(Just Like) Starting Over

Hello hello and welcome to my blog, now in its third year running. That's right, ladies and gents.. we are about to embark on year THREE of this epic quest that is my teaching career. Lest you think that since I will be a fully tenured teacher the battles will cease and it's all smooth sailing from here, here's a look at the changes in store for our brave heroine..

• "New" principal. Our principal took a job at the district office and our assistant principal is moving up to the principalship. (Is that a word?)
• His assistant principal vacancy will be filled by a man by the name of Mr. Chew. (I kid you not! I haven't met him yet.)
• Our other assistant principal will be on maternity leave for the beginning month or so. She is temporarily relieved by a man my coworkers call the Sith?
  
• Two of my favorite senior teachers are not returning. Two other teachers are also not returning, but I wasn't as close to them.
• One of the new hires is from Teach for America. I promise to do my best to play nice.
• Trying out interactive notebooks with the physics kids.
  
• I may be teaching three preps.

Did you see that? Did you see how I snuck that in there? Teaching three preps. I think it shows some growth on my part that I'm not completely freaking out about it. I'm no stranger to having random new preps thrown at me last minute (first year was Chemistry, second year Algebra), and sadly I was kind of expecting it.

But can I pause a minute and whine/vent just a little? I promise it won't take too long. I know I don't have much to complain about since I still have my job and I still get to be at the school I love.. but can I for ONCE just do the job I was trained and hired for? I teach physics. I teach PHYSICS. I got the math credential so I wouldn't have to teach chem again but it's not what I was trained to do. Teaching math is not what I'm good at, by any stretch of the imagination. And now I might have physics, geometry AND earth science. Earth science WTC?!? What do I know about the rock cycle? Climate? Ecosystems?? Oh yea.. geometry? Side-angle-side theorem and pi=3.1415..? At least my principal gave me a heads up about the geometry and asked how I felt about it. There's a good chance that it'll be switched back to algebra. And the main earth science teacher is a rockstar so I have someone really solid to piggy-back off of.

Part of what this means, and what I'm trying to avoid thinking about.. is that I'll be teaching two sections of freshmen. Ahh freshmen, the bane of my existence last year. Who knows, maybe we'll get a batch that aren't gang bangers selling screwdrivers during standardized testing. But beyond not feeling adequate teaching subjects that I'm not familiar with.. I REALLY don't feel adequate teaching that age group. I'm not entirely warm and nuturing. I don't like holding the kids' hands. Don't mistake my heart for my kids for coddling. I try to treat my juniors and seniors like little adults. They make their choices and they live with the consequences. Freshmen still need to be taught about what that's like. I don't know that I'm the one that can teach them that.

Anyways. I just needed to get that out of my system. But like I said.. I was expecting this. So. One more week of summer (minus three days of PD and meetings) and then it's go time. I'm almost ready.