Not Your Typical First Day Back

Going back to work always fills me with excitement in a way (probably mostly for chatting with my co-workers who I haven't seen in a few months), but then the excitement quickly dies down as soon as the first staff meeting is called to order and we get down to business. There's always new goals, new acronyms, and talk of what will be different this year. Don't get me wrong, I like the freshness of the new year and the ability to start over with a new group of kiddos, but it's also daunting. As I stare at a list of kids I've never met, I always have a pretty big fear of what is yet to come. I am looking forward to meeting some kiddos on Wednesday during our supply drop and I am hopeful that by then my classroom will be looking a bit more organized and put together than it looks right now. I barely had anytime outside of our meeting to get anything done because I had to go pick Baby Sneaker up from daycare at 12:30. Thankfully tomorrow I can stay until 2 because my friend volunteered to get her and take her back to my house so I can have some time with my team.

Onto the unconventional part of the day. We received a postcard in the mail shortly after school let out indicating that the entire staff was being asked to meet in the library at 9:30 AM today and we were assigned TRIBE colors. Even support staff who were not paid to be there, were asked to come. So, what's with this tribe business? Well...we had our own little Amazing Race this morning. Families from school volunteered to take part and they had stations set up at their houses with different challenges. Each of the 8 tribes were given an envelope with an address so we had to hop in our cars, drive to a family's house, and complete the challenge. That family gave us our next address and we were off to the next challenge. Some were team challenges that required cooperation, some were word puzzles, and some were individual challenges. Some of the challenges had a set time and some were timed to see who could do them the fastest. All of the scores were tallied and once everyone was back the winner was announced.

When I first heard what we had to do, I will admit, I was not excited. But, it turned out to be really really fun. Our tribes are groups that we will remain connected with all year and we are assigned to help with one PSO event as a tribe, to plan one social event together, and to make sure that we take care of any "sunshine" during the year, which means getting gifts if babies are born, flowers for people who have surgery, cards for deaths in the family etc. I think that this whole tribe thing is a great way to get people connected and that will be a good thing for our staff.

Was today your first day back too?

What did you talk about at your meetings?