Hello?

Hey ya'll. (I know I live in the Northwest now, but somehow some vestiges of my ten years in the South still come through.) So this blog is just sort of a place for me to vent and talk and muse about things happening in my life. I am not sure if this is something that people will want to read or not, but I think this is more for me than anyone else. At least I hope that is the case. So here's my first vent:

I got an email from my principal today asking me to come down and talk to him. I still get nervous when summoned to the principal's office, so I tremblingly approached at lunch, and was asked (informed) that two of my classes will be condensed and redistributed between myself and my co-teacher, and that I will be taking on a government class of seniors who failed the first semester of government. Almost to a man, it will be students that will readily admit to being too lazy to do the work, and I will get them at the height of their senioritis. I am so excited I can barely contain myself... Here's the thing though, I am really the only one who can do it. There are only 5 people in my department, and the only other one who only teaches one subject has so many kids there is no way to condense her classes. I am willing to pitch in, but it is frustrating to jump into a class I have never taught before - 4 weeks into the semester. It is going to require reworking somewhere around 40 schedules for different kids and will dramatically add to the number of things I am already doing for school. I am not sure if the principal realizes how many things I am already involved in. I keep score for track meets, take tickets at soccer games, keep stats for softball, am the advisor for the freshman class, am helping to start a new club to travel abroad, and am putting together quite a bit of curriculum for the class I already teach. I am at school 10-12 hours a day already, and adding another class will add to that time. **SIGH** Oh well. Somehow I'll make it and then this year will be over. It is never as hard as the first year...although in my case it is actually the 6th year. I still count it, since it is the first year here and feels like my first year all over again. Not all things are negative, today in first period I had a great discussion with my kids. I could almost see things clicking into place, they had great comments and started an awesme discussion. It was great!

Anyway, that's all for now...thanks for reading!!