New Year. New Blog.

The Best and The Worst

So far.... 

This year brought many new and exciting challenges for me. I am teaching 6th graders again after a two year hiatus, and I have new roles in the community: I have taken a leadership role around Middle School Advisory, and I am the New Faculty Mentor for the new teachers on the River campus.

I took on these new roles because I was ready for it—I asked for more, and I am pleased to report these new roles have given me the elevated challenge I was craving. But, with these new challenges, I have been forced—on a daily basis—to evaluate my task list. I must triage, and I don’t leave every day feeling finished. I am feeling the demands of, once again,  making sure I have balance between my work and personal life. Leaving work by 4pm daily is incredibly important to me. It allows me to have precious time with my son in the afternoons. I am still, mostly, succeeding with this, and have left even earlier on a couple of occasions.

To say finding that balance has been my biggest challenge isn’t necessarily true, because my 6th graders certainly win that award. In my two years away from teaching them an actual core subject, I had forgotten exactly how slowly they move in these first few weeks of their middle school lives. I continuously over-plan classes, and I am spending lots of time re-doing/writing plans because things are not going as I thought they would. I am currently—already—not only 1-2 weeks behind, but nearly everything I planned for the past 4 week, I changed. Still, with all of these challenges, I have managed to experience some really awesome stuff!

Working with our new team of teachers has been incredibly rewarding. Being the listening ears for their first-few-week questions and debrief has been a treat. When I signed on to this role, I envisioned lots of systems setup (my personal fav.) and day-to-day practice feedback and support. However, I am finding that what new employees need the most is someone to listen to them, and my guess is that extends far beyond this workplace. There is so much more that goes into joining a new community than understanding course calendar practices and reassessment policies. Culture assimilation, and shock, are real. The excitement is raw. I am happy to be the support for these incredible teachers, and I hope their experience of the first few weeks went a little more smoothly because of the support, and the ears, I provided. I do plan to get real feedback from them about this, too.

All-in-all, it really has been a wonderful and exciting start to the year. The biggest highlight for me, though, is the people I work with and for—faculty, students, and parents. I get to work in a place where I am respected as a professional and a human, and where that feeling is mutual across the community. I feel fortunate to have found a place to work where I really see myself staying for my entire professional career, and where I will never run out of ways to grow and people supporting me to keep learning.

image from: http://static.adweek.com/adweek.com-prod/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2011/09/Back-To-School.jpg