Ugh... getting sick

So Sunday I went home to take back my car that was damaged by Babmi and also visited Dan and slept at his house. Yesterday morning I woke up with a stuffy nose, and thought oh hell no! If I get sick and can't work, I don't get paid, it's that simple. So I start taking anything and everything I can to get over this cold, I really hope it works. In other news, Homecoming weekend.......AMAZING! I got to see so many people I haven't seen in forever, it was great!! I lost my voice at the game...surprise, but it was worth it. Now back to reality, worked at St. Francis yesterday and this one girl asked how to play Gb and F# I don't know, im just estimating, but like 357 times! I wanted to take her instrument and tell her to never be in band again, I was just getting so annoyed. The trumpet section is really improving, which is good. Oh and I got 1 more trumpet so now I have 2 trumpets, 5 flutes and 2 percussion, things are really looking good for this band HA! Oh well, I'm going to go try and work out and then hopefully get some reading done before lessons

First Day of Subbing!

Last night, I called the substitute service hotline to see if there were any jobs for me today. Well the first one I heard was at UHS for Special Ed. Now I have nothing against special needs students or anything, if you know me, you would realize, I could never teach special ed. For some reason, I feel very uncomfortable, maybe because I have never had too much interaction with people with special needs. Luckily, there was a job open for an elementary position at Brookhaven Elementary, and PERFECT it;s like 10 mins away from my house and from Fawleys! Obviously I took it. Then I got nervous, thinking, I have to teach all of the subjects in elementary school. Social Studies, Math, English, Spelling, Science. What the hell am I going to do?? I just figured, I'll just go and read over her lesson plans and hope for the best. I got to Brookhaven this morning, and how lucky am I? I got to Sub for Pre-School!! I have worked at a daycare for two years and worked with preschool students, this is perfect. Also the teacher had an aide with her, so the aide is doing all the work, while I just sit there and play with the kids. There is this cute little guy named Gavin. He is adorable. They told me he would probably be very afraid and stand-offish because I am new. They said he cries all the time and doesn't want anyone to go near him. Well he came to class and came right over to me and was trying to play with my by scaring me lol. I about died, I have been with him the whole day. Now it is nap time a.k.a. my break. I am loving this subbing thing and I already know that I am going to be subbing high school choir at UHS for Barry Kolar. I am having a great day and it's so nice to know that right now I am making $100 for very little work!!

I wish I was teaching choir!

So This past week went ok. I'm not terribly fond of teaching band, especailly when I have 5 flutes, 2 drummers, and a trumpet for a band. I will deal with it and get through this year, but oh well. Also this week I got approved by Mon County to be a susbstitute teacher, isn't it said that I am more excited about subbing than I am about my band director job? Anyways, I already got my first call to be a Substitute today at 8am, I had to decline because I have to go teach at good ole' St. Franny! I just made it seem like I didn't already know about being a Sub, since no one called to let me know. I found out from UHS's Choral Director who i saw at Kroger. He said he is going to be needing me this Friday, I hope I sub choir this Friday, it would be amazing to be teaching a choir again. Also, Dan and Molly came in this weekend and I went to the Marshall game on Saturday. I had such a good time with Molly, she never fails to amuse me . I can not WAIT until Alumni Band this weekend! Annie and Glen, GET READY! I am not looking forward to going to St. Francis right now and teaching band. Other bad news, I lost to students TODAY for lessons, one parent told me her other son had too much stuff going on, so she couldn't take her daughter to voice lessons, that's awful, denying one child something so your other child can do more activites. The other, just didn't want to practice piano, but the mom told me he has been contemplating lessons for a while now, and didn't want to quit because he liked me so much, so that made me feel better. So now I have 23 students, which I guess isn't bad, but I just want a ton so I can make mroe money, oh well hopefully I will get more! Well I'm off to band hopefully they sound better today than last week :/

Oops forgot to blog!

Ok, so Annie reminded me about blogging about my teaching experiences. Thanks Annie! Well, what has been going on, my voice and piano lessons are going great I love teaching voice and piano and I can really hear a difference in some of my students voices! It's really exciting!! The St. Francis job on the other hand, I could live without. Thursday I went back to St. Francis to teach a couple of rehearsals, and found out that the instruments STILL aren't in to the school yet. So for the beginning band I just went over my expectations and the classroom rules, honestly I thought they would be a little more respectful since I was their student teacher last year, but it was the exact opposite. They thought that I was like their friend, and we were just their to have fun, I already had to enforce some of my rules and give out some pivots (it's a classroom management technique they use in the school, very effective). Then the advanced band was supposed to come in, I was very excited I had a lot of ideas for them. So they show up and my advanced band has 8, that's right, 8 people in it. Hold on it gets better, out of the 8 students in my band 5 of them are flutes, yes 5! What am I supposed to do with an 8 student band composed of 5 flutes, 2 percussion, and 1 trumpet???? If anyone has any ideas PLEASE send them to me. As of right now I am thinking of combinig both band and writing very simple parts for the beginning band, just so the band will be a decent size. Other than that, my life is going pretty well, I should be hearing something really soon about getting approved to be a substitute, I can't wait till I am subbing regularly and making $111 a day subbing, it will be really nice to add that money to my lessons and St. Francis job. Dan is opening his practice in the next couple weeks and already has some patients lined up! I'm so excited for him and can't wait to see his practice take off! Well that's about all that's going on right now, tomorrow I have to go back to St. Francis, hopefully the students got some of their friends to join band, I'll update and we'll see what happens, wish me luck!

