hi! school (still here #2)

i've got to put myself to bed soon and i'm certainly too tired for poetry, but i also know that there are at least a handful of very generous people out there who read this and want to know what is happening, and i want also to share the excitement: i'll meet my first students tomorrow!

tuesday's the official first day of school, when we'll have a full day of regular classes, but tomorrow we'll have orientation, an assembly and then an hour in our classroom with our freshman "slc" ("smaller learning communities," sort of like progressive, character- and community-building homerooms).

otherwise i will be working in two ninth grade english classes (which meet for an hour and a half every day) and one senior ap english class (which i think meets three times a week: twice for an hour and a half and once for 45 minutes--as you can see the school schedule is quite confusing, i'm surprised no one's managed to sell me an elevator pass yet!). there will be two of us residents working with one mentor teacher. our mentor is wonderful, she is witty and wise and she seems to know instinctively which stuff to sweat and which not to, a very important piece of the teacher's survival tool kit. i actually requested to work with her because last year she taught a junior creative writing class, and of course i want very much to incorporate creative writing into my own future teaching practice.

unfortunately she's not teaching that course this year, but i know enough by now to appreciate working with someone who values this aspect of an english curriculum and can give me ideas about how to do it well. but ultimately i feel like i wound up in the best possible environment, with the best possible mentor, for me. she laughs a lot, which is so important. the desks i helped arrange in her classroom don't face forward in neat rows but are clustered together in angled pods of fours, a finely composed, intentional dis/order. i can tell that she works her students hard but and because and through loving them well. and she really loves her job!

we've spent the week at our new high school in training, curriculum planning, and classroom preparation, which has been quite exhausting; last week's reprieve already feels so distant. it seems we'll be expected to take on quite significant teaching responsibilities nearly immediately, which is unexpected and nervewracking but also exciting, and i sense that my mentor will provide me with the right balance of handholding and freedom. (just like a good teacher.)

the dark checkered hallways are waxed to a squeaky shine, lined with those tall human-sized lockers in a glossy deep blue, and the air smells of that peculiar, thick, expectant smell of high school (except when the physics/philosophy teacher is burning incense in his classroom). the other resident and i have our own wooden desks in one corner of the classroom, maybe tomorrow i'll bring a little plant or one of my prints to decorate with.

probably best to go now: i've still got to iron my shirt for the first day of school. wish me luck.