Whine whine, I'm a teacher, yay.

In the past two days I've learned that being a beginning teacher involves a lot of "hurry up and wait"...and I know that this means I'll be working straight from Thursday morning until Tuesday morning when the kids walk in. Let's talk a little bit about how my first two days as a "teacher" went.

Yesterday:
- Joined the county high school staffs for a workshop put on by Jason Dorsey who discussed generations working together in the work place. I went through a similar (in that it was the same topic) at Bridgewater when I started working there, but this was much much better. Both more entertaining and more informational than the crap that we had there. It probably helps that Dorsey is a member of my own generation so he didn't constantly make our generation look bad. So that took up our morning.
- Lunch with ladies from the science department. I am a novelty to them as I am the youngest in the department by 25 years. They are hilarious and crazy and I'm exciting to work with them.
- After lunch, my mentor teacher had to go somewhere for some training and I really had no idea what to do. Really. You go through 5 years of school to get to this point and then you walk into an empty classroom and you wonder what you're supposed to do first. I went to my department chair -- who is the most wonderful person ever and gave me a hug and told me how glad she was to have me there when she saw me yesterday morning (for the first time since interviewing me) -- and said "what do I do first???" And I quote, "oh you poor thing, I'll help you." ... Oh thank the lord, she's ok with me being completely lost!! So she got me started on stealing school supplies, I mean, stocking my classroom with necessary supplies and showed me where to get bulletin board paper, ok, now you're talking my language!
Today:
- First faculty meeting. Many points made by the administrators were preceded with, "And we'll do this the same way that we did last year.." Oh hey, if that's the case, you might want to have a meeting with the new teachers to catch us up, we're not magical, we don't know what happened last year. Many other points were mentioned that the caveat that "an e-mail has gone out" or "and e-mail will go out within the week", funny thing about that, I don't have [school] e-mail yet and no one can tell me who can help or when. Yet the other new teacher (and my new BFF, let's be honest. She went to JMU and she's the other brand new teacher, and a runner...TRIFECTA!) has her e-mail up and running. She's going to set me up tomorrow, screw waiting around for people, our generation is supposed to be magical with technology so we might as well prove it. Also, I won a ski lesson, ski rental, and a lift ticket in a raffle at the end of the faculty meeting. Not exactly on my list of things to do...oh wait... here goes #94 on my 101 in 1,001!!
- Lunch
- Set up the rest of what I can set up in my classroom. I've seen classrooms before and I know that teachers have a lot of stuff. I always thought it was magic, but now I know. I don't have any stuff. Where the heck does it come from?? All my drawers and cabinets are empty (except the ones that have school supplies from the supply closet in them) and my walls are empty, soon to be filled with assorted, discarded ones that other science teachers don't want anymore. When does the teacher stuff fairy come? Gosh, I hope it's tonight!!
- Listened to my mentor teacher say no less than 5 times, "we really need to find time to sit down so I can tell you what to teach." I got all the time in the world, I'm sitting here wondering what to do...what the heck, lady...you volunteered to be my mentor, c'mon!!
- Went over and over in my head if there was anything else I could do. I can't access the documents which tell me what to teach/generally how to teach it. The system which includes all our communication with parents and are websites are down. I am one of a few classrooms left that did not have my projector installed as planned this summer. I have a Promethean Board but nothing to attach it to and since I can't get into my account (same as e-mail issue), I can't get on the computer to even create things to use on my Promethean Board, even when I do have it attached to something. Hope my students enjoy my high-tech chalkboard and overhead projector on the first day :)
Tomorrow:
- Morning - County-wide science training/staff development.
- Afternoon - School-wide staff development.
- Notice that this doesn't include figuring out what to teach or classroom set-up because obviously those things aren't important.
Thursday:
- By 6 PM, I have to essentially be ready. 6th grade orientation and Back-to-School Night.

I know it sounds like whining, most of it isn't, it's really just word vomit. I was offered this job on June 25th and since then, I've been very excited about it starting, I moved August 2nd and sat around getting even more excited so it's really difficult for me to not get to get in there and do things. For once I don't want to be procrastinating, I want my career to just get started already. And in 25 years, I'll hear myself saying what my colleagues have said to me many times just in two days..."I can't believe I've been teaching all that time already." I'm incredibly optimistic about it, so let's go already!!!!

PS - If you want to hear whining, ask me about Verizon lately...