Real Life Update

I've alluded to the fact a few times that my fall has been hard. And in my What's Up Wednesday post for September, I mentioned I was dreading some work stuff. Well, the work stuff has passed and I've decided to write some of it out.

As many of you know I am a middle school secretary (Gr 7 & 8 in our province) at a school not far from our house. I really do love my job, most of the time. In Canada, school is funded partially by the province and partially by local taxes. However, those taxes are distributed evenly so every school in Ontario receives the same amount of funding per student. I don't know all the ins and outs of the funding formula but, for some reason, our local board has a fairly significant deficit. And this has trickled down to the local schools.

In mid-September the principals found out that there was going to be a significant reorganization happening due to the funding deficit. This meant collapsing classes (so that class sizes would be larger) and some teachers losing their jobs. Four people at our school knew we were going to have to reorg, and that we would be losing a young, favourite teacher. And we also knew that these reorgs were going to be widespread.

So on top of all the impending chaos coming at my school, I had no idea how these changes might affect Rachel as well. The only person I could talk about this with was Dave, as I didn't know if any of my friends' kids would be affected (and they were), so I couldn't talk about it with them. It was basically two and a half weeks of knowing some major changes were coming down the pike and having to pretend everything was normal -- both at work and in my regular life. It was a very hard two and a half weeks. Plus, I wanted to cry every time I had to interact with the person I knew was losing their job.

On top of all this, once the final decisions were made, I was the person who had to make all the changes of moving students from class to class in a very short amount of time. Needless to say I was very stressed as this all came down the pike, plus sad about losing the teacher.

The transition happened a week ago, and thankfully the bulk of the work I had to do went quite smoothly, although it was an intense day of making it all happen. And then last Tuesday was like the first day of school all over again with new classes, new class schedules, and everyone trying to figure out how to navigate this all.

And although Rachel mentioned that a teacher at her school was gone, Rachel's class wasn't affected and her teachers are all the same, so that was a huge relief.

I am hoping now that this big impending thing is done, work will calm down and I will come home at night less exhausted, with more energy for things at home -- laundry, yard work, cooking, and yes, blogging. Thanks for hanging in with me as I've been mostly absent in blog world. I hope that changes over the next weeks.