Turtling through the school year

Here it is--12:46 a.m. on a Wednesday night. I KNOW not to drink sweet tea for supper! I should never have caffeine on a school day. So I can't sleep. I also don't know how to work this blog thing, but I want to try.

I am having a terribly mixed emotions school year. On the one hand, I love my job and my students and I want to work with them forever. On the other hand, I just can't wait for this year to end so I can go somewhere else. I really can't put a finger on how I truly feel. I have loved starting this band program and watching it be successful. But I don't like the changes that I feel and see. I don't like the way the students in the band have begun taking things for granted. They used to savor every moment and work hard for every moment. Now they just plod along. The older students do not understand or seem to care how much they will influence the younger generations. They think I'm so full of it when I talk about stuff like that, but I know it's true. When a senior or a junior won't keep his or her mouth shut during rehearsal, the sophomores and freshmen learn that they don't have to keep their shut either. I don't like the slow loss of integrity, ethics, character I am seeing in our program. Slowly but surely, it's going downhill.

In my mind, my plan is to find a new job for next year. But as soon as I commit to that, I start feeling so sad at the thought of leaving the wonderful band and the wonderful school (even though neither is wonderful). I guess the thing is I know what will happen if I leave. It's not because I'm so great or anything like that, but when band directors go, programs die. On one hand, who cares? Does Rutland High even deserve a great or even good band program? On the other hand, some of those kids are the most wonderful kids in the world. Don't THEY deserve the continuity of what we've started?

I'm telling you--I am really conflicted. Today I asked the officers which marching event they'd like to participate in on October 21. I also put the option of choosing nothing. Do you know that most of them chose nothing?? Now if the officers don't feel like taking on a challenege and working hard to meet a standard, can you imagine how the rest of the band feels? It makes me so sad. Two years ago. those students would have wanted to go to INFINITE marching events--now they hardly want to do one.

Yet there are the wonderful ones--the MIchael Hanners and Brett Combs who stay after school on Wednesdays and paint the lines; the Benjamin Bennetts who ask me questions and advice about music when we all know who knows more about music in that duet!; the Zachary Barfields who draw me pictures of turtles to cheer me up; the Anton Hughes who are so dedicated to the band and love it so much that he'll come to whatever practice he can just to get his two days in every week. There really are some GREAT GREAT students. But there are enough headaches to bother me.

On the other hand, I know these kids, even the headache kids, are are so much better than any other students anywhere. I love our class together. I feel like we are one person working toward one goal when we rehearse each day. I guess it's just the after school stuff that gets me down. It's rarely, if ever, the actual class from 7:30-9:00 that bothers me. Perhaps that is the perspective I ought to adopt.

Anyway, I'm just rambling. I can't remember how it felt, but I know there was a time when teaching at Rutland made my heart and head positively jump for joy. I don't feel like that anymore. I have very brief moments, but they are not enough to sustain me.