This was the first week back to school, but with a bit of a twist for me.
I'm in a brand new district (it's HUGE!), at a totally different school (the most diverse student population in the district!), and I'm no longer in a self-contained classroom (Just reading, writing, and social studies from now on, baby!).
(Feel free to throw confetti and bounce about in a mini-celebration for me. I'll wait for you to finish. It's okay, I'm excited too!)
Whew. Talk about change. And if you know anything about me, you know this: I don't do very well with big changes in my life! In fact, even though this job hop sounded perfect for me, it took many many hours of conversation with friends and family before I finally decided to accept the offer. I'm lame, folks. I like a little stability in my old age.
Lucky for me, my husband and I are carpooling the 30 minutes to work each day. My poor husband is doing a fantastic job of listening to me on our drives home from work -- I require lots of reflection time every day!
I knew leaving my school, with its focus on brain research and many freedoms in the classroom would be difficult, but I didn't anticipate how much I would feel like a foreigner in a new country!
Besides the obvious differences -- Newbie district is more than twice the size of Oldie district, my new school recently became a Title I campus, the technology resources are (far) less than ideal, the student population is incredibly diverse, and this district has some pretty stringent ideas on how a classroom should be run -- there are also many interesting nuances that I am adjusting to that create the culture on my new campus.
Although I was obviously excited to embark on this adventure in an ELA classroom, I knew things would be different. I mean, c'mon people. I am used to:
- not wearing shoes in the classroom
- snacks and water bottles all day
- students working in the halls, under tables, anywhere that works for them!
- playing music all day
- narrative report cards
- textbooks gathering cobwebs in the corner
- ample technology resources - 2 computer labs, teacher laptop, Macs in the classroom, Smart Boards, classroom iPod sets...
- freedom to teach how I want with little interference or questions about my methods
- a general belief among coworkers that worksheets are coma-inducing time wasters
- collaborating with a classroom of 1st grade buddies each week
- two different schedules that we flip-flop back and forth from all year
- student led conferences with parents twice a year
- portfolios that go home throughout the year
- and much, much more (including a 10 minute drive to work!)
In many ways, I spent the past 5 years feeling the freedom to try out just about any wacky idea I came up with. Some worked, some didn't, but I always knew I was free to give it a shot. My team was my family and we worked our little educatin' booties off -- including meeting weekly over the summer to continue planning for the upcoming school year. We shared professional development books and ideas and were always there for each other -- no matter what.
It's difficult to walk away from such a close family. I don't think that is something you can find in every school, though I'd like to believe it is possible to grow that type of closeness between teachers.
My new principal is 100% behind my teaching beliefs, although she did raise her eyebrows at my shoeless feet once this week! My students (all 35 of them) are sweet and polite and eager to learn ... even if I think I may befuddle their brains a bit. We're all still figuring each other out, and having a lot of fun doing it! And although my new coworkers may not yet see the sense in my unusual classroom antics, I think we've settled into a comfortable work relationship. This week at lunch, the teacher in the classroom next to mine said, "I think I heard you guys singing or chanting stuff today..." and I laughed and apologized if we were to loud. But he simply replied, "Nope, sounds like my kind of classroom."
And that, my friends, was a very good feeling.
Even though Newbie district is a little more strict in how they want me to organize my teaching time, I still have the freedom to teach what I'm supposed to teach in the way I want. This week, instead of jumping into academics like many of my coworkers, I spent a great deal of time setting up the environment with my new learners. We talked (a LOT) about what we want our room to look and feel like, we learned about how our brain works and what type of learners we are, and I set them loose in our classroom library to play with the different genres they will be reading and writing this year.
There were some moments that, quite literally, rattled my thoughts: arriving to work an hour before sunrise to find two young students seated in the dark front steps of the school, a 10-year-old student tearfully asking me to help him spell his last name before he got to the end of the lunch line, because the lunch lady keeps asking him to spell it and he doesn't know how, among other things.
I'm eager to make this new campus a home, and it's happening day by day. I know I've landed here for a reason, and if I forget amidst the chaos of finding my way in this new world, I have two groups of amazing kiddos that remind me every time we sit down to learn together.
