Oh, you're with the new school!

Workroom update: still all in boxes. At the earliest, the end of the week. It's more likely to be next week. Luckily, I have my own classroom to work in (and I mean that, I am lucky to have a room - a lot of people are in a bunch of different rooms).

During our meeting Monday morning, we had a power outage for ten minutes while the power company shifted us over to a different transformer.

The bells are working though, as is the PA system.

Someone asked me if we had a mascot, a song. Yes, we do. Our mascot is the stallion. We have been enduring any number of horse jokes. On our intranet, we have this scary looking horse with extra muscular biceps and pecs. Yes, it's a biped stallion. He's buff, thus, the stallion. We have school colors: green, blue and silver. Now, I loved my old school, I love the people I worked with, the students, nearly everything about it. However, I hated the school colors: purple and white. Those were also the colors of my college, and I told myself that I would never again put myself in a situation where I would be required to wear purple and white, and look where that got me. However, I love green and blue, so I'm a pretty happy camper. We got two shirts to wear for "spirit" - one is a grey t-shirt with our name and logo on the front, plus "Established September, 2005"; on the back is a neat slogan, which you should see here. I believe it means "Excellence in all endeavors" (or endeavours, should you choose the British spelling). The other shirt is a nice polo shirt in dark green. The insignia has our school initials and underneath is says "Charter Staff", which I think is really cool.


"But wait, you haven't said anything about the song", I hear you cry. Yes, we have a fight song. Or rather, we will have a fight song. They were still writing it as of Tuesday. We will apparently be learning it later this week, and then when we have the Stallion Stampede (I told you, unending horse jokes) next week (when the students come in to get their schedules, etc.), we will apparently sing it to the students (and parents, and community members, and any other Tom, Dick or Harry who wishes to attend), and then teach it to them. Fostering community spirit, see?

We took a bus tour of our boundary - the neighborhoods where our students live. There is a heck of a lot of construction going on in the area - more so than I've seen in the parts near where I live and where I used to teach. Roads are being widened, or even just built, new housing complexes are going up, old houses are being expanded upon, etc. We have houses that are enormous, but are on teeny little lots, we have houses that are enormous that are on larger lots, and of course, we have houses that are enormous that are on enormous lots too. There is some subsidized housing, so there is going to be a big gap between our wealthiest and poorest students. However, we are quite diverse, which is pretty exciting. The area that we serve is huge - it goes for miles in all directions. I wonder if our students will be as able to socialize because of that issue. I know it will be a problem for the middle school students, given that they will be dependent on the parental units for transportation.

Here is my burning question: I'm 5 ft. 6 inches. Many, many students are taller than I am. How on earth do they sit on those school buses comfortably? My knees were wedged in!