My Job!!!

As I mentioned in my post on the 4th, I got a new job. And I found out that I got it while I was driving on the last leg of our trip to Albuquerque. I had interviewed for it the Monday before that, and I had felt pretty good about the interview. Getting the call that I got the job was a surprise and a relief. I had given up on hearing anything until after the holiday weekend.

I'll be a middle school choir director at two middle schools in the district where I live. One of those schools happens to be where I went for 6th, 7th, and 8th grades. I'm going back to my old stomping grounds, this time as a teacher. The kicker is that I never was in choir at that school. I was in band! I did have 2 classes that took place in the choir room, one was theater, and another was called Future Problem Solving, and it was taught by Mr. P, my band director who I blogged about before. I'm very excited about teaching there, even though it's only a small fraction of my part time job. I'll only be teaching one class period there.

The other half of the job is at a rival middle school, one that most of my high school friends went to. (I transferred to the high school across the highway from where I lived so that I could stick with Mr. P.) There I'll be an assistant to the choir director I student taught for 10 years ago. I worked very well with him for the 6 weeks I was assigned to his school (which was a different school in a different town, closer to where I went to college). He had picked me to be his first student teacher. He met me when I was working for the music conservatory at the college I attended. Kids would come in for piano lessons or voice lessons, and as a part of their program, they'd also do their music theory assignments in a little room where I worked as the theory lab instructor/facilitator. He taught voice lessons at the conservatory, and every now and then when he'd have a no-show lesson, he'd hang out in the hall outside the theory lab, and that's how he got to know me. To now be going to work with him after all these years is really fantastic. God really does work all things together for our good.

The reason I was working in the theory lab back then was because I dropped out of the music group I had been singing with to marry my dear husband. I couldn't have really done the traveling music group thing as a young newly-married woman. The dean of fine arts created that job in the theory lab for me so that I could meet the conditions of my scholarship. I have often had moments of regret over having quit that group. I truly loved making music at that level, and I loved many of the people in it. I didn't really like the "on the road" aspects, and I had burned out on it after two school years of it, and doing even more in the summer between those years. I knew quitting was right for me at the time. And now to see how my life is impacted by the "replacement" for participation in that group... God is really amazing. He knows what He's doing, and I can trust Him.

I'm very excited bout teaching choir. When the elementary job didn't work out like I thought it would, I was rather disappointed. But even during my interview for that job, as I was answering one of the questions, the thought crossed my mind that the answer I was giving would be more compatible with a middle school choir job. Even then, my heart was with choir, and not teaching elementary music, even though there is an after school choir at the elementary level.

All together, my job is a part-time job with .5 of it being at the school where I'll assist my old supervising teacher, and .17 of it at my alma mater. I'll have time in the middle of my day in which I can run errands and get some grocery shopping done sans my kiddos. I think this is a very good lifestyle aspect to this job that would not have been the case with the elementary job I didn't get, which was full time.

I've already got a training thing tomorrow, a meeting on Monday, and another training thing on Tuesday. Today I was fingerprinted, which is a new requirement set in place during my stay-at-home mom years. I'm going to have to do laundry on Saturday this week. It will be my first "working" weekend. My life is already changing.

I have so much more to blog about, but I just can't do it right now. I'm about to take my girls to the pool while we still have some summer left!

I just heard "Walk Like an Egyptian" as bumper music on a radio show I'm listening to. Now that's in my head. Now there's a blast from the past!!