Earned the weekend

The other night I had dinner with my principal mentor from last year. I was exhausted from the school day--a good kind of exhausted--but exhausted nonetheless. We had a quick dinner and headed home early since we were both so tired. She said, "you'll learn to hate Friday nights. Everyone will want to go out and you'll be so tired and you'll just want to go home and sit." Well, here I am sitting on my couch, watching Groundhog Day and completely vegging out. I do intend to find a more balanced approach to working so that this isn't the weekly picture, but for this week--the couch is the perfect Friday night spot.

The top 5 challenges this week:

5. being very nervous at the podium in the auditorium in front of the staff on the first staff day

4. realizing that we are 15 lockers short--and that no teacher wants their students to share

3. Finding lots of important school documents that need to be updated but can't be found in digital format and need to be retyped.

2. Realizing that I have overbooked our music spaces--can we build a new music wing by Tuesday?

1. Finding out that the very popular "Homework Center's" funding has been cut and must be found elsewhere

The top 10 great moments of the week:

10. Getting an unexpected hug from a teacher I had just met when I told him he didn't have recess duty

9. Watching first year teachers set up their rooms

8. Listening to kids and parents come into the building for the classroom visits on Thursday

7. Watching teachers interact and laugh about moments in the history of the school during the timeline exercise

6. Taking photos of groups of teachers for the bulletin board

5. Leaving the building after dark on Wednesday, but pretty much finished with the schedule

4. Leading meetings that are respectful of teachers' needs to meet with their teams and prepare their classrooms

3. Framing, hanging, and talking about the pictures of kids I've taught in the past 7 years

2. Meeting with teachers one on one to alleviate or at least listen to their concerns about the schedule

1. Receiving feedback from our senior staff that the atmosphere of opening days was better than it has been in a long time