On the surface, today was nothing special, but upon closer consideration, it was filled with a lot of little joyous moments. After four days, I am finally feeling officially settled in for the summer, but with that, things start to feel "normal". Given how short my time is here, I have to keep reminding myself how special every day I have here is so I never get bored. This blog is really helping with that.
I opted not to have breakfast this morning so I got to sleep in an extra couple minutes (necessary, given my late night yesterday). I walked over to school this morning with a large group of co-teachers. The morning hike is beautiful because the misty evening fog is just starting to lift and the sun reflects off of it creating this bright glow on the horizon in every direction. My iPhone camera could not handle the brightness, so I had to do some editing to make the picture below viewable.
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| I'll try to get color photos of it in the future. It's truly a sight to behold. |
Upon arriving at school, I was pleasantly surprised to find that the national organization sent a representative to bring us breakfast of donuts, orange juice and Starbucks coffee. I was already regretting not eating after the long walk and feeling very sleepy from my lack of proper sleep, so this gift helped me start my day feeling even brighter than the fog. Let it be known that I have, in the past, held a strong distaste for coffee and yet I gratefully poured myself a cup (with a fair amount of cream and sugar, of course) which put an extra little pep in my step.
Because the movers were bringing our boxes into our permanent faculty room this morning, we relocated to a different classroom for the morning, which happened to be the lower-school music room. After some more Life Map sharing from my coworkers and our morning lesson, we took a short break. Having left my guitar at home for the summer, I was overjoyed to get my paws on one of the room's instruments. One of my coworkers is a huge fan of all things Disney, particularly The Little Mermaid, and dreams of playing her at Disneyland someday; knowing this, I tried to play by ear the classic ballad from that film/musical, "Part of Your World". She smiled bigger than the Cheshire Cat (registered trademark) and began singing along with me. Over the course of the song, more and more teachers joined in, and soon enough it became a full-on jam session. Little did I know, one of them was recording me from behind...
Over lunch, I worked on learning the names of my students. The administrators made handy little flash cards with the students' pictures on the front and names on the back. I never realized how good I was at memorization until one of my peers told me she was impressed with how fast I was picking up on the names. I really appreciated this exercise. I've always found calling people by name to be crucial for showing respect, and I certainly like it when other people refer to me by name too. It's nice to know that from the minute our students walk in the building in a little over a week, I will be able to call all 133 of them by name and start building strong relationships with them right away.
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| Looks a little nicer today, eh? |
Later in the afternoon, we split off into our co-teaching pairs. Essentially, in our program, every grade is taught four main subjects and each subject has two teachers. These pairings work together to plan lessons, give each other feedback and generally become each other's main partner on the staff. Luckily, my co-teacher and I get along very well, and he is also staying in the same dorm as I am so it is easy for us to collaborate both inside and outside of work if necessary.
As part of the "getting to know each other" process, we were encouraged to take the Myers-Briggs personality test and compare our results to find both areas of commonality and distinction between our characters which may help or hinder our abilities to work well together over the summer. I took this test once a long time ago but forgot my results. When I took it this time, I was told I am an ENFJ (extroverted, intuitive, feeling and judging). Despite my previously being skeptical of the Myers-Briggs assessment, I actually connected very well with my results and found them to be true to me, both in the associated strengths (reliability, charisma and altruism) and weaknesses (indecisive, hypersensitive, and inconsistent self-esteem). My partner is an INSJ, so we have a good balance of similarities and differences.
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| Unrelated, but this is a picture of my classroom for the summer! Small, but just enough for me. |
On the way home, I called my grandparents to say hello and update them on how things are going. One of the toughest parts of being out here is having a three hour time difference from home. When I get out of work, my mom is usually already asleep. (She goes to bed before the sun even sets. You have my permission to poke fun at her for this in my absence.) My grandparents stay up super late though. It was nice to hear a voice from home even though I haven't really felt homesick at all since being here.
When I got home, I cooked myself a Trader Joe's turkey burger for dinner (which was delicioso) and planned on hosting a premiere of the first episode of the new Orange is the New Black season. I invited my dorm mates to watch with me. Unfortunately, in the lounge, the TV's cords had been accidentally unhooked from the wall (where we could not access them) and the room was too noisy to hear it just over my laptop speakers, so we postponed until a different day. Instead, we just hung out and had good conversation and watched some unsettling YouTube videos of popular rappers (I finally learned what the terms "cooking" and "trap" mean... silly me thinking they were just soliloquizing about their house chores) and unusual uses for grapefruits. Apparently, grapefruit is actually the citrus fruit which is the new black.
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| Shout-out to Mom: thanks for letting me borrow your little frypan for the summer! I'm putting it to good use. |
Between my first voluntary cup o' Joe, our Disney singalong, working with my partner teacher, and just bonding with my coworkers some more, I would say today was a very productive day. I just had to remind myself a lot to pay attention to the little things that made it unique and beautiful (a good lesson for people everywhere to keep in mind)! I thought back on being on the East Coast, dreaming of returning to San Francisco, and feeling like a mermaid wishing to spend a day out of her normal waters.
Now that I've got my land legs, I can't afford to just stand around. I have to use them to go explore. My days in California are limited. I really need to enjoy being part of this world.
Until next time,
Nate
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