One month in...

I'm having a good time with this job! It has it's ups and downs, there have been days where I've been stressed (lol, this past week when an entire book fair was dumped on me LAST WEEK to run), but then there's moments when the Kindergarteners are giving me hugs or when the 8th graders put things like "jail" under "an ecosystem near where you live", that make me smile and enjoy it.

The teaching aspect has been interesting, as well as the IT support part. The kids are all, well, kids so some days are better than others for behavior, but most of the time they're great. I managed to get through some basics in Excel with the 4th and 5th graders this week, they learned what a "cell" is, how to highlight, and also how to do graphs (they liked the pie charts). Several of the boys also figured out how to add lightning bolts and smiley faces, which I was fine with because it meant they were learning the program.

The IT part has been really interesting, since I basically know nothing about servers, switches, printers, networks, etc. I know what they are, but I couldn't begin to tell you how they work or how to troubleshoot when a problem occurs. The normal IT guy has been really great about showing me some basics that they won't have to pay him to do anymore (downloading upgrades and running spyware checks), so I've been learning and I like learning.

I'm getting ready to teach my first elective after Thanksgiving. The first one will be knitting and then in the spring I'll be teaching video production. I'm super excited to teach an elective because it's a subject I want to teach and therefore will be something I really enjoy. Especially the video production. Also the knitting will be awesome because I'll be able to work on my projects in class (ie get paid to ;) ) and get a new generation into knitting. So that will be awesome.

The end of this year and the beginning of next are looking up.