to begin again

Home after the first day of school, Matt and I and Uwharrie are sprawled under the ceiling fan, reading. For pleasure only. American Nature Writing and Omnivore’s Dilemma. I am waiting for the sun to sink so I can run comfortably. I look up through Matt’s curtain of plants to check the daylight situation.

It was a good day, but this distancing of myself from school is a very good thing, too. This year my work office (teaching resources, binders, printer, etc) is at school. There probably is no way around bringing some work home, but the idea is to be able to leave it and to set limits to how much I work.

Right now, I’m about a unit ahead in my planning. (No telling how long that will last.) It falls into place after a month of logging hours at school, in the evenings, and on weekends. I wanted everything to be in place for that first day – essentially today.

I had no reason to be nervous today. I was a veteran, wasn’t I? And I have well-behaved sweet kids. I guess I had just been holding my breath for today (and tomorrow – we’re on block scheduling), and I wanted to release it again.

So I’m teaching at an Early College, which means students are here for five years starting their ninth grade, and they graduate with not only their high school diploma, but also an AA. The school (Mec) is located on the back building of a community college, and students start taking college classes immediately their first year. By Year 3, they’re hardly around the high school end any more. It’s the only thing resembling college prep in this county.

I AM Mec’s science department. I have no planning Tuesdays and Thursdays, but Matt does teach one period of Earth & Environmental Science (Year 1) so that I can have planning on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays. My other prep is Physical Science (Year 2).

I’m excited about the year, I really am. The school is chaotic at times, and the students are spoiled in that they’re given a lot, but don’t appreciate it, but are still continuously given a lot. But I don’t teach the most spoiled of them (Year 3), we have a lot of grant money, and I’m encouraged by my principal to be creative and teach outside the conventional classroom. She and all the staff really care about these students. I’ve got to be encouraged by that.

My classroom is awesome. I’m a little apprehensive because it’s used by the college for night classes. It’s always been my routine to straighten up at the end of each day because I want a neat, clean classroom to walk into the next morning, no surprises. Will it remain in the same shape as I left it? I wonder.

Some perks of this job: My students can use a brand-new, fully-stocked, college lab (complete with crisp, white lab coats for everybody), and I can tell the print shop what I want copied, stapled, and hole punched, and pick the completed order up the very next day.