It took five long years of college to prepare myself for August 13th, two weeks before the high school fall semester begins. Why would I be so excited? This is my first year to be in front of the class as the teacher rather than the student. All new teachers are required to attend conferences with the local public school’s board of directors. The meetings are important if you’re interested in job related information such as payroll, taxes, insurance, vacation, and retirement benefits. For the most part, everyone yawns through the information and signs on the dotted line. The remaining half of the week is spent attending retreats with the senior staff members and getting to know each other.
“Everyone in the circle has to introduce themselves but use an adjective that starts with the same letter as the first letter in your name! I’ll start! My name is Daring Diane!”
I appreciate this part of the week the most because you can always get interesting advice from veteran peer:
“The person, doing all the work is the person doing all the learning; always walk your students through the material so they find the answers rather than handing it over”.
Some, more encouraging than others:
“Get a coffee cup with a cover. Then the little bastards can’t slip anything in your drink!”
“Run before it’s too late”.
Lunchtime is always something to look forward to because the new kids usually go out together. It’s nice to have a group to go out with again, but I can‘t always relate to them because they’re recent newlyweds.
“I had to decide whether I want to be a teacher or a wife, and honestly, my new husband comes first.”
“I love being a dad.”
“I just want to be in education so I can take three months off to travel and raise a family with my new husband.”
Feeling completely dedicated to my profession, I looked down on this attitude; mostly because everyone in the education was engaged and therefore didn’t leave many prospects for college students who were single. This didn’t really apply to me because for my past five years I had been dating a younger girl from the business college, Melanie.
Mel graduated early and already started her career working for a large and popular computer company. She was going to be my sugar mama someday. Not anytime soon though because I’d have to be crazy to get married at 24. I was especially excited to see her today because after two weeks of introductions and paperwork, we received the keys to our classrooms. This wasn’t the smoothest process when the assistant principal had all the keys of the school organized in a small plastic box.
“I think this is the key to the school’s main door. Hmmm… this looks like a room key. No, wait, room keys are more of a brown color. This is like a rusty gold. I tell ya what, Jason…”
“Actually, I’m Josh…”
“Come again?”
“Josh, my name… it’s Josh”
“Right, right, right… take this key and if it doesn’t work, come back and I’ll look again, Jason.”
I returned three times before finding my room key. It was a one of the larger classrooms but lacked the windows of the smaller rooms. Two chalk boards took the place of the white boards I was accustomed to from my training. I knew this meant I’d go home with chalk dust covering me at the end of each day. The desks were stacked and shoved against one wall waiting to be spread out. It was in dire need of dusting. I stood in the center thinking about the five years that lead me here and that this was my big “I made it” moment.
Then my phone rang into my moment. It was my, Melanie.
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