Ready to go

I'm guessing that the last thing on students' minds at this time of year is what their teachers are doing with their time. Of course, we need dedicated time to plot how to torture the particular kids that we hate, but that's not an official function. We are doing something called in-service. I've never quite figured out the correct grammatical structure for this. Are we in in-service or are we at in-service or simply in service?

In-service is a kind of catchall term for required stuff that teachers have to do that isn't directly related to teaching. It ranges from after-school meetings to so-called professional development to beginning and end of year all day jams.

I rode my bike to school, braving the prediction of rain, which Weather Underground predicted would not be occurring in the half hour I'd be riding. I still got soaked from the humidity and had just barely enough time to dry off before we had to head down to the initial meeting.

As I begin to write this I am in that welcoming meeting. It's a chance to reconnect with colleagues and meet new faculty. We then follow up with the administrators all giving a brief overview of what their priorities are. This is usually pretty pro forma, full of optimism and good cheer. It's a little more meaty this year, since there's been substantial effort made to start the year in an organized manner. I have mixed feelings about this. I like knowing that the people running the place are strong and supportive. On the other hand, I have really enjoyed the freedom afforded when there's little top-down supervision. I have issues with authority and I really don't like being told what to do. I guess we'll just have to see whether new resolve can overcome inertia.

The rest of the day had a union meeting and then it was time for lunch. It's a nice time to catch up with people that you haven't seen all summer, or longer in some cases. It's always a good feeling to remember how and why you liked someone. The lunch had food fight potential because there were pretty much no serving pieces or cutlery (like my college frat's mythical no-hands spaghetti night!) but people were reasonably well behaved, all things considered.

After lunch it was time to sit at my desk. I'm not much of a sit at a desk person, and this whole production is far too much sitting for me. So I spent some time putting books in classrooms. Not randomly, of course. It makes the first day of classes easier if the books are in the rooms when you get there. Teachers who work in schools where you have your own room may not understand this. But four sets of books in four rooms later I was done. Finally I sat at my desk for a while and then it was time to leave, except it was raining. Oops.

After waiting out the rain, I headed home in the bright sunshine, which lasted for a few minutes and then it started getting darker and darker and windier and windier. I started ticking off the miles, thinking "Okay, I can make it through 3 miles in the rain...2 miles...a mile and a half..., etc." But I got home with nary a drop or rain upon me.

The second day started with a meeting with a guy from Apple talking about the iPads we are supposedly going to get. There were many hypothetical questions about the hypothetical iPads, which I guess is appropriate. I'm not sure why people haven't reached the conclusion that these meetings would work better if it wasn't everybody in the room at once. Especially with computer stuff there's just too large a range of experience and needs. The Apple guy was excellent though.

Then we spent a half hour learning how to mark people absent. Setting aside how long I personally might have needed to do this (or if I'd need a meeting at all), I must say that it always struck me that one of the core functions of a school was to know who's there. So anything that helps accomplish that is good. And we did learn how to mark people late too.

After that we had some time to get ourselves ready for opening day. It's time to start.