Heading down new roads

Somewhere on OR-38. Gorgeous.

A lot has happened in the last few months (as you've probably read), and now I can add one more thing to the headlines: I'm returning to the classroom.

Well, sort of - I will be teaching full-time online. I'm not going to have a physical classroom, but rather, I'll be working from a home office, and teaching high school students from all over the state of Oregon through my computer screen.

The first order of business (besides doing all my HR paperwork online) was to head out to North Bend for our New Teacher Orientation.

Four hours away, in a part of the state that I've only heard of and never been to (Coos Bay), to spend three days as a new teacher who doesn't know anyone else learning about a new method of teaching that I've never done before.

*gulp*

(Though, I think the driving-far-away-all-by-myself part made me more nervous than anything else.)

I'm a creature of habit. I've spent all ten years of my teaching career at the same school. Sat through staff development in the same theater, looking out at (mostly) the same faces. Basically taught the same things from year to year. (Not always, but overall, I've stuck to the same books and activities.)

And even the school I taught at was in the city I GREW UP IN. So even before I spent ten years teaching at the same school, I spent my LIFE in the same community.

One of the Oregon dunes

In the days leading up to the training, I was texting my work wife/bestie and lamenting how I could not imagine having to sit through staff development without her by my side. I know I'm not the only new kid, but I haven't BEEN the new kid in a long time. (Well, I guess you can count my current retail job, in which I'm still the most recent hire, but retail is not the same.) And I would be a long way from home :/

I ended up having a great time. My introvert self even hung out in the hotel bar with a few of my new department members one evening. (It was Trivia Night and we took second place!) We met a lot of the leadership team and support staff and I got a good sense that the community that I'm walking into is a good one, with values that seem to line up with mine.

Online teaching is different, but not THAT different. I am still, in essence, teaching the same skills and concepts (and even some of the same books-- looks like Macbeth just seems to be my lot in life). The delivery is a little different-- I don't get to see the kids' faces while I teach, but I will still have to manage a bunch of them in a room (a chatroom, really), and I still get to be me and add my own personal stamp on things.

Coos Bay, right next to my hotel

The drive, by the way, wasn't so bad. It was long, but I thankfully missed any terrible traffic both ways, and it was spectacularly scenic. Oregon, you are a GORGEOUS thing. I kept getting distracted by the mountains and trees and various bodies of water (the Umpqua River, lakes, the bay). The temperature was a good thirty degrees cooler than what we've been getting here in Portland, so even though we were busy working each day that we were there, it still felt like a nice little vacation.

Next week is full-staff professional development (at a shorter distance away), and I'm feeling a lot better than I was a week ago at this time. I am excited. I feel refreshed and nervous and positive, in a way I haven't felt in a while, and even though I'm a little swamped with things to do in preparation for the school year, I am all abuzz with anticipation.

I guess taking a new road isn't necessarily anything to be afraid of after all. It might lead you somewhere wonderful.

(image source unknown)