Tuesday, October 25, 2011

New job!

So three weeks ago, I call my district supervisor and ask him if there will be any spare elementary classes to pad my FTE (contract, for my non-teacher friends). He says "I'll know at the end of the week." That Friday, he sends an email to every music teacher in the district saying that it will be a .62 Itinerant (traveling) elementary position (way more than we thought it would be).

That's twice the amount of money I make now (and it includes benefits I don't qualify for now). And we've been a little behind in bills because we had to replace the Jeep back in August. So I tell him I'm interested. After a "just for appearances" interview (as often happens in my district...something I'm not a fan of, but at least this time it worked in my favor), he offered and I accepted the job. It's 9 classes at 5 schools. 6 of those are kindergarten, so the lesson planning isn't crazy. It's kind of a "picking up all the loose ends" job. Immediately, I made a grid with all the different schools, principals' name, phone number, secretaries' names, copy codes, regular teachers' names for my classes, and dividers for each school in a notebook.

Yes I'm neurotic.

But after only two weeks that organization has already paid off a few times, so judge me all you want. I've committed to this and I'm gonna do it right.

Despite the insanity of that, all the elementary schools in my district have early release every Wednesday. So to keep my schedule a little more manageable, I don't have any classes on Wednesday. I DON'T WORK ON WEDNESDAYS. And I'm making twice as much money. And all I have to do is travel between schools? Um, OKAY.

But now here's my problem. If we still lived in Battle Ground, I could keep Sam at his current daycare because it would be on the way. But coming from the south, I'm backtracking an average of 20 miles a day. That's 80 extra miles a week that I'm driving...ugh. I hate Hate HATE searching for daycare. Especially when I really like where he's at otherwise.