A Good Knight’s Sleep.

Drawn on my all too brief lunch period. Already tired.

The smoothest opening day I have had in years. It’s hard to accept that this was the case, but it was.

If it was so smooth, why am I so incredibly tired? Good question. Day one…on fact Week One, teachers are very much “on.” You need to lay out everything, explain everything, manage and micromanage. If you are clever enough to do that, in a month or two the systems are in place to make things run very smoothly, with far less energy invested. Still…you need the front-end time and energy expenditure.

Already, I have had an administrative observation, and gotten a pretty positive “report card” on the subject, with a closed door meeting about how satisfied they are with their hire. That seems a bit sudden, actually…I mean, it’s Day One, right? As I understand it, there has been some friction with admin and teachers, and this is pretty emblematic of attempting to “let people know when they are doing the right thing.” In the turbulence of all this change, I couldn’t care less, really…it was nice to feel valued.

The kids were also pretty excellent. It’s definitely a different crowd than I’ve had in prior years. They were pretty easily managed, and generally very friendly. There wasn’t any opposition to doing work, and it was Day one, which was refreshing. The older kids were definitely more diverse, with some truly impressive piercings and hair dye strategies. There was far less in the way of truly immature behavior, which was very refreshing.

This is also the first time that I have seen anything like “no social promotion.” That is to say, when I look at my roster, there are students listed in higher grades than the Tenth…who need to make up the units for the course to graduate. That is a HUGE deal…I have never seen evidence of the removal of the “pass everyone” strategy before this very day. I let the students know that their past performance and past records didn’t matter with me…the goal was to move forward and be successful, with no one being left behind. That seemed to be pretty meaningful to a good number of them.

Generally, they were very likeable. I tend to like the students a great deal…I would have made a bad choice of profession if I didn’t. Still…this was a very new situation, and I was relieved to find them as endearing as I did.

With attendance for day one…rules, regulations, breakfast in the classroom, schedule checks, notebook distribution, textbook checks, AND a brief presentation on the five parts of any narrative (Introduction, rising action, climax, falling action, denoument), I got a HUGE amount done, with efficiency, in a fifty four minute period. Each class has roughly forty students, so my student load is close to double what it was under the auspices of “class size reduction” grants. Being brief…I am tired, and that’s what the art is about. I was already tired when I drew it on my half hour lunch, with my two friends.

So, yes, she’s ditched the chest plate and the weird loincloth, but somewhere in the middle of getting out of uniform, fallen asleep on the Big Easy Chair. There’s a high probability of that happening here.

Still…it was unexpectedly nice…especially given all the circumstances of the change. Maybe the protagonist and I will both have a peaceful night’s sleep, with Pony and Quislet watching over us.

One can hope.

• August 19, 2015
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