It Has Begun

My school year has officially started. I have now been back to work for two days. So far, so good.

Yesterday was fun. Our librarian and technology person (her title is "ITS," whatever that stands for) set us up on our very own Amazing Race, like the TV show. It was a technology race. We were assigned teams and sent all over the school to do various tasks with various educational web-based resources like Google Earth, and Animoto, and other multimedia programs like Audacity. We have all these tools available, but we don't always know how to use them in the classroom. The two awesome ladies in charge of this race had very specific instructions at each station. At the end of each task was a matrix code that had to be scanned with a smart phone to reveal the next task. My team was awesome. It was me and our two lovely theater teachers. We won!! It was great!

The afternoon was spent in a fine arts team meeting. Not quite as exciting as the Amazing Race, but it was all stuff we had to get through.

Today we started in a fine arts meeting again. There was more we had to discuss and we had some time to get our websites in order and things like that. Then we got to do some team building in the afternoon. Our team activity was to rent a party barge and go play in the lake. That was really nice. We all decided it would be a "no photo zone" so that we could all feel comfortable in swim suits. There was a slide on the boat from the upper deck into the water.

I have been swimming three times this week, all for very long periods of 3 hours or more. I am more tan than I have ever been in my adult life. As a kid I was very dark every summer, back before mothers really worried about UV protection. My girls are also getting pretty tan, even though they've been wearing SPF 50. They have been swimming every day this week. I think they're growing gills.

I still haven't recovered from the fatigue of Waterpark Wednesday. I just haven't gone to bed early enough. And I don't get to sleep in tomorrow. I have a meeting I must attend... All I want to do is sleep in. It will have to wait until next Saturday. *Sigh*

This evening, since dinner, I've been a busy little bee, working on my lesson plan template in Excel, going through the school calendar and marking all the early release days, and school holidays so that hopefully I won't fall behind in turning in my plans. I guess I should consider that a goal for the year: to be more diligent with lesson plan writing, filling in more details than just the songs to be rehearsed. It will make the other goals I have already set a little easier by making me write down the choral examples I will play every week, and the sight-reading games I will have the students play with my rhythm cards.

Today we had music playing on the party barge all day. What would you expect from the fine arts team? Before all that, though, I had Michael Buble's song, "I Just Haven't Met You Yet," stuck in my head. I mentioned that to the fine arts folks I was waiting with as we gathered to take off for our outing, and one of them pulled out an iPhone and played it for me. It was a very satisfying moment! That song makes me feel happy. :o)