Lessons from the Valley

OMG... It started already. How time flies!

Courtney brought up an interesting point at the end of her blog entry. I reported to my first day of planning in the Valley on Thursday. I was really excited/anxious to finally start everything, but one recurring thought was going through my head most of the week "What on Earth should I wear?" Finally, the morning of, I decided to err on the side of caution and I put on some bomb gap black slacks and a quasi-dressy white shirt. I thought I looked pretty good. A product of having awesome female family members who seem to always buy me clothes that match. I nervously dressed myself and took the glorious 7 minute drive over to the Valley for my first all staff meeting.

I knew I had made a mistake as soon as I stepped out of the car. I watched in amusement as other teachers rolled up wearing various assortments of flip flops, shorts, tank tops, athletic clothes and generally comfortable garb. I looked like I was getting married or going to court. The first thing that my cooperating teacher told me when I walked into the social studies office was "Wow, I should have told you that we were casual today." "Yeah, I said, I thought it would be better to be over dressed than under dressed." I nervously walked to the other side of the school and waited for the meeting to start. It was my responsibility to find out and I never asked.

The principal is an awesome guy. Obviously I have not spent much time at the school, but I really like listening to this guy talk. He had a powerpoint for the first meeting and went around and introduced all of the new teachers in the building and finally after he went through all of them, he posted a slide showing the names of the three student teachers in the Valley this fall. I was the second listed of three. The first one was not there, and when he read my name I stood up and smiled and waved. He then smiled and said "It looks like you got the dress code." To which I replied "I guess I will just be the awkwardly overdressed student teacher today." It got a good laugh, and it was an interesting way to introduce myself to the entire staff. I walked around the rest of the day as "awkwardly overdressed guy." I am happy to be known for something rather than the other two student teachers who I do not think have showed up to the school yet.

The moral of the story is that you should definitely follow Mrs. Cohourtney K-Ballz lead and find out from your cooperating teacher what the dress code is on the first day of meeting.

School starts on Tuesday. I get the Freshman for like 10 minutes before they head off to orientation. I do not know why, but this whole student teaching thing is scaring the crap out of me. I am sure I will get over it as soon as I get used to the surroundings, but as always I seem to be putting a ridiculous amount of pressure on myself to be the best student teacher ever.

Hope everybody kicks ass this week!
I hope that we all regularly update this page as I bet a lot of really amusing things are going to go down this semester.