Week 10 moments

Time for an HVHS teaching update! Things have been going extremely well at school, and although this week is utter insanity (last week of term, my sole charge week, writing Year 9 reports, Year 11 and Year 13 performances and assessment reports, Year 9 guitar assessments, etc.), it has actually been a very positive experience. I had my Global Student Teaching supervisor Jill observe my final Year 13 Jazz History lesson today, and it went really well. It was a successful lesson, although I didn't feel it was my best (mainly because of a couple pacing issues due to the fact that my Year 13s haven't had a Jazz History lesson in 3 weeks, so all of their answers and discussions took longer as they had to recall all of the information). Nonetheless, Jill's comments on my teaching were extremely positive. A few quotes for the interested:

"I can tell already that you are a very proficient teacher..... and I don't say that often."

*jokingly* "It was almost a waste of time for me to come here and observe you doing exactly what I knew you could do!"

"You will have absolutely no problem finding a job.... and if you do, I want to know why!"

So, needless to say, I was very happy with how the day went in that regard. I also had my Year 9D guitar assessments today, and at the end of the spell when I was supervising the students putting their guitars back in the storage room, one boy stayed behind after putting his guitar away, looking like he had something to say. He sheepishly said to me, "It's been good, Miss, being in your guitar class. And I'm sorry about a couple things right at the beginning...." (we'd had a little "chat" in the first 2 lessons about some disruptive behaviour, i.e. horsing around with his friend in the classroom while I was distributing guitars to the rest of the class) ".... but it's really been good. Thank you." So that was a completely unexpected and really nice moment today. Then when I went back into the classroom I had a couple more boys waiting around to say thank you, to wish me a good term break, and to ask me if I was going to travel New Zealand on my 2 weeks off, so all in all it was definitely a nice way to end the day. I also got another very complimentary interim report from Stephen, so to make a long story short, today was fabulous! Definitely a lot of feel-good moments today (including at lunch time when Salma, one of my students from the last line of Year 9 guitar, stopped to have a visit with me outside the hall and asked me worriedly if I would be back in Term 4. When I said that I would be back for 4 weeks, she grinned and said, relieved, "Oh ok, good!"). I love HVHS!

Despite the fact that I still have copious amounts of work to do tonight (Year 11 performance assessment reports, Year 9 general music assessment marking, Year 9 general music reports.... oy vey....), I feel very content. I have another Orchestra performance tomorrow at assembly in Spell 1 so I'll have to get everything for tomorrow prepared for tonight, as performing in Spell 1 means that I lose my non-contact (prep) period. Life around here, as I said before, is utter insanity. But, it's all good. :o) And besides, you know me.... I've never been one to sit around idly anyway..... bring on the next challenge!

(I maybe shouldn't say that and tempt fate, as Gary, Katriona, Stephen and I are planning on having all of the Year 9s gather together in one room tomorrow and watch the DVD "High School Musical" in the last spell of the day. I can sense the impending chaos!)

So with that, I leave you with another video. This one isn't super recent, as I've only just figured out how to compress videos for the blog. I actually took this video of Grace a few weeks ago when we were hanging out on Courtenay Place in Wellington, likely during one of our traditional Tuesday get-togethers. So here you are - meet Grace in 3D! (Oh, and for the record, the shout-out to Auntie Diane is really to Auntie Diane and Uncle Ron.... didn't mean to leave anyone out! Haha. And if somehow you missed the in-joke about double chins, you must go back a few posts to find the infamous double chin pictures.... they're really too attractive to pass up)!