Back to School Night

I don't know about you, but I was always excited when it was Back to School Night. The way I remember it, this event happened a couple weeks after school started. It coincided with the first PTA meeting of the year and it was a chance for parents to meet their kids' new teachers. I don't know why I enjoyed those nights so much. Maybe I was one of those kids that liked to brag about the amazing progress the class had made in the first week of school. I really don't remember.

Today was my school's open house. It was my first visit to my new elementary school and to say I felt overwhelmed would be an understatement. I know next to no one. I'm unfamiliar with 75% of my caseload. And it was about a million degrees today. That didn't help.

It also doesn't help that my co-counselors are even more jaded and cynical than I am. So I'm fielding their complaints about the way they're treated throughout most of my day. This doesn't help my situation either.

The first half of my day was spent organizing and cleaning the counseling space that we have at the school. While it's bigger and better equipped than the space at my previous school, it gets no air circulation. That should be fun for our group counseling sessions for the first four months of school. I'm sure when winter hits, I'll be all kinds of comfortable in there.

At 4:00, the real fun began. That's when parents and students began trickling into the school to meet their new teachers. Two of my students arrived as I expected them to. The other two on my caseload, I didn't expect to see. And I didn't.

So I didn't stay the whole time. Open house was scheduled to last until 8:00. Since I left early and had time to kill, I decided to drive over to my old school to see how things were going.

I'll admit, I'm a little concerned for my former co-counselor who is now left to work alone at my old school. So I wanted to check in on her to see how her open house went. By the time I got there, she was already gone. That's when I decided to stick around and visit with the teachers I came to know so well last year.

That's right, I went back to kindergarten. It was great to see everyone and to catch up. I saw the Teacher, too. And she looked good. Real good. So I avoided her classroom and actually didn't speak. Didn't want to put myself through that. Kinda hope she didn't think I was being rude. Everyone was pretty busy for most of the evening anyway.

I plan to go by there again soon, though. I'll pass by the school every day once I move back to Radford. I figure I can swing by after school one day when things aren't so hectic.

Meantime, I'll be spending the vast majority of my time in an unfamiliar school with unfamiliar people. I'm just not too sure about all this...