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Well I will work at getting day 2 up but in the mean time, if anyone would like to forward this blog to anyone that might have any ideas or tips that would be awesome!!! I also would not mind comments on posts, I like to hear what people are thinking!!!

Day 1

I know this is coming a day late but I needed to take a day to gather my thoughts. I sat down on the couch yesterday and it finally sank in that I had just wrapped up my first day of my new job. My new job that I had spent five years in college for, of which it took me 2.5 years to figure out I wanted to look into teaching and the last three cleaning up from the first two years of college. It was a strange feeling; I had never been so emotionally drained by any other academic endeavor that I had ever undertaken previously. Even after I had finished up the last two years of school taking over 60 hours of credits between the last two years, this was the most tired I had been in awhile. I had a feeling of being let down and lied to a bit. I thought that working in school to get a good job would somehow lead to increased satisfaction? Today that all seemed like lies, big fat lies. It’s funny to think about how, during the interview, certain things don’t sound as bad as they are. Your false sense of confidence tends to take over and it’s not till you focus in on hind sight that you may or may not be able to truly ascertain, what in fact, you had just "gotten yourself into......". I was hoping to be able to come into the school that was cleaner and more updated and have an easier go at things. I thought it was fair to assume that the cleaner school, the school that appeared to be better off would be more prepared for new teachers!! I had the option of picking a school, a luxury not afforded to other people often. My other choice was very rough looking and when the pay is the same there are a limited number of factors that you can use to pick a school. Anyway, I was hoping to come in from choosing a job (what appeared to be at a much better school), get hired, then get my orientation and work with the sub that had been in the classroom for the past two weeks. I wanted to over on Monday and get the ball rolling on learning; that never happened. When I finally arrived in my classroom and was in front of the class for the first time I was wrong; oh so wrong. Let us just go over some of the highlights from the first day.......I was waiting for the principal with her secretary for a little while. I was concerned as it was 0715 and I had not seen her yet. When I finally meet her it only took 60 sec before she had to deal with some other kid somewhere else out in the school building. When one of the other assistant principals took me down to the room, making a pit stop in his office, I was confronted with my first period. This was what I thought was my first period. Once the introductions had been complete, I had my first surprise. The sub that had come in that day was a new sub to the class; I guess I wasn’t the only one that was having a first day!!? I spent the next 5 minutes hoping that the sub would take over for the time being and I would just be able to sit back for a minute or two and jump in, no such luck......I suddenly had to come up with something to teach for the rest of the day. Surprise number two, the kids had been without a teacher sense the beginning of the school year and had at least 10-12 subs. This of course meant that no grades had been put in for the first nine weeks and that they had pretty much learned nothing. I found nine weeks of vocal words ungraded and pre tests. There had been the folder that had been in there sense the beginning of the year and not much else. A grade book and planning book that had never been used at all and some random trash in the desk draws. All of the cabinets and filing cabinets had nothing in them as well. I will spare some of the details and just list the other surprises I had throughout the day. 1) no teacher txt books or resource books 2) no dry erase marker 3) no classroom supplies 4) nothing all the walls 5) no continuity or lesson plans that any of the subs were given 6) no idea what the kids had been even looking at 7) no idea what I Was going to do for an entire day with no lesson plan and no resources at all 8) no computer 9) no class roster or seating charts, 10) not orientation do discipline 11) no key to the room 12) nothing for the kids to do at all 13) no idea what I was going to do with the roughly 30 kids that speak English as a second language 14) they were suppose to send someone down from the central building to tell me where to start teaching from and he never showed up……..this is just some of the obvious ones!!!!! No, to top it all off, all day I was being told all of these things that I should be doing and should have in the classroom. Someone told "you know that today and on Tuesdays we have PLC" (it s a professional development session). I was completely dumbfounded that, as they all were aware of that I had nothing at all.....anything, that I was going to sit in a classroom to listen to some teachers talk about 20 damn words that we were going to use for ISTEP!!!!!!!!!!!!!! I guess they just wanted me to hand stuff out. I could only hope that Friday was going to get a little better.

First post

Welcome one and all, I hope that you enjoy hearing my rambles and learning from my experience. Feel free to chime in with helpful links and words of encouragement.