Loving every minute

I managed to land a sweetheart deal with this job. 2 preps, 4 sections of 11th grade and 1 section of 9th. Most teachers have 3. Some are asked to do 4 preps, though our union contract stipulates that they must agree to it and they get extra money. I have my own classroom and am in it for all but one class. I've been told to keep my mouth shut about this as more senior teachers are running all over the place. My classes are capped at 26 students, but only one class even comes close to this. Most are under 20.

This really seems like a cool high school. It's huge, but almost all of them are these days. So they followed the middle school model and broke the scool into 4 houses. I'm in the Fine Arts house, which has an audio and visual production studio, dance studio, instrumental music, choir, and seemingly all of the really cool English courses. Nearly every one of the teachers and staff has been both friendly and helpful. I'm a pretty good judge of when someone's genuinely nice and when they're just being polite, and everyone I have to work with is genuine. This is a biggie.

Here's another biggie: No one seems to care a lot about the specifics of what I teach. There are 3 required books and several more to choose from, but nothing else is defined. Everyone I've spoken to has incredibly helpful suggestions, but it's up to me. Which for me means that it's up to the students. I told them that there are a few things that we have to do, but that they get to have a lot of input on all of the rest of it.

I've got about 100 students and so far I seem to have made at least a small connection with at least half of them already, just by telling them that they get a lot of choice.

I really hate getting up early, but I really love going to work in the morning now. I've definitely found a great place for me.