Tuesday Slice: Settling in

 

I am six months into the 20-21 school year, on a new-but-not-new-to-me campus...and I think I'm settling in, as much as one can in this alternate universe of teaching under pandemic conditions.

If you haven't followed my journey to my current job, here is a summary:  my children went to our neighborhood elementary while I worked as an ARD facilitator (translation: running IEP meetings) for our district's DAEP (secondary disciplinary campus) for eleven years.  I was surplussed from that job during budget cutbacks just a few weeks after I signed up for grad school--Library Science.  Two weeks later, as my youngest was getting ready to "graduate" fifth grade and move on to middle school, I was hired as a resource teacher at the elementary campus.  I taught there for three years as I completed my classes and practicum, and then got hired as librarian for another campus.

That was seven and a half years ago.  Last May, the librarian at our neighborhood school retired.  After a lot of soul-searching, I left a position in which I was very happy, and moved to my neighborhood school.  It was a big change:  high SES to Title I, a campus of over a thousand students to one with five hundred.  Newish, modern, spacious school to a building built in the seventies.

(I think you get the picture, yes?)

I have hall duty each morning and afternoon, outside of the library doors.  I am grateful, because it gives me an opportunity to say hello to my new-to-me students.  I don't know all of their names yet, but they know mine now.  A few are starting to pause on their way to class to talk about what they're reading now, what they are going to read next.  I'm hearing reports from teachers that their classes look forward to their library day, even though most of the meetings occur online.  My new-to-me assistant and I are getting into a groove, sharing responsibilities for running the library.  There's still a lot of work to be done (I dream of remodeling the space a bit!).  But a wise library professor once told me that if I ever finished my to-do list in the library, I was doing something wrong.

Last May, I sat in front of the school on a Sunday afternoon, exploring my feelings about returning and the changes it would bring.  Eight months later, I'm looking at the next eight years, and thinking about what I can accomplish on this campus.  I'm settling in.