Almost an Official Teacher

Tomorrow I am going to the High School to set up my room. I had to buy some supplies today and it was kind of fun. I finished my class syllabus and created a substitute folder and all that junk today. I am excited and nervous at the same time, but ready to finally start teaching. My schedule goes as follows; 1st world studies, 2nd world studies, 3rd prep, 4th world history, lunch, 5th world history, 6th prep, 7th Freshman Athletics.

Football is going well...I yelled at my players for the first time yesterday and it was awesome....lol. They were being lazy and I got upset. We have a scrimmage this Friday and the football schedule really starts to pick up. The head coach told us all to enjoy our last weekend because from here on out we are going to put in a lot of hours. I am scared to find out what that means because so far for the last two weeks we have been working 8am-9pm. Oh well, I love it so it will be fun...tiring but fun.

First Day of Texas Football

Today was a really long day...I mean really long. The first part of the day I had to attend a new teacher orientation. Mainly we talked about the discipline plan and what rules were in place to make the school run smoothly. I guess about four or five years ago Del Valle was a really bad school, lots of gangs, drugs, and other problems that got in the way of education. Now the new administration has changed a lot of things and is really strict on discipline. All students are required to tuck in their shirts, men have to wear belts, saggy pants are not allowed, and many many more rules are in place to ensure learning takes place. There are discipline officers that patrol the school and are there to support the staff in any way. There is a whole bunch more that I thought was really impressive but its to much to type, haha. Our morning meetings went from 8am-3pm and we had to go immediately to football because the players started coming in to get their equipment at 2pm. It was a very hectic time, and the freshman made it even worse because they come into the school not knowing anything at all. But after all the kids got their equipment and everything taken care of then they had to practice. Varsity and Junior Varsity practiced from 4-6pm and then the Freshman went out to practice from 6-7:30pm. The freshman are really slow at picking things up and its obviously going to take us a little while longer to get things in that it does with the older kids but thats how it goes. After practice, The kids changed and left while we had to start doing their laundry (they are so spoiled), then we met as a staff. After the staff meeting, then we split up into offensive and defensive staff groups and talked about practice, how it went, and what we need to change for tomorrow. So at the end of the day I left the office at 9:30pm. This is nothing like the last high school I worked at...which is actually a good thing. There is a lot of structure and the coaching staff is very organized. Its just going to require a lot of time and effort to get things done.....so basically my life for the next three months is over. Now given, we are in camp right now but still, its still going to be a lot more work than my last coaching job, and I am not even coaching varsity!

The Move to Texas

So far Texas has been awesome. I have been here a little over 2 weeks now and everything is going very well. I just recently found an apartment, and as of Friday, I began my first year teacher orientation at the High School. There are a lot of new teachers from the Midwest and I just found out that our principal is a UofM graduate. I will be teaching 9th and 10th grade world history and world geography this year. The best part about all of this is that I just found out my entire year is already planned out! I anticipated having to start from scratch and figure out what I was going to teach, when I was going to teach it and how, but my department has already done much of the planning for me.

Since I arrived I have been very busy with football. I went to San Antonio two weeks ago for the Texas High School Football Coaches Association Conference with the other coaches I will be working with this season. Everything was paid for and I got to see both the Alamo and the famous River Walk in downtown San Antonio. The conference was a lot of fun and the other coaches are really cool. When we got back from the conference I got to see the school for the first time. The building itself is almost brand new. There are 2000 students that attend Del Valle High School and from my understanding, most of them are from low income families. The school demographic is 70% Hispanic, 20% Black, and 10% White. Teaching this group of students will be challenging but I think I will survive, lol.

The High School facilities are really impressive, at least to me. The facilities are better here than Wooster! There is a really nice weight room, three practice football fields, and the game field is under construction because they are installing field turf...which is about a million dollar project. The coaches office is huge as well. There are 14 coaches between varsity, junior varsity and freshman. We each have our own desk and I love it. I found out when I got down here that I am going to be an assistant coach on the freshman team. This isn't what I expected but I think it is good for me since everything is so new. I have a lot to learn and the freshman play book is a lot
smaller than varsity. I am also coaching baseball in the spring. I am going to be the Freshman coach and it should be fun. I really like the head baseball coach. He is a old Mexican guy and he is funny as hell.

Yesterday me and several other football coaches went floating down the Guadalupe River. Coach Rich has some property on the water and we all went his house, grilled out and had some beer. We had a floating cooler and we just floated along down the river, drinking and bullshitting...I had a great time.

Tomorrow football season starts. The kids will start coming up to the school in the afternoon to get their equipment and then we have to get them out to practice. I am excited for the season to start but know that I will be working a lot, as most people know, football is huge in Texas and I can only imagine how many hours I will put in over the next three months....