The Furrow

The second grade team sort of decided I should be team leader this year. I still can’t figure out how, but I told them I’d accept anyway, under one condition—I get to wear a special hat to team meetings. I’ve yet to buy the hat. Maybe those of you who read this blog can offer some suggestions as to what sort of hat it should be.

Anyway, the real perk for the job is that I get a small stipend. The duties entail: organizing part of the agenda for the second grade team-level meeting (on the second Wednesday of each month), attending an extra “grade-level chairperson” meeting at the end of the month, and basically acting as a liaison between the second-grade teachers and the principal. So far, I’m enjoying the new role. I really like helping out my co-workers, and I get along well with everyone on our team. They’re a nice group of folks.

Our principal, Mr. Martin, is a real people-person—very easy to talk to. And I’m finding out we have a lot in common. For example, he’s a new dad. He and his wife had their first child(a son) about the same time we had Lucy. Mr. Martin plays guitar (and several other instruments to boot). Nick and I jammed with him one afternoon—a surreal experience ‘dat. A couple weeks ago, I found out he also played D&D as a kid. It came up in passing and, well, I didn’t mention that I’d also played. Maybe if it comes up again…

In today’s meeting, we received some exciting news regarding the state test results this year. Our second grade made its growth target in both language arts and math. We were the only grade level at our school to have made target growth in both areas (the other grade levels also progressed, but not enough to have made the very high target growth mark for this year). It was quite an achievement for our team, and we were thrilled. Sheesh, sometimes you just need that sort of news to keep motivated (though it sets a very high standard for us to maintain for this year, for sure).

Hm…

Other than that, I’ve been playing guitar quite a bit during my spare-time (which I seem to have had more of than usual). I’m starting to learn the straight minor scale (as opposed to the minor pentatonic scale). I’ve been trying to improve my backwards sweep-picking, and toying with hybrid-picking. I’ve also been practicing a lot of songs. You can really learn a lot by just playing songs you hear on the radio. Audacity is, among other things, a great tool for learning to play songs from a CD. I use it to record a portion of a song I’m trying to learn, slow it down to a speed that’s manageable to play, and repeat the part several times so that I can practice playing it over and over. Once I get it down at a slow speed, I just speed it up a bit, continuing to do so until I can play it at normal speed (which doesn’t always happen). Still, it’s fun, and a great way to learn.