The Two Best Reasons for Becoming a Teacher....July and August!

There is nothing better than school vacation. Sure, I end up working and trying to hustle up some cash to survive for the two months off, but still...not having to face a full day's teaching every day is such a great feeling. Mind you, I enjoy teaching and I like the kids and what have you, but I just LOVE school vacation!

The last day of school was an unheard of early-bird June 14th. There are lots of reasons to celebrate the close of this particular school year.

First of all, there's the insanely early relase date I just mentioned.

Secondly, there's the fact that this is our last year in our temporary holding facility. The new school will be open in Sepetember. And it is gorgeous! I was on the design committee and heavily involved in decisions regarding color, materials, paint, furnishings, etc. It was a pain in the neck sometimes to go to the meetings, but walking through the place has blown me away. I can't wait to take up residence in my new classroom. I'll actually have real cabinetry and a beautiful desk. At my current location, the pipe behind my storage closet rotted out early last year, thus leaving me to resort to using stacks of milk crates to house my books. Beautiful. It always looked so professional for parent conferences. Thank god no parents show up to conferences at my school. Then I'd really have reason to be embarassed. Now my embarassment is purely theoretical in the hypothetical sense of "What if a parent ever turned up for parent conferences and saw these 'shelves.'"? You get my drift. Although the picture shown below is not an actual snapshot of the dumpy state of my temporary classroom, I think it does a fairly accurate job of illustrating the work conditions I've suffered for the past two years.



Yeah, the new school is going to be a much welcome change.

And thirdly, we get paid 3 days worth of our yearly salary for packing up the boxes on this end of the move, and three days pay for unpacking the boxes on the other end of the move. This will work out to about 1,118 for me both this summer and again in the Fall. I love being on a city payroll. And althogh I can often be heard loudly complaining about the fact that I was never provided with any matierals or books to teach social studies, I must admit to having been delighted to find that I had a total of six boxes to pack in order to complete my entire move. I did let guilt take hold and I helped other colleagues, but still...

The last day was filled with joy and sadness as our 8th graders prepared to take leave of us and venture onto the high school. However, any tears quickly gave way to shouts of "PARTY!!" as the kids pulled away on the school bus-come party van on that last day.




I've been very busy ever since the release from school.

The kids got out on Thursday, but we had professional development on Friday. On Saturday and Sunday, I had my corporate training (I mean, BRAINWASHING) for my new job. I am hereby literally banned from ever mentioning the name of my new employer on this or any website for the duration of my time working for them. Honestly. I had to sign confidentiality agreements, and in anticipation of a new product which will hit the market on the 29th, I have had to give my cell phone over at work every day in order to allow the managers to keep tabs of camera phones and shit. Anyway, on Monday and Tuesday, I had to do my packing at school. On Wednesday and Thursday I had tons of errands to do. Then yesterday, Friday, I had my first in-store shift at my new company. This weekend is time to rest and get some wedding stuff done. Monday, back to work at the store for further training. Wednesday and Thursday I have day-long workshops for school. Friday is wedding rehersal.

Saturday......WEDDING!