Re-establishing Routines

 No way to describe first week back at school. Usually I feel rested and ready, this year I don't. It feels like we have come from our farewell do, had a long weekend, then arrived back in the school car park. And this year, due to Covid, we don't do the jumbo meet up in the staff room. It's a different vibe altogether and I'm not that happy to be back. But needs must. The beach is my anchor.

Kahu is ready and waiting to leave home but doesn't. I keep putting feelers out but I'm ok to see his not so cheery face at the end of the day. Life with me can't be that bad. We're both ready to move on but it's the same slow process as leaving Chris's. It's a wrench for him and he takes his time. Poor baby....not.

I meet my form class on the first day. They are so varied and quiet. First week routines kick in: up and out the door, looking for e-mails which tell me what to do, struggling in my head to imagine how I'm going to do everything I'm mandated to do, sore point, but taking things one day at a time. How else when systems are so complicated. 

I spend the week in my room alternating between working with my class and trying to organise for my English classes. I know enough to wing it but know enough to know that won't be enough. Covid is here and our learning time could get hijacked at any point. I have paper resources downstairs, in the cupboard of my old classroom and in my present classroom. It's a massive organisational task as I have to make sure I have enough electronic resources too. 

My peer support leaders are naively enthusiastic and dutiful. They take lots of sessions and one of them goes down the fun route, ditching the listed games for the throwing plastic bottles so they land upright challenge. The kids love it and he draws another class in. I try to learn names, finding I remember faces first, only they're from the cheek bones up. 

At home, Anjie helps me find places to hang a few things, strawberries and cherry tomatoes continue to ripen. And somewhere else, Covid stretches its tentacles.