Another Test Down

I headed to Vermillion this morning to take the Praxis exam in order to get my teaching certificate. I honestly have no idea how it went. It was a two part test specific to music with the first part being an audio portion where examples were played that we had to identify styles, composers, music theory and other items. The second was a written portion that covered some of the same material but also had a good deal of educational philosophy and music education specific questions.

I have to say that I did not enjoy the questions about the classroom or music education approaches at all. Those were the subjects in college that didn't hold my interest when I was in college and barely registered for me today since I could care less about Orff and Kodaly (no offense). It may be primarily that those questions deal more directly with elementary music education than they do with middle or high school band, but I'm pretty sure I tanked on quite a few of those questions.

One realization was strongest by the time the morning was over: I really am not sure how badly I want to teach. I'd much rather be in a ministry position, even though those positions are not immune to their own issues. We'll have to see what happens. I'm not closing the door to teaching and if the right teaching position comes along, I'm sure I'd be able to do a great job and could be very successful doing it. We'll just take it as it comes.

In the meantime, I finished my first full week in the shop and don't think I messed anything up too bad. I've been building bikes, restringing racquets, filling CO2 cartridges and have even been able to do some more minor repairs for customers and on trade in bikes that we resell. It's been fun, but I've been tired all week. The last bike ride I got to take was on Sunday, so I get to spend a good deal of time around bikes, but wonder what it might be like to ride one. Hopefully I can get some miles in this week.

We leave for Indiana next Saturday and will be in Marion through Mother's Day. It will be great to get caught up with friends and to not have a job interfere with my bike riding for a week. We'll even get to do a meeting with the camp staff for Impact Summit at the end of July while we're there. We haven't seen some of them since we left last summer assuming we were done with camp. I'm excited and have been working on putting the songs together that we'll do. I'm also hoping that I might be able to write some new songs for us to use, but I've been hoping to do so for months and haven't had much of anything happen.

I need to head to bed. A big day tomorrow with leading for services while Hal preaches and a retirement party for Dr. Mitchell in Vermillion. Dr. Mitchell was the head of the Music Department and Director of Bands when Amy and I went to USD. We're hoping to see some familiar faces and do some catching up. It promises to be a fun, but exhausting day.