Archive for October 11th, 2009

On Wednesday afternoon about 2:30 p.m., I got called to the principal’s office. Boy was I scared. What could I have done wrong to get called in? I squared my shoulders and walked down the long, long path beside the school toward the office. When I got there, the principal didn’t seem unfriendly, but he did seem to have something important to say.

“I didn’t have any idea this was going to happen,” he told me, “but I just go a phone call that you’re being transferred to another school.” The numbers of students in my class were a bit below maximum, and another school had over-full kindergartens. I would be going to the other school to help alleviate their overcrowding problem. It’s called being “surplus listed” and it had happened to me, as I understand, because I had the lowest seniority, having worked only a couple of months.

Thursday would be my last day of teaching my students, Friday I would clean out my room, and on Monday I would report to the the new campus.

At first I was pretty worried — taking on a newly-formed group of kindergardeners eight weeks into the school year could be a recipe for a lot of chaos. But soon I got good news. The new school would give me an already-formed second grade to teach, and the second grade teacher would start the new kindergarden. So my room would already be set up, my class already together. This sounded promising. And I began to think of the positives. Second grade is considered easier than fourth, and there would be team planning, which means I would be able to share lesson plans with the other second grade teachers.

Another adventure loomed; it was more mountains, as they say, behind mountains. Overall, I have a feeling that I am struggling, but I am swimming, not drowning, and that is good.