New school, new staff, new blog.

I freaking hate May. I realize that every year I look forward to it, but then it comes and I have finals and projects and registration and freshman orientation and guard auditions and tests and IEP staffings and ILP testing and ILP writing and essays and eligibility and field trips and BBQs and awards and career fair and no time for sleep and an overabundance of funk-causing viruses. Ugh, I'm wiped out! And I was so sick Monday I stayed home and should have taken yesterday, too. But alas, alack, and ahoy, it's May again and I'm racing to the end of the year.

The end of this year is further complicated by the fact that both I and my 8th grade English coworker are leaving this year - myself for Rampart HS and Johanna for New Haven, CT and her husband's full ride scholarship to Yale for a doctorate in Divinity and Religious Philosophy. Yeah, we all hate husband just a little bit. Granted Johanna has a fabulous job waiting for her as well :) Nonetheless, our future absence leaves two holes to be filled and we've been spending a lot of time with the teachers coming in going over units, plans, common assessments, transition stuff, and so forth and packing classrooms. i've been working 60-70 hour weeks for the past month, and I think last week I made it to 80 by the time I was done. It's all going to work out in the end though, right? It should be worth the time invested to go over 3 years of collaborative work, so I'm really hoping those coming in will take what we've built (from nothing, I should add - we didn't have a writing or literature program, common novels, or common assessments) as groundwork for what they'll do. At this point, though, I need to start looking at my own new curriculums - intro to journalism and World and American Lits!

So here I am, racing to May 22nd like a proverbial bat out of Hades. Wish me luck! And luck to all other teachers who are going 110 for the next two weeks!

In Literature, Spring is a time of rebirth and renewal. For me, this Spring will be a time of change. I'm going to be looking for a new classroom this Spring and, with it, a new chance to grow and learn. It's going to be hard, and it's totally stressful, but it's the right time and the right thing to do.