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.

Tying up loose ends.

Today I started my fourth last week of internship.  This is significant because I have cleared up my 3 week block, and have also finished working behind the scenes of The Somewhat True Tale of Robin Hood.  The play’s reception was pretty fantastic, all in all.  Enough to make my coop teacher shed a few tears as she gave the “go get ‘em” speech on the final performance night.  I believe we actually sold out the theatre on Friday as well.  Pretty crazy stuff.  A number of teachers have stopped me in the hall to say what a wonderful performance it was and such.  I’m not letting it get to my head too much as my contribution to the play was somewhat minor compared to others.  However, I was there for 2-3 hours solid almost every day of the week for two and a half months, so I guess that counts for something.  The kids even thanked me personally in front of the Friday night crowd with a card with a galaxy cinemas “night out” certificate, a couple chocolate bars, and a jumbo box of Vector cereal (there’s an inside joke to that one).  I was quite flattered, it was so thoughtful of everyone to do something like that.  Anyway, now I have all this time opening up.  What am I to do with it?

Grading.  Grading grading grading.

Seriously, it’s not that bad.  It’s actually quite humourous when a bottle of wine is in accompaniment.  I learned a valuable trick while I was in class though the last couple years: never assign anything you will not want to grade.  If it’s going to be boring as all hell to read or evaluate, don’t bother handing it out.  So that’s saved me a little.  I still have a fair amount of grading to do, but my grading involves reviewing improvised scenes between awkward grade nines.  Hilarious.

Speaking of, I did finally end up having a certain student who had previously requested a zero actually get up in front of the class and improvise.  SUCCESS!  Not to mention the fact that she performed spectacularly.  Blew me out of the water, really.  Now she’s off to visual art for six weeks.  Best of luck!

For all those interested, I’ve had a little bit of down time and wrote a review on a music site for an album called Still by Dionaea.  You can check out the review by clicking here.

Short, busy week.

Today is parent/teacher interview day!

I’ve successfully made it through my first week of full-time interning alive, but not without spending a number of hours outside of class prepping for what lies ahead.  This weekend will be more of the same.  But for now, I get to concentrate on speaking with a number of parents today about their children.  I’m not too sure what to expect as my parents never actually went to parent/teacher interviews.  I have spent most of the morning enjoying a quiet, empty classroom, listening to Radiohead and Thursday, and catching up on entering marks into the computer, hopefully it’ll be enough to keep my nerves calm once the parents come in around 2:00.  What I find particularly interesting is the fact that the meetings are no longer than 7 minutes.  Not that I have a plethora of things to say regarding everyone’s kid, but 7 minutes honestly seems like barely enough time to get the ball rolling should it come to that, in regards to conversation.

There is one parent I’m rather interested to meet.  Interested and slightly apprehensive, I should say.  The parent of a student, Z, who I gave a final failing grade in the class I taught him in.  I mean, I do have all my backing in order, all my peas in a pod in terms of why I gave Z the failing mark.  But one never knows how a parent could react, I guess.  Only time will tell.  Other than Z, every student whose parents’ signed up for teacher interviews are more or less at the top end of the class.  Peculiar, and might I say discouraging, how the students who actually need their parents involved in their education are the ones that don’t show up.

In other unrelated teaching news, we hosted another improv show at the school last night and packed the house.  The students from the improv group actually asked me to open the show with an original tune.  So I had my first official show in front of an all-ages crowd.  The real highlight though, as one can imagine, is the amount of talent that is shown during the two hours that this group of 12-14 students improvise their way out of just about anything.  I left with a sore face from laughing and a perma-grin.  This part of the internship is really what it has been all about.  I told one of the students who acts as somewhat of a leader to the rest of the group that “Every time I see you guys perform, I get the impression that there’s something greater in the works.”  These kids are truly inspiring.  I know I have said it before but I honestly feel refreshed, imaginative and in the mood to be worthwhile and helpful.  This sort of thing really acts as my fuel to keep me going through this whole internship process.

But more so, it calls to me to participate in whatever way I can, because I know that I love watching the act, so why would I not want to be a part of it?  I decided to volunteer my time as a co-coach to the improv team here at the school.  This will go well out of my internship and into my remaining university semester, but I couldn’t care less.  I honestly believe some of these students have a life waiting for them doing what they’re doing now.  It’s like watching someone’s life unfolding right before your eyes.

Moments of Brightness.

So this week I had a shot of inspiration given to me.

I have spent a lot of time fearing internship.  I have feared the whole educational process because it has been hyped up astronomically from fellow education students to quite simply be the most difficult semester of one’s life.  Not only that, but there are countless horror stories that circulate around the student body regarding what happens when one’s co-operating teacher lacks compassion, or even passion for that matter.  On top of these things, it is really the moment where the last three or four years of your studies are actually put to use in a real-world setting.  There are a number of people depending on you to successfully move forward. Needless to say, it’s a big weight to be placed on one’s shoulders all at once.  But that’s internship.  I suppose it wouldn’t be the challenge it is set up to be if it was not all of what I just mentioned.

Regardless of it being a challenge unlike any other in my life, it still has its moments of brightness.  On Thursday evening, a group of the drama students in the 10/20/30 class that I now teach put on an improv show called “Improv On The Rocks.”  The show lasted around two hours.  The students taking part in this show I’ve gotten to know fairly well over the last few weeks, and I have to say it’s been quite the experience.  I look forward to speaking with them because they have fairly humourous and/or interesting things to say.  On top of that, they have a talent for improv unlike any others I have seen.  Thursday night’s show filled the Miller Theatre’s 175 seats and then some.  I was lucky to have one reserved for me by the students themselves, right in the front row.  Now, if I could, I’d show a video or provide a script for just how incredible these kids are, and how hard I laughed my *** off while watching them.  Unfortunately, I cannot.  But I can say that when I walked out of the theatre, I was truly inspired.  Seeing kids in their community engage in the arts in such a passionate and positive way reminds me of why I got into this profession in the first place.  Its witnessing the arts for what they are truly meant for in our society.  IF ONLY it could be that way all the time.

The final game required the two “finalists” of the evening’s match to have a “pick-up line” match, where they pulled a girl from the audience (as both finalists were young men), gave them a random profession to base their pick-up lines from (which ended up being a lighting technician) and see what developed.  All of it was on the spot spontaneity, and all of it was nothing short of sheer brilliance.  As one student approached the girl for the last round of pick-up lines, he spun out “If you were a light switch, I’d be turning you on all day” right as the other competing duelist spat right back “Baby, are you short-circuiting?  Because you’re making me go haywire.”

Absolutely inspired.