So, I guess I should explain

Explanation time.. no, I'm ok people.  Don't worry, just a little batch of bad news that day.  Besides, Canada lost the hockey game and was out of medal standings.  It was a bad day all around.

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Okay, so here's the skinny on what happened.  If you haven't heard already.  PACI as of next year will only be a 10-12 students with only the students who are already there.  No new influx.  What with the rejection of the re-zoning alot of students are already jumping ship over to Hammerskjold.  It's funny, they say that enrollment is declining at those schools, and I wonder why, they keep saying it's closing so of course, nobody's gonna wann go there.

The reality is that the # of students will be the same overall... so the jobs should be safe.  Just people will have to move around.  My problem with that is the fact that I usually benefited from the more schools.  They'd have more classes.  With less schools there's less chancesof having smaller classes. Like instead of 2 classes with 15 a piece, they'd have 1 of 30 ...

So, that's why I felt a little down over it, I realized that I'd be getting a short end here.  And seeing as I'm not even ON a seniority list... I'm on the lowest rung.  That and I'm waiting for results from my interview.  I'm not too pleased ... I don't think I did well.  Time will tell.

 

PACI - r.i.p.

too bad!

 

Crushed

I've been sitting here ever since the staff meeting this afternoon.  Trying to think of what to write... Obviously I have a lot to write... but what.  The trickiest part was how I felt.  I'm kind of numb about it, but that's not exactly true.  How does it effect me?  The correct adjective was hard to find.  I think finishing reading Canticle for Leibowitz has sort of helped me find that proper word.  In the end of thebook Abbot Zerchi tries running out of of the church when an explosion occurs and he gets crushed by all the rubble.  That's sort of how I feel right now.  Crushed.  Some huge terrible thing has happened and it is beyond my powers to be able to do anything.  Beyond anybody's powers to do anything.  What this means for me is hard to say.  The trickiest part I'm having here is what to do.  Because I don't know what it means for me, I'm usnure of what to do.  Now am I really unsure of what to do, or just because I'm afraid to do something.  My whole life I've been too afraid to shit or get off the pot kinda thing.  I hesitate and because I do i miss out.  I really am clueless right now.. and crushed.

 

I ramble on too much - Sometimes it's not good for an interview

Today, I had an interview...

Not an issue, normally... I've had lots of interviews lately.  Weirdly enough, the LAST interview I had was with the same people.  Today it was for the pool hiring list, and to ensure tha tI keep my spot on there.  Apparently it 'runs out' after 2 years, so you have to renew it.  So, at 2pm today I went down to the board office to try to do that.

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Written Part - 25 minutes

You are to write about your best lesson / unit to date.  It was funny, because I guess being a new teacher you always think your best to date is your most recent.  So I wrote about that 10 Applied unit I redesigned and stuff.  Then part way through they were conducting the oral interviews in the next room and you could hear the questions through the walls, so they had to move me and this girl to another room to write.  When I get to the room there's no more desks available so she then takes me to the 3rd floor to write in there.  So technically all the moving I had less than the allotted time, but... I'm not going to complain.  I had a great idea and it didn't take me long to write it.

 

Oral Part

This was neat as it was the people who last gave me an interview... I didn't get that position... so maybe it wasn't neat.  But Neil is a good guy, so it was nice seeing a friendly face there.

1. Why you?


2. How have you designed a curriculum to incorporate students of different learning levels.


3. Situation:  you meet a student in the hall who has missed a few days of your class lately and when you ask them why they say "somebody's been taunting me" and when you ask them if they are coming today they say "no, i don't think so" and walk away


4. How have you incorporated Literacy in the classroom?


5. Explanation of your Written Portion

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Always disliked question #1, I'm not good at bragging about myself.  But I did get a chance to tell them about the website I've designed http://members.shaw.ca/mrmoore which I think is a good thing.  They were all pretty much standard fare questions, but... still... I ramble on alot, I'm not so good at explaining myself on the spot.  Give me some time to really develop a response and I'm ok... maybe I shouldn't try to be a lawyer... who knows.  I wish me luck.

