The backstory to this story is that American Preparatory Academy has several different campuses, all under the APA franchise, I guess you could call it. There's a West Valley 1 campus and a West Valley 2 campus and a Salem campus and a Las Vegas campus and a Draper 1 campus and a Draper 2 campus. Last year and the year before that I taught at Draper 2 (D2) campus, which had the first floor of elementary and the second floor of secondary (Jr. High and High School). The exciting news last year was that we were going to expand! We were getting a ton more students for both elementary and secondary, and creating a whole new huge building right next to the D2 building, which would be called Draper 3 (D3) and house only Jr. High and High School while the whole D2 building would convert into all elementary, second floor and all. So last year all of the secondary staff and I packed up all our classrooms and moved them into boxes into the cafeteria and the elementary people started moving their stuff into our classrooms.
And that's when the fire nation attacked.
The D3 building, it turned out, was actually not going to be ready to move into by the time school started. So we had a large increase of students to the elementary, completely filling the D2 building, and a huge influx of secondary, which was going to fill the huge D3 building. But now there was no D3 building.
The solution was to cancel school! No, I'm just joking. The solution was to split all the kids that were going to go to D3 into two groups: 7th and 8th grade, or Jr. High, and 9-12 grade, or High School. The Jr. High students would be put into the D2 building, and the High School students would be put into the APA offices and D1 building. Because all of our classrooms were already taken, we had to fit into every nook and cranny of the place. The gym has a divider that comes down to separate it into two, and so there's teachers teaching their classes in the gym. The band room can separate into three, so three classes are going on in the band room. The multipurpose room became a classroom. The P.E. students are doing everything outside. Instrument storage became a classroom. The cafeteria is not being used as a cafeteria; it's being used as a classroom. That's in the D2 building. I'm not sure exactly what the D1 is doing, but probably something similar.
Where am I teaching? My first four periods are in the west half of the gym. The students sit in the bleachers. They need their binders to act as their desks so they can write. The gym was supplied with a whiteboard on wheels, one for each gym half. I am only there for the first four periods, and then other teachers come in and teach in there. For 6 and 7 period, I teach in the middle band room. That room is crazy because five other teachers also teach in there, so finding place for everyone's everything has been kind of crazy. I managed to get some binder space and space for my turn in baskets. For eighth period I teach in the east half of the gym. Teaching in the gym in funny because there's a teacher on the other side teaching too and you can totally hear the each other and the other classes. One time when Mr. Waghorn, my English teaching buddy, was teaching on the other side and it got super quiet for both of our classes I yelled out loudly, "And that's when I beat the crap out of Mr. Waghorn!" And the other class just burst out laughing. I like 8th period because whereas my other classes have about 30 or more kids on the each, my eighth only has 16 students, so it's nice. And my 4th period only has 6 students, which is great too.
All in all though, it's not a nightmare like it sounds like. Sure, the first few days were absolute chaos, and added on top of that there was the total solar eclipse the first day of school so we added that into our schedule too, but things have now settled down into sort of a routine. I have a portable cart which I keep all of my supplies and such on so that I can take it from classroom to classroom. I have carved out a little nitch into the band room classroom and have mostly figured out classroom procedures without a classroom. It's actually kind of fun having these weird teaching conditions. It will make great stories later on, like "Remember the beginning of the school year when we had to teach in the gym? Good times, good times."
So all in all even though things are crazy I have a positive attitude about it. I'm not complaining. I'm glad I'm not like some teachers who teach both High School and Jr. High classes, because they literally have to drive from the one campus to the other. It takes about 5-10 minutes to drive. And their gas money is compensated by the school, so that's nice. I'm just glad I don't have to do it because I take the bus to school and so don't have a car at school to do that with. But I love teaching at APA. My favorite thing about it is that all the teachers are good friends with one another. There's this sense of community that binds us together. During trainings we sometimes go out to eat together and and we invite each other to parties and BBQs and stuff. So my one big fatty major complaint would be about this whole D1 D2 split situation is that I miss those other teachers. Greenwood, Brereton, Ochs, Hollinger, Goff, Pimentel, etc. It's like our community group of friends has been cut in half, and I never get to see any of them because they solely teach High School. That's my one complaint.
Anyway, that's my first week of school. Like I said, it makes for some good stories.
And now for something completely different:
I've had this question for a while of how they did the yellow line on TV in football, for the first down line, and low and behold, while "wasting" time on You Tube watching educational videos from VSauce, Vox, and Today I Found Out, I came across the answer to my question:
Oh, man, I BURST out laughing at: "And that's when I beat the crap out of Mr. Waghorn!" Thanks for the funny.
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