On Sunday I hopped in the car of someone I'd never met before, but whose name I knew, and let her drive me 3.5 hours to a little tourist town on the peninsula. We spent three days at the only Catholic school in that area as part of a four member (three members from our Archdiocese + an out of state chair) visiting team. We were tasked with writing a report of findings to affirm the self-study the school had conducted on its own and recommend a term of accreditation to the multi-state accrediting body that all of our schools belong to.
I love the accrediting process. I volunteer for visiting committees any time I am offered the opportunity. This time around I was "required" to be a part of a team. Most people think I'm crazy for loving the process. But I get to travel for work and am treated like a professional. Many teachers don't have the experience of a work trip complete with a paid hotel room, SWAG, and lots of free food. I also get to write a report (I do love to write) while discovering new ideas for my own classroom. What's not to like?
Okay, it is a crazy ton of work. As I was climbing into the car of a principal who lives fairly close to me and teaches at the Archdiocesan school closest to my own (which is not close to where we live) my husband called out, "Have fun on your vacation from work where you have to work!" On my first two accreditation teams, I ended up with a migraine. I didn't pay attention to my food and water intake as I observed classrooms and stared at a screen attempting to put words to my observations... and yet I still learned to love the process. Okay, it is a little crazy that I love the process.
This time around I was worried about the small size of the team. I was concerned that one of us would end up with COVID and couldn't figure out how the team would finish the job with only three members. My previous teams have always had at least six members. But our little team functioned incredibly well. The chair was super organized and kept us on task. And we were all healthy, active participants in the process.
The biggest snag was waking up on Tuesday morning to a text from my partner teacher telling me she had given two weeks' notice on Monday night to our principal. It wasn't exactly a surprise, but it still felt like a punch in the gut. I spent less time focused on the accreditation process on Tuesday morning than I would have liked. But my ability to focus had been severely compromised. During one of our breaks, one of the other team members found the posting for my new partner teacher already on the Archdiocesan website. Know any great fourth grade teachers? IB training a plus!
I got home on Wednesday afternoon. On Thursday morning I went in to find a glowing report from my sub and a taped-up piece of paper wrapped around a $10 bill with a lengthy explanation of how a picture frame got broken. Coming back from a three-day absence is never easy. I had a very large stack of papers to grade, even though I have two specialist periods back-to-back on both Mondays and Wednesdays.
I also had a ridiculous Thursday schedule. It started with a morning meeting that required another staff member to bring my students up from carpool and start their day. At lunch I had a make-up meeting with a group of fifth grade students preparing an end of PYP exhibition project. Our meetings are regularly scheduled for one of my days with back-to-back specialists, but I was out of town this week. My principal was supposed to watch my students eat their lunch, but he was in an unexpected meeting. Two other teachers graciously took turns watching my students eat their lunch, and watch Bill Nye talk about earthquakes while I tried to check in with my fifth graders. The day ended with a regional teacher leader meeting for the group that "required" me to go on the accreditation visit this year. Meanwhile, our primary recess supervisor had a family emergency and could not be at school. So, I got pulled from my lunch time meeting to have a discussion about how my grade-band would cover lunch recess. Since I was in a meeting that was supposed to last well into the recess period, and had all the aforementioned commitments in my day, I was relieved when the principal was done with his meeting on time to cover our recess.
I believe my workdays will follow a similar pattern until I have a new partner teacher. The principal told me on Thursday that he will take the other fourth grade class until we find the "right fit" for the position. He promises to do all of the grading, but I'm pretty sure I'll be on the hook for all of the planning... even though my outgoing partner teacher is teaching an entirely different set of math lessons and novel to her small groups than I am teaching to mine.
Today was the annual Archdiocesan professional development and curriculum day. It was virtual, so I didn't have to wake up early and drive to school. I did have to open my Zoom room for one of the presenters who was running his morning and afternoon sessions out of my Zoom room. Things went fine during his morning session while I ran two computers so I could attend a different session. I was distracted enough by the second, muted presentation running on a the second computer in the morning, that I decided to scrap my plans for the afternoon session and attend the one I was hosting in my Zoom. Toward the end of the second session, while the participants, including me, were in a breakout room, the presenter randomly had his host privileges revoked. I was enjoying my conversation and didn't realize how much time had passed. My phone rang with an unknown number, so I ignored it. But then my phone rang with a call from the marketing director at my school. After I answered, she passed her phone to my principal who was on his cell phone talking to someone from the Archdiocesan office, who was on another line with the presenter whose session I was hosting. Through the grapevine I was given the presenter's cell phone number to troubleshoot the issue. Once I understood what had happened, it was easy to reinstate his host privileges, but the breakout sessions ran so long he had to cut material he had planned for the end of his session.
Going into the weekend, I still feel like I'm drowning in papers to grade, but my principal told me we do have a candidate to interview as a replacement for my partner teacher. The scheduled interview means Tuesday will shake out a lot like Thursday did. I have a Zoom scheduled for before school with the parent of a student who started at my school three weeks ago. She wants to get a better sense of routines and expectations. After school I have three meetings that all overlap with one another. Every four weeks our weekly staff meeting collides with the monthly teacher leader meeting. The staff meetings usually run until 4:00, but the teacher leader meetings begin at 3:30 and are scheduled to run until 5:30. The interview is scheduled for 4:00. Since I do need to run a breakout room at the teacher leader meeting and have been asked to pitch my college roommate's first book (Literally Unbelievable: Stories from an East Oakland Classroom) at the end, I foresee an overloaded brain coming my way by the time I will finally get to climb into my car and drive home. I guess I'd better rest up this weekend!
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