OK, I've arrived! Actually, I arrived a week ago, but it's been crazy busy, so I'm only now getting a chance to post. (or rather, having an alignment of time and energy to post). I think I'm a week behind, so at some point I may split up this post into two posts, just so I can say I've kept up with a post a week.
So much has happened this summer. Oh my gosh. In the weeks and days leading up to the move, it kind of felt unreal. Could I really be moving across the country in the middle of a pandemic to start a new, demanding job? It seemed like a dream or a fleeting fancy. Even once I arrived, it still felt kind of unreal. Perhaps partly because I was so tired, everything felt a bit dreamlike.
There is a lot to tell. As I said, what a summer: together, me and my fiancee planned and executed a Covid wedding, and I finished my intense teacher training via online, and I studied for and passed (that's right, I passed the final test, I'm official, the diploma is in the mail. Though it's going to my Aunt's house because I have no permanent address yet...) ... my final tests. And packed up all my belongings (and helped a little with the general house belongings, but that was far and away Suzannah's hard work) and drove across the country with our two cats.
I thought I was going to have to start teaching the very next day, but wonderfully, I had two days to rest before diving in. Which was much, much needed.
This was a busy, busy summer. But I did it. I did it all. We did it (Suzannah and I).
But oh, it is not over. Not by a long shot. We're looking for a house to move into (another big thing that seems kind of like a dream or fictional story I read, not something that's really happening to me). And I'm learning the ropes of the job I'm in.
The job is a fascinating experience: the kids are wonderful. The facilities are wonderful, the co-workers and bosses are wonderful. The job is intense. I need to arrive by 7:20 every day, and leave at 5 (though I don't actually get to leave at five, since I have to disinfect everything once the final kids are gone at 5.)
This is longer than I've ever worked before, as a job. I'm getting up at 5am so I have at least a little time to do a 15 minute run and some meditation. I've worked other teaching jobs, like for student teaching, where I was getting up as early, but none where I was working this late. Also, as usual, I'm exhausted at the end of the day. I think this is just par for the course as a teacher starting up a class at the beginning of a year, but also it's expected, as a new teacher, learning all sorts of new things every day, trying to get up to speed. And then on top of that the long days. So, that is all just to say, by the end of the day I'm not capable of much higher order thinking.
And this is just doing a little teaching and mostly assisting. The other teacher who's going to come in is still in training for another week, so we're running on two people when we'd normally be running on three. We're making it work, it's just one more thing adding to the intensity of what's going on. Then in addition, we have a bunch of extra energy going into sanitation procedures, sanitizing all the high use surfaces and desks and chairs two to three times a day.
And of course, since I'm moving towards being a teacher rather than an assistant, I'll be picking up more teaching duties as we go along, I think, which means, though it should settle down somewhat in terms of the newness of the job, learning the ropes, more and more complexity is going to be added. Still, that's a more gentle on-ramp than most teachers get, where they're just thrown into teaching from day one and it's sink or swim.
OK, that should do it for part one. I'll continue this in part two.
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