D-Day Minus 2

So now there is one day of prep left prior to my debut in front of approximately 180 future leaders of America, who expect me to guide them along the path to greatness. I'm not even remotely ready.

However, I'm feeling reasonably good about my prospects for avoiding major catastrophe. Tomorrow will be all about putting together the specific items I want to talk about and what I want to say. I've decided to stop caring about the fact that my room is going to look like shit relative to all of the overachievers who are decorating their bulletin boards, putting up themed posters and otherwise making their rooms look like artists' renderings of award-winning 3rd grade classrooms. My department head, who teaches calculus, uses a cow theme (cow-culus... get it?) and has cows ("moooving ahead through math") everywhere. There's also an enormous tree on the back wall, for hanging vocabulary words from.

Meanwhile, one of the assistant principals wants us to teach a lesson each of the first 6 days on things like tardiness, dress codes, etc. The packet he sent around includes worksheets, group activities and quizzes. (Why am I late? (a) my previous class is on the other side of the campus, (b) I had to go to my locker, (c) the halls were too crowded or (d) I spent too much time socializing with my friends.) It's about third grade level ("Okay, class. Who can tell me some reasons why a person might be tardy? Now, how do you think we might be able to prevent that from happening in the future?") So it looks like I'm going to start out being a maverick. I'm going to talk about tardiness ("Don't do it. If you do it very often, you're going to have to stay after school to make up the time.") but I'm not planning to do quizzes and group discussions on the subject.

I'm more than somewhat disappointed that there was essentially no help for first-time teachers (of whom there are apparently very few) and "new to MHS" teachers, of whom there are a whole bunch. The latter group probably knows the right questions to ask, but not the answers. The former group really doesn't even know the questions. I've started a list of things I wish I'd known on Monday, and so far it has about 35 items on it. For most of those things, I've learned the right answer, but in several cases, I would have been much better served to have known it earlier. Of course, there are a number of things I still don't know, and I don't have any idea what it is that I don't even know that I don't know.

I guess I'll find out in a couple of days...