School’s out for summer….

(Can’t you just hear Alice Cooper singing?) Anyway, we finished up with students yesterday and had a short working breakfast with staff this morning. It was hard saying goodbye to some of the teachers that I’ve become good friends with… particularly those on the “special team” (Art, PE, etc.) Now I just keep plugging until I nail down another job for next school year. It will be a little difficult if I can’t get something finalized by next week because starting June 7th I’m going to be at the Army camp (3.5 hours north of here) for the next 6 weeks to teach at the Music Conservatory. Oh well, if I have to drive back down for a job interview, I’ll do it. Gotta have a job. I did get an e-mail about another interview for next week so things are looking up.

So far, so good

Well, I had my job interview at one of the district’s middle schools on Thursday and it seemed to go pretty well. Its always hard to tell for certain in these situations… everyone has to be so non-commital until decisions are finally made. I did feel that I was able to deal intelligently with all their questions… no major bloopers anyway. I was also able to highlight all my band experience both in and out of schools. Now we wait… and pray! They did say that they were going to make a decision before the school year ends (two weeks) so at least I won’t being hanging out there for too long.

What a month

I realize that I’ve been very negligent about posting this past month. It has been a real rollercoaster of emotions! The first week of April, my principal dropped a bombshell out of the blue. He informed me that I am not being rehired for next year. When I asked why, he replied that, since I was a first year teacher, he didn’t have to give me a reason. With that, he was gone. As I said to Jacque later, it felt like a “drive by firing”. We were down for a few days, but we’re doing much better now. It seems that he wants to bring in his own people, since he did the same thing to a couple of the other first year teachers as well.

Then both our daughter and our youngest son had accidents where they totalled their cars. Other that some minor injuries to Angela in the second crash (broken nose and effects of whiplash), they both seem to be OK… thank the Lord for that!

Finally, today I got a call and an interview for a vacant middle school band job here in the same district. I meet with them at 4:00 on Thursday. Here’s hoping (and praying). Even though middle school kids can be challenging, I would like to move up to that level so that I can do regular band rather than just vocal and rhythm band stuff. We’ll see what happens!