Another Kick at the Can

Another Kick at the Can

For this, my final year, I am getting a second kick at the can to teach grade 8 subjects - and I'm truly glad that I am.

Last year, for the first time in my career, I was assigned grade 8 Science, History, Geography, Health and Physical Education.  I was not happy with this assignment.  "For heaven's sake, I have two years to go.  Just leave me alone and let me teach what I love - Music!"  However, for the students, this was a far better setup than having me teach 4 other classes of junior music, and this grade 8 class having 4 different teachers for these subjects.

 A year ago, I was scrambling to get all those new grade 8 lessons ready in time and really didn't feel that I had done a bang-up job until well after Christmas.  I had many, "If I had known that, I would have done it differently." moments.  This year is truly different because I now know the content.  I know what the important information is, what activities were interesting to the kids, and more importantly, what didn't work.

Last year was eerily similar to my first year of teaching - except, in contrast to then, I had many years of teaching experience and classroom systems in place that had yet to be developed 35 years ago.  Though it was similar, it was in no way as traumatic.

So, even though I would much rather be teaching full time music for this last year, I am, believe it or not, very excited to have been given these same assignments one more time.  Another kick at the can to get these subjects right.  "Yay!  Olly olly oxen free!!"