Look Who's a Teacher!

Today was my first day as a REAL teacher (kind of like a "real boy", but not). I was apprehensive leading up to it, but as I sat on the bus waiting to arrive at school I began to mellow out and was ready for orientation.

We started in the high school auditorium with some social time before beginning the official welcome presentation by the administration. It was during this time that I walked around and got to know many of the teachers, even teachers in the high school or elementary school. Many of them wore the tradition hijab and were clearly Muslims, but others were of different backgrounds. We had people from Europe (Bulgaria and Scotland), Africa (Morocco, Algeria, Uganda, and Ghana), America (Canada and the United States), and Asia (India and I believe one or two other countries). It was really awesome knowing that I am living and working in a very diverse place; it seemed to take the pressure off of me a bit.

After the big assembly, we split up into schools, so I went downstairs to the middle school (we share a building with the high school) to meet with our building principal. There I got to meet other middle school teachers and was very happy that I became familiar with some of the Muslim teachers, in addition to the "newbies" and other Americans. I also found out that my principal is a Sagittarius (like me!) and has family from Millersville, Pa (where I went to school, for those of you who are not aware). It is a SMALL world!

After listening for two hours to all of the oh so fun policies and procedures of MKS (Modern Knowledge Schools), I got to see my classroom- yes, my very OWN classroom. And as you can see above, it's a decent sized classroom. Many of the other teachers have classrooms that are about half the size of mine. Fortunately, too, the teacher before me left a lot of materials and left the classroom in decent shape, and the teachers I am working with are awesome. Have to run. Love you all!