First day of Band

So yesterday was my first day of Teaching Band at St. Francis, or so I though it was supposed to be. I get to St. Francis a little early to make copies of music, and a letter I wrote up to send to the parents that have my expectations, how not to buy an instrument at Walmart etc. I walk into the office all excited for my first day, make all the copies and I see the Principal. I walk over to say hi and he tells me "Hi Ryan, i am so sorry I heard you talking and I wanted to come tell you. I didn't send the order in for the instruments until Thursday (4 days ago!!!) so I cancelled band for today, and I was meaning to call you, but forgot." FORGOT!!! How does the Principal cancel MY rehearsal and then FORGET to call the Band Director?!?!?!? I was very pissed. If it's any consolation, he at least let me clock-in so i would get paid for coming. I was OK with that, but I really wanted to get the ball rolling on rehearsals, since I have to prepare a Christmas Concert in TWO MONTHS! What a great way to start at St. Francis :) So I just walk down to Maria Grisso's Music Room to see if, while I'm here, I could help her out at all. I get down there, and she explains to me that apparently this isn't the first time something like this has happened with the principal. He is apparently not to great with his communication skills. Then I was thinking, wait I am teaching advanced band, shouldn't these students already have an instrument? I was sort of right, yes they have their instruments but the principal cancelled band before that day so most of them didn't bring their instruments. I did, however, have some students bring their instrument. I had two flutes and a drummer show up. Great two f-ing flutes and drummer, perfect! I tried to have a lesson with what I had. So I try to do some warm-ups with them, just doing a Bb scale at first. Don't you know the one flute can read music AT ALL, and doesn't remember any of the fingerings. Awesome, this is what I wanted to be doing, teaching a flute the fingerings. I'm not a band person, I have never claimed to be a band person. I enjoyed being in band, but I never wanted to teach it. I took this job, one because I needed something, and two I was under the impression that the advanced band already knew how to play. Well I was wrong the old band director there didn't teach them shit, in fact the only credential she had was that she played guitar. So know I guess I'm going to have to teach both beginning and advanced band how to play their instrument. I'M PSYCHED!! Well hopefully on Thursday when I go into St. Francis things will be a little better, and the principal won't cancel MY rehearsal. On a better note I got an 85% on my first English Lit. Paper, and the class average was a 65%, so that put me in a better mood!

October 3rd first blog

So this is my first time blogging.......ever. I read Annie and Glen's blog and thought it was a good idea to keep friends who are far away updated. So i am back in good ole' Morgantown. I never thought I would be starting my first job back in WV. I always told people I would never teach in WV, and look where I am. I am actually happy to be back in town, I still have friends here, the jobs I have are all low stress and pay pretty good money, the house I am living in is beautiful, my roommate is pretty awesome, and it is close to Dan. For those of you who don't know, Dan is this guy i am dating. He is so awesome and that is the main reason I don't care that I am back in Morgantown, because it is a whole lot closer to Pittsburgh then Philly, Maryland, or Virginia. Well so far this year has been pretty good, I have 26 piano & voice students ( I know, me teaching piano). For the most part I like it, i have a couple of really strange students, but it is really nice teaching one-on-one. I get to bond with my students on a completely different level, it's more of like a friends teaching them piano and voice rather than a teacher in front of the class teaching. So I got this lesosns job, and it was great, but I wasn't sure how I was going to live off of the lessons. Luckily, Dr. Robbins (Music Ed Professor @ WVU) e-mailed me a whole bunch of job openings around the area, so i interviewed, and interviewed and got a job as band director at St. Francis. I am very excited, because it is where I student taught. The pay isn't as much as I would like it to be, but I will manage. I will also be subbing in Mon and Marion county on the days I do not work at St. Francis. So while I will be working 3 jobs this year, none of them are high stress jobs, which will be nice. My first band rehearsal for St. Francis is Monday. I am very nervous because I never thought about teaching band to anyone, I don't know what I'm going to do. I mean I know it's the frist day so a lot of the time we will be going over my expectations and rules, but then what do I do on the second day. I know I went through Instrumental Methods with Mo Weav, but I'm just afraid I am going to forget something, or make a really stupid mistake and then that will be it. Oh well, if I do make a mistake at least I won't have someone in the back grading my every mistake. Wow I didn't realize how much I was rabbling on, I kind of like this blogging thing. Thanks Annie & Glen!