Long Dark Teatime of the School Year

I don’t think there are many yuckier work places than a school in the last two days before the students arrive, so the new job is scoring pretty well on my constant school-comparison mental spreadsheet.

Everyone is wandering around mumbling to themselves, but we are all in the same boat and so no one looks at you weird. The tech women are looking the most harried, as usual. We have all begun to abandon those nit-picky, monumental projects you dream up over the summer (“I am going to have my entire curriculum done for the whole year and I will do all my photocopying before school starts AND I will write that first letter home to parents before we get going AND I will get these posters organized!”) and have started hunkering down to what absolutely must be done. In this school, bulletin boards seem to be one of those things. I have two in the stairwell and one in the library to deal with at all times, and one large rotating one which happens to fall to me this month. These are a big deal. In an elementary school, you always want color and excitement, but in a private elementary school you want the parents to feel they got their money’s worth and the way you do that is by making sure the hallways sparkle. My last school didn’t really have much wall space, so I am playing catch-up on this front.

The beginning of the ever-growing list:

In my new school:
The head teachers meet with their associate teachers and the division director to discuss expectations and work out any kinks before school starts

In my old school:
The asssistant teachers came and cried in the library when the head teacher was mean to them.

In my new school:
I attend grade level meetings to see what everyone is up to and make sure I am supporting the curriculum.

In my old school:
I sucked info from 2nd graders and ran after people in the halls and lingered outside classrooms and eventually gave up and read another round of Junie B Jones books.

In my new school:
Eight weeks paid maternity leave.

In my old school:
Two weeks.

In my new school:
50% tuition discount for faculty children

In my old school:
10%

In my new school:
The Division Director hangs out in people’s classrooms and sometimes puts up their bulletin board paper for them.

In my old school:
Um. Administrators? In a classroom? TOUCHING SOMETHING? Um. No.