Exciting First Week

I survived my first week teaching elementary music, and trust me, that is quite an accomplishment!

My very first day on the job, I had to fight with the after school program coordinator to be able to use my classroom for the last hour of the day. She came in at 1:30 expecting to use my room, but I have a class starting at 2:00. It was really bizarre. Then during the rest of the week, I had three fifth graders immediately leave my classroom as soon as they came in- before I had even checked the roll; I had one fifth grader in another class screaming like a lunatic for several minutes at a time just to disrupt the class; I have two second graders who forced the school to split their class in half for music time because one has a legal restraining order against the other; I couldn't go into work on Thursday at all because there was a shooting close to my school and several armed assailants were still at large in the neighborhood; and I lived through it all with a nasty cold. It was definitely a challenging week. But I'm feeling pretty optimistic because I did survive, I did manage to teach a little bit of music, and it seems to me that things will only get easier week by week! Still, please remember me in your prayers! It will get easier, but it will still be hard!