Life update

Well, dear reader (there's only one, hence the lack of the plural), you can probably tell I'm back to work from the lack of posts lately. Actually, I've sat down to post a couple of times and thought, "I really don't have anything to say....why manufacture something just to be blathering on?", so I didn't post at all. However, I thought I'd fill you in on what has been going on just so.

As mentioned, we're back to work full time now. We won't see the kids until this coming Tuesday, but we're hard at it preparing our rooms and doing staff development trying to make sure we're ready. On my 7th grade team, there are only a few of us left from last year and my cohort across the hall is not only new to the building, but new to the profession as well. He's former military and had gone into some sort of counseling field before this, so he's got a lot on the ball, but I'm afraid his expectations are too high and he's going to be disappointed by the level of kids he's going to get.

It's like riding a bike; you've got to fall and scrape up your knees a bunch of times until you figure out how to make this gadget work!

In any case, they had a "secret" meeting on Thursday that I was surreptitiously invited to attend. I had no idea what it was for, but it turned out that they wanted me to be my new cohort's official "mentor" teacher. Being the official mentor is detailed and somewhat tedious, but it does add a little to your paycheck and, more importantly, if you do it right, you can develop someone into a really good teacher who will thank you for your efforts in the future. I was mentor to the person who was named our district's secondary teacher of the year last year, so I know that it's possible to take someone who's never taught and turn them into someone who teaches very well.

Along those same lines, my poor mentee is freaking out because of all of the various initiatives they lay on us this time of year. Happens every year! The administrators get all pumped up and tell us about all of these wonderful things that are going to happen (well, wonderful in THEIR eyes because they're not the ones doing the work most of the time!) and about all of these new programs that are being initiated.....blah....blah....blah. I told my cohort not to worry too much; it happens every year. They come in, freak us out with all of this stuff that we're supposedly going to be doing that we KNOW we don't have time for, and that's as far as it gets; the planning stage! This year the administrators are supposed to do 20 walk-throughs a WEEK and we're supposed to observe someone else teaching on some interval that wasn't shared. Uhhhhhhh........that's not happening; at least it's not happening IF you want grades turned in on time and lesson plans turned in on time AND parent contacts made. Yes, boys and girls, we're supposed to start turning in a parent contact log every two weeks along with our lesson plans! Here's how this is going to go:

"Hello, this is Dan at your child's school. Could I speak with Mrs. Martinez, please?"

"Hola? Como Esta? Su Iglesia con nino?"

"Sorry, ma'am, no comprende! I'll call back when I learn to hable some espanol. Click"

I'm really going to try on this one, actually! Making parent contact has consistently been a shortcoming of mine, so I'm really going to work on it this year. I'm going to make at least two calls every day and even if they really do turn out like the one above, I'm going to log and turn them in.

Well, wish us Godspeed as we move into the new school year!