As I have mentioned before, one of my lovely talents is to blow things out of proportion. Case in point: pre-observation interview with Charlie Brown*, the main principal at the school. Here are some thoughts on this process.
An administrator is supposed to observe you (formally) twice a year. One is unannounced, the other is scheduled. Back in October, I scheduled mine to be at what I was sure was going to be a perfect time. The future always looks perfect from the perspective of the past (or at least from the perspective of a procrastinator). I was sure that December, the time of grade deadlines, the time of attendance incentive field trips, the time of fundraiser reward parties, the time of snow days, was the perfect time to do my observation. I think that I thought this because it was October at the time. Now that my vision has truly cleared, I see that I was incorrect in this.
Anyway, I scheduled my observation for this coming Thursday, and my preobservation interview for today. I had everything planned. I thought ahead. I even took home all of my lesson plans and to-be-filled-out forms with me on Thursday just in case we got Friday off too. Which we did. Funny how, it wasn't until Saturday night that I got to all of this. I finished all that I could (realizing that I don't have Broadway on my home computer and so using it for all of my worksheets wasn't a good idea if I wanted to work from home). I even emailed everything to myself just in case. I thought I had everything done, finished, completed. And yet, still, it was two minutes before my meeting and I was still literally cutting and pasting my pre-observation form together so that I could make a nice, clean copy for Charlie Brown. I was also trying to remember how to breathe. And cut. And paste. Somehow, under stress, fine motor skills become less refined. After I was done I powerwalked to the 8th grade office and sat down outside Charlie Brown's office. I was two minutes late (which I figured wasn't too bad since I'm usually 5 minutes early), but he was still talking to the 7th grade principal, so I figured all was well.
As I was trying to catch my breath in the waiting room to the principal's office, I was remembering one of the reasons I never wanted to get in trouble, which was so I didn't have to wait outside of the principal's office. Now I was doing it voluntarily.
Ah, the joys of teaching.
Now, to think about Thursday.
*Remember, names changed to protect the innocent. In this case, me.
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