Today was the first teacher day and I'm sort of in shock, but in a good way. I am, once again, blessed with fantastic colleagues who are friendly, knowledgeable, down-to-earth, and very happy that I'm joining them. I'm sure I'll feel like running away after my first day with kids (particularly those with special needs and/or behavior problems, and I know I have a lot of those on my roster), but many teachers have said "feel free to come over and talk to me when you get discouraged or when some kid is giving you problems." D. said, "the key is getting through the first year. After that it's smooth sailing. There were a couple of times my first year when I went home in tears." I'm sure I'll be there too.
So, the staff is great. Now to address the issues of: what the heck I do on the first day, setting expectations for discipline/classroom management, discovering kids' strengths/weaknesses, deciding how and when I will lecture on the approximately 15 million different topics the kids will be working on separately (yay, differentiated learning)...oh, and trying to get the computers in my lab usable, which most of them currently are not. If it's not the computer, it's the cable. Then it's the switch. Then it's the imaging server. Help.
No sweat. Uh huh. Oops, I forget sarcasm doesn't work on the Internet.
I'm still lucky. And I get to walk to work. Handy, since the price of gas is obscene.