"Homer" Week

Well, it's been a week since I last wrote. This week was more focused to site-specific training (at least the latter part of the week). Monday was up in Kenai (again) and we were discussing dropout rates, and other such things. 149 students from the district dropped out last year, and it's a major concern that's going to be addressed. I'm intrigued to see how that works out, and what programs they start to put into place.

Tuesday was a workday, and I managed to get a lot done. Mark (the choir director) came in and we talked about the concert schedule and how things generally work around the school, which made me feel a lot more confident. I managed to get my handbook, grading policy, class expectations, and other "paper" type things done.

Wednesday was meeting in our departments to talk about goals for the school and our departments, and it was definitely interesting. I got to see a lot of what the teachers think about the school right now. The new principal (Dr. Gee) seems to have a lot of really good ideas for how to get things going, and I hope that they keep going the way that he talks about.

Thursday was mandated state training - bloodborn pathogens, teacher education programs, that sort of thing. Definitely useful, even though I've heard most of it before. It's a good reminder of what to do to be careful. We also learned more about H1N1 - there's 400 cases or so in Alaska so far, so we'll have to see about that.

Yesterday was more sporadic. I was in the middle school for the morning, working on my instrument inventory for there. Then I went over to the high school for freshman orientation. I didn't feel too particularly useful because they thought I was going to be at the middle school so they didn't assign me a group of freshmen to sit with, but that's all right. I got to meet a decent amount of freshmen through the scavenger hunt and find out what instruments they play, as well as get more of them interested in jazz band. I just hope that they're able to sign up. Then I went back to the middle school and finished my instrument inventory. I got my handbooks printed off, as well as the grading expectations. I plan to go in tomorrow sometime, to finish printing off everything that I need and getting it copied so that I'm set for the first days. I also pulled some music for the high school ensembles so that I can get them playing as soon as possible, which makes it easier to know the level that they're at.

Today is a lazy day. I managed to sleep in until 11am which was wonderful. I finished cleaning my room, now it's just time to start doing laundry. I'm going over to Mary and Eric's for dinner - married couple who are also new band directors in the area. They're supposed to be going clam digging today, so hopefully fresh clams. Otherwise pizza - which is still good, as is socializing and meeting new people. I'm going to run into town at some point, to go to the music store and do a bit of looking around and exploring. Hope everyone's having a good week!

Oh, if you're looking for my new address, just comment with a way for me to email it to you and I'll make sure to do that! Also, if you have my cell phone number - at the moment, I don't have enough service in my house to receive calls. However, it does ring (I just drop them if I try to answer) so I get voicemails and all that, and I'll call you back as soon as I can!