-ry

Our Winipeg Wake Up Call

So another yearly ritual is done...  The 2006 Winnipeg Scottish Festival.

Overall it was a fun experience.  We had a good time together as a band.  Saturday ended up being a VERY busy day for me, I played for 2 drummers, 2 competitions and 3 band competitions.  Rough, especially as my reed was having rough troubles all along.  But I won't make excuses.

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Day starts off with me going to register and the WSF people start off telling me that if we don't pay, nobody plays!  It was not a pretty sight, they really don't like us there - it's obvious.  But again, I'm not gonna make excuses. I don't want to retell the story, but needless to say, we're not well received there.  Too bad it's the only competition for us to really go to.  Wish we had other options.

So I go from that to playing for Cassie and Joe.  Did pretty well... for solos, I woulda been dead last, but Joe ended up with a 5th place.  Good for him, it was his first competition!

A bit of a reprieve for a while and then it was playing for my competitions.  The neat thing was that I was competing against Peter.  I saw Pete's secretary the other day and she said I should kick his ass.  Turns out I did!  He was REALLY REALLY sounding good before we left.  But I played really well, at least I thought so.  But I ended up getting a 5th for my strathspey/reel and 6th for my march.  I thought I played much better than that, but oh, well.  Weirdly Pete didn't place

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Then it was time for the band competitions... well we could have done much better, but ... it was a great learning experience.  We got spanked!  But the bar was REALLY brought up.  Some of the bands really were smoking that day.  But... again, I'm not making excuses.

Results:

Slow March - 6/8:  4th place - apparently they didn't liek the seconds for the slow march... 'too busy' grr... oh, well.  Would have liked to got 2nd place to get 'our' trophy again... heh

QMM: 4th place - had a few new people playing with us for this one, so we did pretty well considering

Medley: 3rd place - cool!

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The cool thing about the weekend I think was that we got to talk to the guy from Kinnairds, Rob.  Realy good guy, let us exchange some of his reeds we had bought previously and talked some shop with him.  Definitely throwing a lot of business his way.  I bought some fun new gadgets:  a reed protector [the piper's pal] and a new tuner!

 

So, what now... back to work.  An interview tomorrow afternoon, so I should go and prepare [some advice from Jarron].

-ry

NipiGONE - and the 'stupid tax'

So... bonehead award here.  Go to do a show for the Men's Briar in Nipigon.  Me, Rory and Joe.  Should be good, we got paid a good amount so we could all make some good cash.  But... well, the way my life goes I packed late last night and left super early this morning with my gear.  So I totally forgot to bring my dress shoes.    After Joe was a little upset over forgetting his tie, and I realized that I forgot my flashes... I notice that I'm wearing my only pair of shoes and they're my shitty brown ones.  So I make the split decision call to go off and buy a pair...   back at the shop where Ror picked up some undershirts.  So I realized that we're in NIPIGON... they really don't have much of a selection... no dress shoes... barely any just black shoes.  So I buy the only pair that could pass if nobody's really looking and they're $42.  My stupid tax!    I deserved to pay it.  Luckily the lady took pity on me and she said she'd give me the 20% off rate.  Nice... so now I just have to take them back to Wal-Mart sometime... heh. 

Next Semester looming

So here comes the next semester, just looming around the corner. Should be good.  I've got the 10 applieds again.  Which means I've already got most of the resources planned, plus I've got a very good idea of how to calendar it out.  To make it even easier, Jarron's also got a period of them too, so it'll be pretty cool to co-teach this class.  It'll be pretty efficient by the time we're done.  Also, I've only 13 students too!  Nice.

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The other bonus is that I'm getting my contacts in with the school.  Especially after the last trip, it was pretty good.  Got to really know a few of the guys better and they got to see me more at least.  It'll be good when I'm back on supply that they'll know who I am and when they need me I guess hopefuly I can stick out.  I should get around to getting my cards out to the other schools so that they know I'm good for supply afternoons.

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Well... enough of this dawdling, I should get back to work or something.  Got a band dinner thing to get to tonight, and hopefully Jarron'll have looked at the stuff I've made up for the first few days.

 

-ry