Full Circle.

Today is my second last day of internship. Tomorrow will be exactly as you remember your last day of school before Christmas holidays. Teachers putting on movies and letting students play games in class. I honestly thought I’d be more excited than this.

Last week, I was excited. I was jumping out of my seat with anticipation. I’d go home with butterflies in my stomach knowing the end was near, and this whole process would have a big checkmark next to it. This week, it feels bittersweet.

There have been a lot of experiences I’ve been a part of here that I wouldn’t trade for anything. I’ve enjoyed them so much that I have decided to remain a part of some even after I leave. I mentioned in the past that I’d be co-coaching the improv team, and I’ll be doing that well into February. If our team wins, I’ll be coaching until April.

What happens now? Well, Christmas, and then back to uni. I’m registered in a number of classes that I’m fairly excited to take part in. One being “Psychology of Music.” I imagine this will be quite relevant to what I want to teach. I’ve found through word of mouth that most people aren’t particularly interested in going back to university after internship has finished. I can understand this, in that when you’ve had a taste of what your potential career consists of, you just want to be done with university. I think I’m partially excited to go back to school because I feel there is so much more I can still learn there. It makes me wonder if I’ll go back to get another degree (most likely in the arts), or upgrade to a masters of sorts. I know that is not in the cards right now, but perhaps somewhere down the line it will be.

You know that feeling you get when something is finished, and you’ve succeeded and now you can move on to the next thing in your life, whatever that may be? This usually happens to me at the end of every semester. It’s not happening right now. Maybe it’s too soon, maybe it’ll hit me this weekend when I’m ACTUALLY done. My conscience knows the importance of this ending, but for some reason I’m just not feeling it.

Yesterday I had this strange experience while I was teaching my grade 9 drama class. I was speaking to them regarding something and I suddenly became… (thoughtful pause) self-aware? I don’t know. I just became extremely conscious of what I was partaking in. Kinda like how I was the first day of school. After a couple weeks of teaching, it started to become second nature and I would just do it. It would just happen (with the help of a lesson plan every now and again). Yesterday, while I was teaching, my thoughts in my mind were precisely this: “Holy s***! These kids are listening to me! I am walking around this class guiding 20-some teeny-boppers through this class!” I’m glad I accidentally took the time to realize that before I finished. Thinking back on it, it felt like taking one last look at your bare house, stripped of everything that made it what it was, right before you move out of it forever.

I have some friends who were also going through their internship this semester. A few of them have expressed that they will become waterfalls on their last day. I think I’m going to do the exact opposite. I’m just going to laugh my a** off the entire time. Saying things like: “Can you believe THAT was your semester?” and “If they let us get away with this, what can’t we pull off!?” I mean this in the best way, of course. It’s not like we played 7-up and duck duck goose the entire time (although we did play this game called duck, duck, gutenberg which is basically the same game, except a full-contact version of it).

I want to mention in this post specifically that I am very thankful to those who took the time to read this blog. It definitely made it worthwhile knowing there were at least a few people tuning in to what I was doing. Some people expressed ideas that it would be extremely funny to be a fly-on-the-wall in my class. Hopefully this granted that wish somewhat. Also, I’d like to thank those who have supported me through this endeavour. I can’t begin to name all of you, but you definitely know who you are. I know it sounds cliché but I couldn’t have made it through this without the constant encouragement I’ve received from you all. I am forever grateful and have a new-found respect for everyone involved, on top of the respect I already have for you.

Well, this is it, I suppose. It’s been surreal. I’ll continue to post, however, my posts may not be as significant or worthwhile as some that I’ve done in recent memory. Also, there is one post I held off on posting earlier this semester, for reasons that will be made apparent once it’s up. That post can be found here. It should be up for reading within the next few days.

Everything happens for a reason.

In an odd coincidence, I was asked a question regarding my reasoning for being a teacher twice on Tuesday.  I had a job interview (not for a teaching position) and one of the only questions I was asked was “so why did you decide to become a teacher?”  Later on that night, I was catching up with an old friend, and we started talking about my internship.  The same question popped up!  I found it rather peculiar that I answered the question twice.  The reason for me deciding to pursue a path in education has never changed.

