Day # ?

I've lost track of how many days into the school year we are. I think it's 137 or something like that.

We're restructuring our leadership model at school, and I got to participate a little bit in the leadership team meetings around this work, and now we're interviewing candidates to fill three new administrative/mentoring/education leadership positions. I'm finding the work a bit rewarding because I think my main contributions to the school thus far have been academic; now I can bring many years of HR and management skills to the fore. These skills have been long dormant, to the point I thought they were fossilized--but of the 13 questions we settled on for our interviews, I wrote 4 (and 16 people sit on this panel). I think I said some provocative, challenging, important things today--and I even felt the return of a certain eloquence and persuasive power I've been missing even in the classroom of late.

It's a big drain however--several hours a day after school, and a bruising 12 hour day today! A gorgeous Saturday afternoon spent under florescent lights...

I'll need to bring more skills to my practice and my school over the next few months and into next year. There will be change, and I'm no longer "new" to the school or to urban ed--I'm a veteran in the middle school now, I'll be teaching two classes of the same kids for the third consecutive year plus a new 6th grade class, and I may have to take on leadership of the Humanities committee. If my planning partner gets promoted, I'll lose the most fruitful professional relationship I've ever had--and that means working with a new partner, someone we haven't even hired yet. Ready or not....