My First Year of Teaching

So I've decided to begin to start a blog talking about the good, the bad, and the ugly about my first year of teaching. One of my good friends Alex mentioned this idea to me as we were hiking Sabino Canyon's Phone line Trail.

For those of you that maybe don't know a whole lot about what I do, I am a 5th/6th Grade Band teacher in the Sunnyside Unified School District in Tucson, Arizona. I recently graduated from the University of Arizona with a degree in Music Education. When searching for a job after college, I was looking all around the country to find a teaching position, but the one that seemed to fit for me the best was the position in the Sunnyside Unified School District. The other experienced music teachers there have been there to support me and offer advice to me--something that I think I would not really had in a smaller school district or on my own.

In the district, I travel around to 3 different schools everyday and teach the 5th and 6th grade band. Each of the schools I am at has a very different personality which makes teaching each class even more interesting some days and challenging other days. In addition to teaching 5th and 6th grade band, I teach 10 students up in Oro Valley twice a week.

Let's just say that this school year, I have gotten used to driving all around Tucson in order to do what I love. Even though I have had to get through some new and challenging situations for me, I still love ever moment that I get to teach the students how to play music on an instrument.

This blog will hopefully give me a chance to vent, write down my experiences, and maybe in the future, help out others that might be going through similar experiences that I have gone through. Enjoy!