Changes

I've been a little vague about my school situation this week because, well, this is a public blog and I am a public school teacher. For all I know parents of children at my school could have stumbled across this so I have to watch what I say and when I say it. Up until all the changes were made official, it wasn't my place to say anything.

Now that all is said and done it is safe to let you in on the happenings at school this week. Due to extremely low enrollment (across the board) our school had to lose 2 teachers. When this happens the teachers are chosen to leave completely based on the last one hired rule. The last one hired is a 5th grade teacher, so she has to move to a new school. However, the low numbers are not in 5th grade, but in 4th, so one of our 4th grade teachers has to move to 5th grade to take her place. That means that ALL of 4th grade has to be shuffled around into 4 classes instead of 5, and that class of 5th graders gets a new teacher. The second to last one hired is a second grade teacher. She is moving to a new school next week, and we had to divide up the kids from her class among the remaining 5 teachers. Due to this move, yesterday afternoon I received 3 new kids to my classroom. Lucky for me, I got three really awesome kids (one of which I even taught last year)! Still, going from 18 kids (oh my gosh SO nice) to 21 kids (yikes that's a lot) in one afternoon is a little rough.

As I said the other day, I am really counting my blessings right now. As far as "last one hired" goes, I was third to last. I would be the next one to have to leave. Now, stick with me for a second here, this will all come together ... Over the summer our reading specialist moved and one of our classroom teachers took over her job. The classroom job was never filled because of the low enrollment. This means that if that classroom teacher had not taken that reading specialist job, if that job had been filled with someone from outside of the building instead, I too would be moving to a new school this week. I feel like I dodged a major bullet. I must admit, it is slightly scary that we have such low enrollment that we lost 3 teaching positions this year. Apparently that has never happened in the history of the school before. And now, even though this is my third year teaching at the same school, I am back to being the last one hired! Seriously?!? Very uncommon to teach somewhere that in 3 years no one would leave and you would still be so far down on the totem pole. So, as for next year and being the last one hired, who knows. I'll cross that bridge when I come to it.

There were no small number of events leading up to this exact place. If any number of things had happened differently, I would have a new job at a new school starting next Tuesday. Everything had to happen just so in order for me to keep my job at my school this year. And I won't go into details, but timing was a very important factor. Timing of students registering, timing of the classroom teacher taking the reading specialist job, timing of when exactly I was given the okay to move to second grade ... if the timing had been off even one time the outcome would have been completely different.

So as I said, I am counting my blessings. The plans for my life are out of my hands, but I am giving thanks to Him for orchestrating the little things to prepare the path ahead of me.

In all your ways acknowledge Him, and He shall direct your paths - Proverbs 3:6