The school year doesn’t officially start until Monday, but I went up to the high school this morning for a meeting with The Principal. My state has a few new laws related to education, and I had some questions about them, so I asked if we could have a chat. The Vice Principal crashed the meeting because she wanted to discuss some of the same things I did, and also pick my brain about how to present info to veteran teachers during in-service (note: I know I am, in fact, a veteran teacher, but part of me also still thinks that’s absurd).
Because I am basically the dog in Up, we ended up chatting about a lot of other things, too: the anti-mask protestors who’ve been showing up to school board meetings (the district will be starting the year with a mask mandate in place), the recent uptick in drug overdoses in the area, the myriad reasons why sophomores are the most difficult grade level to teach, the school’s new hires...
After that, I actually met quite a few of the new hires because today was the last day of new teacher orientation, and The Assistant Superintendent asked all the mentor teachers to be present to meet their “mentees.” Fun fact: the teacher I’ll be working with, Ms. H, is engaged to another rookie teacher, Mr. Z, and he’s one of my former students. I think it’s awesome, and I also feel super old. Heh.
I was going to go up to my classroom if I had time between meetings, but I didn’t, so I’ll probably go in tomorrow to set things up a little. The in-service schedule is pretty packed, so getting a head start might be a good idea. I’m excited, though. There are going to be challenges, for sure, but there will be a lot of joy, too.