Monday, September 17, 2007

Overwhelmed

This evening I left work at 7:00 for the second Monday in a row. A long work day, considering that I arrived at school at 7:00 this morning. I guess it's nothing new to being a teacher - and so many other teachers (my mom!) work so much harder than I do - but I've been feeling rather overwhelmed recently, regarding one class in particular. After 4 weeks or so of meeting with all four sections of 5th Grade classes at our school together with me and the band director trying to figure out who would be in band and who would be in strings, we finally decided and separated into two classes. This year instrumental music is required in 5th Grade (that may change next year because of all that's happened!), so dividing about 75 students between two teachers didn't leave much hope for me to begin with, but the more classes that went by, the more students I found wanted to be in strings and now I have a class of 33 beginning string players all to myself! (To clarify, that's 33 10-11 year olds who have never held a string instrument before.) At first I was just glad to know who was in my class and finally get started, but the more I think about it, the more that number grows in my mind in terms of responsibility and planning and classroom management and grading and so on. I've been so spoiled with small classes! Last year's 15 in beginning strings seemed like the largest number I could comfortably handle. Now I have twice that many! Yikes.

The biggest stress of the last week concerning all this, however, is not the kids. I'm really grateful because I know almost all of them from last year. They're all (mostly!) super great, respectful, enthusiastic and eager to get started, which excites me. It's getting them instruments and thinking about tuning those instruments twice a week (I'm thinking it'll have to be less this year) that feels like a huge weight right now. I put in a large order of instruments and supplies last Friday and they are all arriving tomorrow. Some already had instruments, so tomorrow I'll "only" have 15 violins and 4 cellos to get set up (bridges up, fingering tape on, etc.) and tuned in one afternoon - a huge project when today it took me 30-45 minutes to tune and/or change strings on about 4 or 5 instruments. Nothing makes me more uptight than hearing bridges "pop" when they fall down or strings breaking - something that has been and will continue to be common occurance for me, it seems.

But I'll stop complaining. God has granted me this learning experience and I know I'll grow tremendously through it. On the plus side, I am very excited about having so many string players added to our fledging program. 27 new violinists and 6 cellists! Naturally, I'm especially excited about the 6 cellists and so is Sam (our lone 6th grade cellist at ICS). If I can manage to teach them something in the two short class periods a week I have with them, it will be a really great thing in a few years. And they are great students, so I'm sentimentally glad I don't have to give them up to the band director. : )

Another beautiful thing God has been showing me in the last few weeks is the growth and learning I've already gone through this past year with regards to teaching strings. I'm no longer a first-year strings teacher! (I feel just about as excited as when I passed the first-year teacher mark.) I feel a lot more secure in what I'm doing and have a list of things that I should "never do again" that are helping to guide me in this new year. I'm so glad God gave me a smaller and incredibly sweet class last year to begin to figure all this out.

All that to say - please pray for me, especially on Tuesday and Thursday mornings at 7:15 as I take on this large responsibility! And pray for the times in between when I'm planning for it and trying not to dream about it at night (already had that teaching nightmare a few nights ago! Sigh...). I truly covet your prayers as I see that God always hears and answers them.

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