Meeting All the Teachers

Today I met all the teachers, including my mentor teacher, the whole math department, and well really... everyone.  My mentor seems really nice.  She seems slightly soft-spoken and very calm but also very cheery.  She's a competitive salsa dancer, and she also went to a performing arts high school in New York.  So we have some things in common, and hopefully I'll get to know her more in the next week and we'll discuss my role in the classroom and everything before all the students start showing up.  

The day started off with a bang.  We played pictionary in groups as a warm-up.  So I was with a bunch of teachers that I hadn't even been introduced to yet, and I got the strangest thing to draw.  It wasn't objects we had to draw but key phrases that they had discussed in their professional development from the day before, when of course I wasn't there.  So I was terrified I was gonna get something and not know what it meant.  And of course, I did.  However, they were still able to guess it thanks to my mad drawing skills.  The phrase was "no genital clutch."  What?!?  What does that even mean?  I cannot possibly even imagine what that refers to.  There I was, the intern that no one has met, holding the pen, and thinking, "can I really draw this?"  So I did.  I drew a penis.  That's right.  I drew a penis.  And then I drew a hand holding a ball to represent clutching something.  And they managed to get it.  So I was a little proud.  However, they did then hold up the picture to show everyone that the intern drew a penis.  So now I'm the intern who drew a penis within the first 10 minutes of meeting all the teachers.  Awesome.

Otherwise, the rest of the day was kind of dull.  We spent most of the day sitting in the assembly hall while people talked at us, and it was especially bad for the interns because none of us know what they're talking about.  They talked about their summer programs and how well or not well they went this year and also how they're losing more and more money both from the school system and from grants.  We went over the calendar, but a lot of the dates were either wrong or were going to change, so I'm not sure how useful that was.  Then all the teachers received their schedules and class lists.  So this is when I met the math team.  There are five math teachers, and they all seem really great.  So my mentor is teaching one class of Math 2 and one class of Math 5 in the fall and two classes of Math 3 in the spring.  Also, she said she had an awful computer incident at the end of last year, and she lost a lot of her curriculum, so it seems we will be writing a lot of curriculum together, which is kinda cool.  Anyway, then the math teachers sat around looking through their class lists talking about the students.  "Oh, he's difficult."  "She is a hard-worker."  "He does better when he sits next to girls because he likes to show off for them."  So I kinda just chilled.  I felt a little awkward already, and then I was just totally not included.  I don't blame them - I would do it too.  But is there any way to not have awkward moments when you're the new person?  I mean really, it's just this horrible inevitable part of being new, and it totally sucks.  Then the academic dean comes up and says to the math team that they're going to meet over lunch, and she turns to me and says, "You don't have to be there - not that I mean to exclude you, but this is something we have to deal with from last year."  And you know, I totally get it, I understand, but it doesn't make it any less awkward.  Someone please explain to me how to be less awkward in these situations!  Anyway, we broke for lunch, and I ate my little ham and cheese sandwich all by my lonesome, because all the other interns ate with their content teams.  Le sigh... At least I was included in the faculty picture, right?  

After lunch they talked at us some more about how to write our professional development goals.  They gave us a worksheet with circles and boxes and charts that I guess I have to fill out.  I don't really remember this part, because this is where I started to doze off.  It was just too much information that I didn't understand, so my brain just shut down.  Oh well.  Then we broke up into our literature circles based on whatever summer reading book we chose to read.  I only found out last week that we needed to read a summer book, and with all the moving, I was not very far into it.  So when we broke off into groups, I was with only three other teachers, and I had absolutely nothing to share about the book, because I just started it.  Again I felt totally awkward and unprepared.  But I did manage to suggest ideas for planning our classes.  In these literature circles, we will meet twice during Seminar with the students who read the same book.  So basically we had to plan two forty-five minute classes with a homework assignment in between to help facilitate a discussion about the book.  So I had a few good ideas for homework, and I really liked the collaborative nature of planning these classes.  Everyone was really open to everyone else's suggestions, so I didn't feel stupid when I spoke.  So hopefully I'll finish the book soon, and I'll be able to participate better next time.  :-/