Another Two Weeks In One

I didn't realize how busy I would be for the last two weeks until things got going. March 26 - 30 was midterm week meaning all exams were to be written on Thursday & Friday. That only gave teachers three days to finish their units and have a review class. Only my Grade 11 English & Grade 10 Music students would be writing exams at the end of the week. I split the Grade 10 midterm into two parts: a performance test & theory test. As for my senior musicians, their midterm was just a performance test - playing scales, pieces, & clapping rhythms. I would conduct all the performance tests throughout the week. The Grade 9s were off the hook because they were not required to write midterm exams.

Speaking of my Grade 9s, I decided to introduce them to chords which are groups of notes played at the same time. I figured all 4 guitar classes had earned it because they had been learning just single notes on the first 4 strings. I kept it simple and taught them the C Major & G7 chords. When playing chords, one must remember to keep their left hand fingers curved, otherwise they may touch the strings that are supposed to be played openly.

Since my Grade 11s were scheduled to write their exams on Thursday (not Friday, as was the original plan), we had to quickly finish reading Of Mice & Men, and study the themes, morals, and literary devices. I'm glad I live in a time where there exists PowerPoint. Much to the delight of students, there was time to watch the 1992 film adaptation, starring John Malkovich & Gary Sinise. The film was pretty good despite having several plot differences from the novella.

For my senior musicians, the week was mostly devoted to letting them practice for their midterms and testing them on Wednesday & Friday. As an added bonus, I handed them a new piece, I'm A Believer by Neil Diamond. My students were more familiar with the Smash Mouth cover version that was recorded for the children's movie Shrek.

Overall, midterms turned out quite well. There were only a few students who didn't show up to write the English midterm but I was told that that was to be expected. Several other classes had no-shows. All of my students wrote their exams in classrooms rather than the gym because I was told that the gym was cooler in temperature and this affects the students' focus.

The only thing to report on the weekend was that I taught my air cadet drummers the parts of the snare drum and how to properly maintain the instrument. I spent half of Sunday walking around town because it was a beautiful sunny day. The other half was devoted to prepping for the following week.

The first week of April was short because there was to be no school on Good Friday (personally, every Friday is a Good Friday). Despite the 4 day week, I had twice the amount of work. There was the usual planning & teaching lessons during the day, but on top of that, I had to correct midterms and record the marks into the school's registry. There's a lot of work that teachers do behind the scenes that people may not be aware of.

While I scrambled to find time for correcting midterms, I continued as if it were a regular school week. I wasn't able to teach all of my guitar classes because several of them had been booked to participate in field trips out on the land where they learned how to ice fish and build igloos. As for the Grade 9s I did have, we reviewed the two chords and all the 11 notes I had taught them up until now. I also gave them time to work on their duet assignment. I originally wanted to test them this week but the land trips forced me to postpone them after the Easter Break.

Unlike the south, Nunavut students do not have a March Break. Instead, there's the Easter Break; whenever Easter happens, students & teachers get the following week off. This year, it's the second week of April. Many teachers & students had plans to go down south to see family, friends, and to escape the cold weather. Because of this, there was a surprising drop in attendance for the week. I too had plans to visit my family & friends down south but instead, I chose to stay in town.

For Grade 11 English, we looked at writing better paragraphs, particularly narrative, descriptive, persuasive, and explanatory. If there had been more time, we would have looked at this before the midterm exam. Their midterm essays were okay but my students needed help with structuring and maintaining consistency.

As for my junior & senior musicians, I informed them about a series of upcoming workshops after the break. For the last several weeks, I had been in contact with the National Arts Centre (NAC) in Ottawa, who organize music workshops with schools across Canada. The goal is to raise a student's level of musical interest by connecting them with a professional musician from the NAC Orchestra. These workshops can be done in person or through the Internet using video chat. In our case, the workshops would be done through video chat. From our discussions, we agreed on two broadband workshops for my clarinet & trumpet students for the last week of April. I tried for flute, saxes, and percussion, but those members wouldn't be available during that time.

As an added bonus, the NAC wanted my students to participate on another project. The orchestra is planning a northern tour in October 2012 and they would like to perform a winter themed piece written by Nunavut students that incorporates Inuit music (ie. throat singing, drum dancing, etc). I happily agreed, reassuring the NAC that my students were up to the task. To assist the students in this project, they would be working with Tim Brady (in person), a well known Canadian composer, electric guitarist, and concert & record producer. He is internationally recognized as one of the world's leading experimental guitarists, and has gained a strong reputation as one of Canada's leading composers of chamber, orchestral, and theatre music. The composition sessions are to take place during the third week of April.

The weather was acting up again, with warmer temperatures but stronger winds. It started on Wednesday afternoon with wind blowing snow through Iqaluit under a clear, bright sunny sky. It got progressively worse on Thursday, forcing classes to be cancelled for the entire day. Looks like everyone got an extra day off for the Easter Break.

On the plus side, I was glad to receive my order of musical ties on Tuesday, bringing my collection to six. Buying musical ties is surprisingly difficult anywhere you are because they are not available in the main suit stores like Moore's. They are either sold in select music stores (if you're lucky to find any) or on the Internet. The four ties I received in the mail were ordered from the American website Music In Motion.

Another plus was that my IKEA table had safely arrived and was waiting to be picked up at First Air Cargo. I had been wanting to fill an empty corner of my apartment with an office desk because for the past month, I had been using the round dinner table as my work space. Rather than spend $525 locally, I convinced my parents to buy me an IKEA table I researched on the company's website and ship it to me via First Air. I was also thankful that a teacher volunteered to provide vehicle transport, otherwise I would have had to pay the local moving company $125.