Glut thy sorrow on a morning rose

So, the first day at Prestigious passed by more or less uneventfully. Everyone acted pleasant and welcoming; I've never been greeted by so many people in one day, all knowing my name and asking how my first day was going.

This school has some serious money. A nice refreshment room with free tea and coffee, high-tech hot water machines, and so forth for the teachers. Hey, even the soap dispenser in the bathroom is motion activated! I had a helluva time figuring that out. It's nice to work at a place where there's a parking lot and a break room (unlike The [Old] Job). Every Pre-K class has two teachers at all times. Computers and printers in every room. Nobody is hurting for supplies of any kind.

So, I got there at 7:30, met my teammates, and... sat around. One of our team went down to a room, and the two other teachers and I sat upstairs by our team phone in case we were needed. The girls went on line to look at jewelry, got coffee, and read magazines. I got handed a ream of new employee paperwork, and I filled it out a bit of it in desultory fashion while we sat around some more.

I thought, "I'm getting paid a big-ass salary for this?" (Oh yeah, the financial director came by with a copy of my contract with an amendment: they decided they'd pay me a hundred bucks more a month than we'd previously agreed on. Sweet!) Apparently it was a slow day, but I felt guilty as hell. It got to be 10:30 before anything happened. At Brown, I'd have been working my ass off for three hours by then, for nothin'.

So, what did I do? I helped out in a kindergarten class (T-Bone's daughter's room) for a while, then had a lengthy lunch period. Then, at 1:00, I went to an interim class that had only eight students. I took the kids outside and gave breaks to all the other teachers who were outside with their classes. When we came back in, the gym teacher came to get them for half an hour, so I had another free period. The kids came back, I read them a story, I sent them out to carpool one at a time, and I left the building before 3:30.

Suck on that, teachers still toiling away in your rooms at 4:45!

Seriously, though, I know it was just an orientation type of day and I'm still learning the ropes, but I hope the days get a bit more challenging. Or, you know, filled.