The first week or so

I've been in my new job for 8 days.  It's been a huge adjustment and I am most definitely not in love with the new job yet. 

The first four days back were just for staff.  I spent that time trying to make inroads with the teachers I'll be supporting this year.  I visited classrooms, offered my help, and was asked a barrage of questions that I mostly couldn't answer.  Thursday night was back to school night, though it was really more of a meet-and-greet because we didn't run a mock schedule.  I stood outside my office and greeted lots of former students, most of whom asked me, "What are you doing here?" to which I answered, "Working!"  I briefly explained my job, told them what a good schedule they had, and wished them well.  The highlight was a particular former student who exclaimed with absolute sincerity, "This is my dream come true!" when he saw that I was now working at his high school.  By Friday afternoon, I still didn't entirely know my way around the building and I knew few staff members' names outside of my department.  I stuffed small "welcome back" gifts in the mailboxes of the teachers I'm working with and headed home for the weekend.

I was NOT stressed the weekend before school started for the first time in my career.  That was so weird.  I actually taught myself arm knitting and made scarves for my church's fall bazaar in my downtime. 

School started this past Monday.  I decided that the best way to help teachers that day was to circulate in the morning to wish them a happy first day and then pop in on their planning period for assistance if they needed anything, but to otherwise let them be.  There's always too much to say and do that first day and I didn't want to be an interruption. 

The rest of this week, I've been working at the Board of Education.  It's a miracle my eyes can manage to stare at the screen long enough to type this post.  I've been writing benchmark tests with the other high school specialist and entering them into our online testing platform since Tuesday.  Oh my goodness!  One more day tomorrow and then I get back to school.  I miss kids already! 

My big victory of the day was getting an e-mail from a teacher inviting me in to see class today.  Unfortunately, I wasn't there, but I'm happy to hear that this teacher is eager to work with me! 

Mathematically yours,
Miss B