable V.P.s give to teachers they want to punish for some reason. I'm not really sure what I did to deserve it.

I wanted to prepare what I could for the first day of class. Basically, I only wanted to print and photocopy course outlines. I didn't have any class lists yet, however, so I didn't know class sizes. Of course, everything can change in the first few weeks when it comes to numbers anyway, so 30-35 copies per class should cover it.

However.

I was all set to print and realized the music office printer was gone. The boss took it for the summer holiday. No problem. I still had course outlines for my keyboard classes already printed from June that I could photocopy. I go to the photocopy room -- no photocopier! It's like the twilight zone around there! Who took an entire photocopier, and why? Of course, there may have been other photocopiers in other photocopier rooms somewhere in the school, but at this point I'd given up. Chances are, any of the few (working) photocopiers left would be in use.

So that was a near-wasted afternoon. I did get a lot of work done to my car after my visit to the school. A back-to-school tune-up. It's probably running better than it ever has. It's nice to have one thing fewer to worry about, at least.

My last weekend of freedom. Here's to another school year upon us!