Jill-Of-All-Trades

If you have ever spent time volunteering for something, you'll understand that feeling of getting in over your head -- not because you can't handle the job for which you volunteered, but because once you've volunteered for one thing, you'll be asked to do more and more and more...

Today, Glenn and Kris (our hosts) took us by the school where Laura will be teaching so that she could speak with the school's director, get her schedule and books, and start preparing for the school year that begins next Tuesday.

What she found out is that she's been asked to teach eight full-year classes:

• Grades 9 & 10 Earth Science
• Grades 7 & 8 Science
• Grade 9 Geometry
• Grade 10 Algebra
• Grade 6 Math
• Grade 7 Math
• Grades 11 & 12 Statistics and Trigonometry
• Grades 11 & 12 Chemistry

The school director piled her high with textbooks, workbooks, problem books, and other various who-knows-what books that Laura will sort through over the coming days. She's feeling a little overwhelmed tonight, but reading "Rookie Teaching for Dummies" (which she found on Kris' book shelf) is helping.

(To be honest, I'm not sure how helpful the book is, but it's proving to be a great stress-reliever. Every page or two, Laura breaks out into laughter. The most recent example is a section called "Wacky Hall Passes", in which the author recounts some of his favourites that he's used, including a six-foot-tall cardboard cut-out of Captain Picard that the poor kids had to drag to the 'loo. Hopefully it wasn't an emergency!)

A week before starting, the school is still trying to plug up some teacher vacancies. While I was there with Laura today, they tried throwing some of those vacancies at me to see if they'd stick. It was easy for me to say no to kindergarden. They were more serious about mid-level math and English classes, but that's really not my passion. Let's hope they're not too persistent -- and if they are, they might just see some kid running down the hall in a few weeks from now with a six-foot-tall cardboard cutout in tow.