Well I now have my own classroom key, to my own classroom, that I will set out my own way, ready for 29 students who will see me as their own teacher.
It's Christmas and New Year celebration time (and in Southern Hemisphere New Zealand, that means school's out for six weeks for the summer holidays). People are off relaxing and so should I - having just finished three years of fulltime study and awaiting a new first-day-of-school on 7 February 2007.
But of course, I have big things on my mind, and the dilemma is how do I tackle my current anxieties about being prepared? Should I push them aside and do nothing until about the 2nd week of January when I go in and shuffle desks around as a kind of 'first step personal initiation ceremony' and then allow myself to be fully focussed on the task at hand of preparing and planning for those first fews days, weeks, term... or do I begin now.
So much of me wants to get in and get started now, but when I step back from my worries, I realise that there's a lot I can't actually do until closer to the time - particularly in regards to syndicate planning.
More than that though, I think I have an ideological debate going on within my own head. As much as I am committed to this vocation of teaching, I don't want it to consume my whole life. I'm a married man, with kids, and other interests. So often I hear people talk about the overwhelming task of being a teacher and the extra hours put in. But you know, I think it is possible to be an effective teacher and have a life.
One thing I don't want to do is create bad work habits from the start. This is one reason I don't want to start my teaching building a routine of spending too much time at school. Yeah, I know, I'm a beginning teacher and many things will take me longer than one of experience. But you see, I'm determined to make this work without it taking over - which only means I'll need to learn to be efficient very quickly!
Well, we'll see whether I'm right (and capable) as time goes by. Note though, I am not a slacker and I always remember what my Dad said "If a job's worth doing, it's worth doing properly". And a proper job I intend to do. I'm working with something very precious, as I'm certain the parents of the children of Mr Ashcroft's Room 3 will testify.
