It started out with a dozen seniors crying on the front steps. Talk of all kinds of retaliation and/or protest. And my first day of CRTs was today. "Hey, we're closing down the school you love, but would ya still do your best for me on that Math test?" Well the testing actually went pretty well all things considered. I gave them the old "don't prove them right by screwing up the test" and "I want you to do so good I can rub their noses in it!" pep speech. I don't know how much it helped, but most of them seemed to be trying their best. Then the principal calls all the teachers to a meeting in the conference room to let us know where we were picked up. So, now I know where I'm going next year, and I'm not going to tell you.
Yeah, you know me better than that.
I had 3 schools circled on the map that I would be happy to go to. All others were questionable at best, hit-the-summer-transfer-list-immediately at worst. I got picked up by one of the schools I had circled, by a principal that I had worked with before and enjoyed working with very much, and at the school I student taught at long ago. It's not the closest one to my house, but it is an easy(ish) drive from my house. Oh, did I mention it's a Junior High? Yeah, back in the Jr. High. But you know what? All 3 of the schools I circled were Jr. Highs. I have enjoyed working at the High School, but I had never ruled out returning to the Jr High sometime in my career.
So, I go out to my new school to say HI to the principal, and she said that's good because she wasn't sure whether I want to teach 8th grade or 9th grade. She penciled me in for the 8th grade, because she thought (correctly) that that is where I would prefer to be. Cool. She's also going to see if she can get me one of the few, very few, classrooms with windows there.
So, right now I'm on a little bit of an "up", because I had feared a lot worse as to where I'd end up. Of course, then the reality of them closing a school I have really loved working at will sink in. But at least I know. And at least I know it's somewhere I'll like being.
