Where Have I Been?
Long time, no post. Well, I might as well update my life situation at this point.
For anyone that missed the references in my GenCon postings, I did get a job as a first grade teacher at a charter school in Minneapolis. That job started right away in August, and has kept me pretty busy since then. One of the philosophies of this particular charter school is longer school days (the actual school day goes from 8:30 to 5, I'm usually in by 7:30) and a longer school year (we started classes in mid-August and will go to the first day in July, effectively making us year round).
So far, I've found teaching to be a tiring but definitely worthwhile endeavor. My class is almost looking like what I would consider a first grade class should look like, and we've started getting a lot of compliments from onlookers. I've felt very well supported by my administration (I have a wonderful, highly experienced teacher's assistant in addition to a paraprofessional for one of my students, and there have been numerous suspensions which seem to have proven the point to most of my class that I'm the one in charge).
And yes, the days are very long and the pressure to perform is great (For example, I will give my first graders four quizzes tomorrow, one spelling, one timed computational math, one conceptual math, and one language arts. This is pretty much the drill every week except when we do the bigger unit tests, which begin next week. Remember this is first grade!). Still, I really don't think it's any greater than what I came from in the corporate retail world (and so much more fulfilling for me). Even though I work longer hours and more days than regular school teachers, I still remind myself that I get 9+ weeks of vacation (one week at Thanksgiving, two weeks at Christmas, one week at Easter, four weeks in July, and five Paid Time Off days, plus all of the regular holidays). I've never worked at a job before where I had more than three. I also have almost every night free with my family.
So, I'm slowly but surely getting a grip on this teaching thing. I've decided to get back to posting to my livejournal because I find it's a good way to get me started writing, and I'm comfortable enough where I'm at in my new profession to spend a little time writing. So, more to come. First up, where I've been in writing games.