Why the dishes are still in the sink

You know how the first week back to school after summer break hits you like a truck?  I started thinking about everything I've done since work officially began on Tuesday and I started to understand why washing the stack of dishes in the kitchen sink sounds like an impossibly hard task at this hour on a Friday night.

Tuesday: All day county-wide kick off meeting at the other high school in the district
- Listen to speeches for about 2 hours
- Present a 40-minute high-energy session on brain breaks three times in a row
- Try to simultaneously help 6 teachers with varying computer requests (Can you find my data from last year's testing?  Where did those Google files disappear to? Can I get my data now?)
- Research aforementioned Google problem, discover the culprit, email the file owner with a request to restore last year's work 
- Fix the toilet at my house after securing the right part (yay, me, doing home repair all by myself)
- Work on paper for grad school

Wednesday:
- Arrive at school to find that my new office is finally being emptied from the previous program's belongings.
- Check in with each teacher
- Work on compiling data
- Attend faculty meeting
- Attend discipline and discipline data meeting
- Attend classroom procedures meeting
- Attend school rules meeting
- Answer guidance counselor questions.
- Create 90% of the bulletin board in my new office.
- Attend training for FAME facilitators at the middle school.
- Attend Mass at my church for the consecration of our new altar.
- Continue to work on paper for grad school. 

Thursday: Agile Mind PD
- Attend an 8-3 training that summarized the 2.5 day training I had in the summer.
- Answer what felt like 50 questions/requests about curriculum, technology, materials, etc.
- Draft newsletter to FAME cohort participants.
- Return to school for a faculty dinner at 4:30
- Compile testing data for teachers
- Back to School Night after school
- Write agenda for department meeting

Friday:
- Attend full staff faculty meeting
- Run department meeting
- Answer questions about programs, curriculum, lesson planning, vocabulary instruction
- Clean my new office (dust is always everywhere anyway, and my room had some student cubicles in place previously that were probably never cleaned behind because of how they were positioned so I gave everything a nice once-over before bringing in my things)
- Move everything from my old office into the new one (down a flight of stairs) except my desk and filing cabinet which the custodians will have to do.
- Track down the custodian to ensure my desk and filing cabinet will be moved on Monday.
- Long-term plan Advanced Algebra I with that teacher
- Help the special ed co-teacher become familiar with the Google drive and pacing guide for the courses she'll be co-teaching
- Track down textbooks for a course
- Answer guidance questions
- Lend a listening ear to a colleague who was hurt by a decision from higher up
- Finish my bulletin board
- Begin making the space beneath my windows into display space (to cover the horrible tape residue left behind)
- Make a mental note that I need a phone, trashcan, and somehow a table and chairs in my office.

I feel like I'm going in so many directions.  There wasn't a clear priority in place for me this week other than to get everything started.  I need to spend some time reflecting this weekend on the relative priorities of what I need to do next week.  Time to bring back my daily task log from early last year to aid in that process!  

How do you prioritize the first week back?