I taught guitar lessons to students from ages 5-45 for about two years when I was living in Sherwood Park, AB.  This job came to me through a man who had started his own contracting company that dealt with music lessons.  He would get the calls from parents or potential students who were interested in lessons, and from there, he’d send out a selection of those people to me (as I was not the only contract teacher that he had).  In my first year, I had twenty students.  Most of the students that I taught had little to no experience.  At the time, I had thought teaching guitar was fairly easy and fun.  The job paid well, but was not full time as lessons were once a week for half an hour.  To fill in my extra hours, I picked up a job at Superstore.

Working at Superstore was an absolute joke.  The pay was terrible, the vast majority of the management were complete tools, and the work was mindless and excruciating.  I had three or four friends who worked in the same department that kept me on the edge of sanity, as I was clearly about to jump off it most of the time.  My shifts lasted around the 5-6 hour mark and they crawled by me at a snail’s pace.  It was misery.  To say the least, the last thing I wanted to do when I got home from such a shift was work another job.

Regardless, I didn’t have a choice.  I’d come home, and prepare for the 4-5 lessons I had to teach usually an hour after I got off work at Superstore.  I’d either get in my car or set up chairs and amps in my room, as certain lessons were taught out of the students’ homes, and some were taught in my room!  Pretty cozy work environment.  I started to realize that the environment I worked in played a significant role in the overall enjoyment of my job.  I also discovered that communicating with people was another aspect of working that I enjoyed, so long as that communication was constructive and/or positive.

My guitar teaching calendar ran on the same calendar as the kids’ school calendars.  Therefor I started up in September and finished mid-June.  During the finishing months of my lessons, I started to realize something profound: my students were learning. In the course of the year, I was literally witnessing the progress they had made as guitar players.  Some were playing along to their favourite green day songs on CD, while before, they couldn’t remember how to finger specific chords.  Some of the students had learned simplified versions of solos of AC/DC, and could play along in accompaniment, where before they had troubles picking the right strings.  I had specific students who could have been considered at the top of the class, had I taught all 20 at once.  They were playing songs with the skill level of a third or fourth year player.

In realizing that my students were learning, another light bulb illuminated!  Was I responsible for this progress?  Well no, not entirely.  Did I have a hand in it?  Absolutely.  I provided the students with the tools necessary to succeed, along with the encouragement that was due to them.  On top of that, I loved every single minute of it, even the minutes with the students that never practiced.  Thus, the energy I was bringing to the table became contagious.  My students loved it all the same as I did.  It became starkly clear that I had tapped into something I had never experienced before.  Kind of like the first time you’re conscious of the love you have for something or someone.  What I had tapped into was the notion that the reward of seeing my students succeed in their goals, and having a part in it, was more rewarding than getting paid to do it.  No matter how worn down I was by my mundane job at Superstore, I never had a bad day teaching guitar.  Never.

As I spoke with my friend on Tuesday, he said something to me that concerned him.  He wanted to know that I wasn’t one of those teachers that got into it because I felt it was the only thing I could get through in university.  I needed clarity.  What did he mean by this?  That education was among the simplest of programs in university?  No, he meant that he wanted to make sure I had my reasons lined up for why I chose education, as opposed to choosing by default because I wasn’t interested in anything else there.  I assured him this was not the case.  Not once did I choose to be in education simply because the other academic paths did not appeal to me.  Not only that, when I came to all those realizations of what teaching meant to me back in 2005-2006, I wondered why my own education couldn’t have been as exciting as this had proven to be.  I had so many teachers whose influence on me was more negative than positive.  Not one teacher that I had made me stand up and say: “What you do is incredible!  I want to do what you do for a living!”  Quite the opposite, in fact.  I had more teachers than I could count who made me want to say: “You blow at this, and I could do it much better than you.”  Now I’m not trying to boast, but I believe that if anyone cared enough to change something they saw being done wrong, they would.  It only makes sense that I should do this.  The fact that I love it and that I feel it’s a personal duty to the world around me act as motivators for one another, in that if I lose faith in one, the other picks up the slack.

In the end, I know why I’m here.  I’ve had doubts and second thoughts, but I believe that’s a part of the learning process in reaffirming that I’m on the right path.  This internship has been one of those reaffirmations.