Happy Furlough Day!!!

Furlough: (Noun) A leave of absence or vacation

So this past Monday was supposed to be the first day back at school for teachers, except that because my county spends most of their money paying people not to work, the school system is hurting for funds and has instituted 4 furlough days. It is basically a pay cut, but with one added benefit...all four furlough days are on days that were set aside for teacher in-service. In other words, I am getting paid $1,200 less this year, but in return I am being spared 4 days of meetings that I really didn't want to go to. I think that I can handle that.

Having never been furloughed before, I wasn't sure what I should do. Is this the kind of thing that you have a BBQ for? Should I make a cake and write "Happy Furlough Day!" on it? I was talking about this with Beki on Sunday night, and since I was thinking about school, I decided that I should check my school email to see if my Principals had sent me information regarding our meetings on Tuesday.

BACKGROUND INFO!!! In case you don't know about my work situation, let me fill you in. I am an itinerant Elementary Band and Orchestra teacher. What does that mean you ask? Well, it means that I travel around to three schools teaching 4th, 5th, and 6th graders how to play instruments. It is basically my own personal purgatory...hence the red font. Don't get me wrong, there is nothing wrong with working with beginners - if we didn't have beginners we wouldn't have anything later on. It is just that all I have ever wanted to be is a High School Band Teacher, and after 6 years of teaching beginners I would like a change. Now back to the narrative.

I don't check my work email very often during the summer (who am I kidding, I don't check it during the year either) so I had quite a few. Most of them have nothing to do with me, but I saw one from my Instrumental Supervisor, so I decided it was worth a read:

Hi, Chris. A middle school just opened up today - it is a band and chorus position. I know you are mainly a band guy but thought that you might be interested since you have indicated that you wish to move to a secondary position. Please think about it and let me know. the school is Drew Freeman Middle School - it feeds to Suitland HS.

The thing that scared me was that it was 3 days old...what if she had gotten tired of waiting and had given it to someone else? Then I noticed that there was another email from her asking me to call her on Monday. This gave me all night to think about it. Now, there was really only going to be one answer, and that was that I was going to take the job, but when you have time to think about things, you start to think about the kids...

I met with the Principal at 4:30pm on Monday. She looked at my resume and I got an audible "Oh, wow!" (I am pretty awesome on paper!) At that moment I realized that I wasn't here to sell her on me, I was here for her to sell me on the school. Things to know about this school. It is one of, if not the lowest performing Middle School in the district. Things have been so bad that the entire administration and 85% of the teachers were fired. The band and choir teachers were not spared because they killed the programs, and now enrollment is so low, that they can only justify one music teacher. But it is a Middle School position, and my supervisor made it clear that no one moves from Elementary to High School, so it was kind of looking like now or never.

I think I know how College Football Coaches feel when they get that job offer for a better opportunity. When you have invested a couple of years in students, it is kind of hard to be selfish and do what is best for you instead of doing what is best for the students. So I do have a little bit of guilt, but I am now the Band, Choir and General Music teacher at Drew-Freeman Middle School!

It used to be a Catholic School, hence the spire and the crosses throughout the exterior. Somehow I took the camera with me twice, but forgot to take pictures of my classroom. It kind of resembles an airplane hangar, and I am sure that it was never designed to be a band room, but oh well, it is what it is. Let's see if I can make it through the first week.

On the home front, Owen earned another potty prize. He had to poop in the potty 6 times to get this one, and he finished that on Wednesday night. The only problem was that we didn't actually have his reward yet. See, he wanted a very specific set of Lightning McQueen cars. When we were in Delaware, Keegan had a set of Lightning McQueen cars that all of the kids were playing with. Since the cars were Keegan's, he obviously played with Lighting, and so he gave Owen a yellow car named Leak Less. (Remember, these are racing cars, so Leak Less is the name of the company sponsoring the car.)

Owen was insistant on having Leak Less as well as Lightning, and we had found sets that had lots of other cars, but not the right one. On Thursday Beki and the Boy came to my school for a community BBQ, and on the way home we stopped at a Target to see if they had the set we were looking for. They had sets with Lightning and Chick Hicks, and Lightning and The King, but no Leak Less. Beki was almost at her wits end over all of this, so she practically dove into the stack of cars looking, and at the very back she found...

The pack with Leak Less

Even though it was late Owen had to play with them right away!

We also found him some Lightning McQueen Decals for his door.

I took this picture to see if you can figure out what is strange about it...

Look at the order that the cars finished the race...

How many other kids do you know that would have a car other than Lightning McQueen win the race?

(Beki did point out to me that in the movie, we never actually see Lightning win a race.)

Of course there is still much bike ridding!

Looking good!

So I have noticed that I haven't had any really angry rants lately...well, except for that entire post about PEPCO, and I think I know why...I haven't been to work in a couple of months! So don't worry, I am sure that the angry rants will be making a return!