day one of year four

what a flippin' disaster this year is going to be.

today was the first day of school. 

well, the first day i had to go back anyways.

kids show up on thursday,

and it's a good thing too. 

because we are not prepared.

at all.

there are boxes all over the halls and rooms, 

no teachers have their teaching schedules, 

and our administration feels it is more important 

to sit in PDs all day than to clean up and prepare the school, 

or finalize teacher programs.

i should be used to the awfulness of our PDs by now,
because every PD in the past has sucked,
but somehow,
i thought this year would be different.

so not the case.


this mindless driveling PD was no different.

our principal spent an hour going through a list of things 

that we need to discuss with our classes during the first week --

class expectations, a syllabus, school rules, etc.
like we haven't all done this before.

you know all of that boring crap that every teacher does the first day of school,

and as a student you always wondered

why can't all of the teachers just get together and share my contact information?

and who can blame the kids,

the first day sucks for us too.

it's so boring and monotonous.

but then it got interesting.

half way through my principals' monologue,

a colleague commented:

"it's kind of hard to write a syllabus

when we don't know what we are teaching."

burn.

(that's right kids, 

we still don't know what classes we are teaching. 

on thursday.)

my principal's response:

"don't worry about it.

just make the syllabus general."

um, what?

ngk, do you know what a syllabus is?

you are asking us to do the exact opposite of

what a syllabus is supposed to be.

this is going to be a great year.

or something.

at least i went climbing tonight. 

and i rocked a whole bunch of V1s. 

rockstar.