The halls around the school have returned to some semblance of normal. The tears have drifted away, to be replaced by smiles that come with the beautiful spring weather we've had this past week. I even burned my scalp while supervising a phys-ed class that was in the middle of softball. There's still a lingering sense of quiet in certain respects, but to a fresh pair of eyes, it would seem like business as usual.
Last week proved to be an extremely long 5 days. Friday finally came and went with sombre footsteps as the memorial for our young student was held in town. Many students attended, but few teachers were able to due to the lack of substitute teachers in the district. Still, a few of us were there, including my principal and two or three other teachers. It was sad, frustrating, and a number of other things piled into one. But it was still beautiful, and the students were wonderful. As I always seem to do, I forget that they're simply kids trying to navigate their way through this world.
I also had my district interview this past Monday, which seemed to go extremely well. I was relaxed and, other than saying "absolutely" about a quadrillion times, I made it out unscathed and I'm officially a Teacher-On-Call (TOC). Ultimately, this was expected the whole time, but it means that I'm finally making some money, I'm an employee of my school district now, and I'm no longer simply a student! It's wonderful, and moderately scary, and exciting all at the same time. Still, until that first paycheque comes (which I hope will keep getting bigger and bigger with more TOC days), I'm still broke. Well, K and I are broke together.
I like this feeling that we're finally going to launch ourselves into the middle class. It's been quite some time in the lower ranks of society as a student living off the borrowed money of the governement and various banks/pieces of plastic. And being a TOC is kinda cool too... this past week I covered a softball class, did some portfolio-style interviewing for the grade 12's as they graduate, and I covered a Science 9 class on Friday. Tuesday I'm in during the morning for a English 12 class, so that should be fun, and hopefully the school will find me some more work for the rest of the week so I can help pay the bills.
Okay, enough rambling for now. More to come later...
- T (a.k.a. Mr. M, TOC extraordinaire)
2 comments:
Hey, T, Congratulations on finishing. I don't know how you did 8 months! THose twelve weeks nearly killed me. I hope you are getting a lot of TOC work. Me, I'm still waiting for my BCCT stuff to get here. Apparently every other Uvic student has theirs, but the Cowichan Valley advisor sent in his reports a week late! Bugger!
Thanks! Congrats to you too! It was definitely a long year and I'm glad it's more or less done. I still have the one class left, but I'm already working a bit and still doing some coaching. I hope you're doing well, and you should definitely give me a ring sometime soon!
-T
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