This has been a very ordinary day. I’ve spent a large amount of time looking ahead at things in the future and not really living in the moment at all. That has made this very difficult.
When I say looking ahead I mean these things in particular:
- What I’m going to be doing with my class after the half term break at the Spring Bank Holiday;
- What the band will be playing in the Summer concerts in Leeds and Kirklees;
- What I will be doing in September 2014!
Starting at the top. I want to alter my plans for what I’ll be teaching after half term. Space is a topic that can be made to fit that length of time. However, I know my class work better if their interest is kept and moving on to a different topic is probably going to work better. What that topic is yet, I don’t know. I have discussed the change with the people that matter in school, and they are all behind whatever I finally settle on. I really need to make that final choice this weekend though for my own sanity.
The band has three confirmed Summer Concerts this year (see that site for details), and we can get away with playing the same pieces at each. I think. The problem is which ones. At the last count, we had a set of over 100 pieces that we can play fairly well – all of which are doable with effort. Tonight we played ten that we hadn’t played for a while, and all of them could be good enough for the Summer. I want to get away from having staple pieces that we always play – ones which we’ve played at every concert I’ve ever been to. Italian Festival’s good and people appear to enjoy the nature of it, but you’re not going to hear it from us this Summer, among some other perennial favourites. This, of course, depends on rehearsals going as well as they have been, and me making that final list of 25 or so items. I always like to prepare far more than we ever need just in case. The order will be finalised a little while ahead of the final concert.
Finally, September 2014. That’s on my mind at the moment. There is a new curriculum being drafted at the moment to be implemented by that time. Coupled with this is the realisation that I don’t want to be where I am for much longer. I don’t mean moving school, I mean year group. In all by that point, I will have taught Year 5 for six or seven years in some form (there have been times, like now, where I have taught Year 6 as well) and I can just see that a change is needed. It’s possibly too late to alter anything now, but in another 18 months, I could be in another year group – with a clean slate of a new curriculum to play with. That’ll give me a fresh challenge which I need every now and then to stop the rot setting in! I don’t know where I would move to within school – that depends on so much – but I do have my own ideas about that too. Right now, it’s just a feeling that by that time I will be ready for something new again.
All of these things are running through my mind at the moment.
