D. called this morning to ask how my first week went. I had to say "wellllll....I survived." I actually feel amazingly calm about it, maybe because I know I did my best.
Friday afternoon went like this:
- talk to 3 new students (I've been told that the class list doesn't settle down until the 2nd or 3rd week)
- realize there is no curriculum for Web development, despite it being listed in the course description. No assignments, nothing. Just the "Using Dreamweaver" manual. Ack.
- get the programming group started, the Web design group started, and try to keep an eye on the kids that are pulling old hardware out of the closet and tearing it apart in the next room.
- discover that we have no safety equipment for doing hardware repair.
- calm down the student who just plugged in an old computer and blew a circuit.
- calm down the IT guy whose server just went down upstairs because we blew a circuit.
- send an S.O.S. to the school principal, saying that we shouldn't offer hardware repair at all until a) I know something about it, and b) we actually have some equipment for it. Yikes.
Tonight after my wedding gig I'll develop next week's assignments for the Web design students. After church tomorrow I'll spend the day making up some programming assignments for the Java students. On Monday I get to tell the students that there will be no "hardware repair" option in class this year. Ahhh, the life of a new high school teacher in a class that, as far as I can tell, had little to no curriculum except for lots of quizzes on Microsoft Office "vocabulary" words. My mantra: just get through the first year.