Our lease at the infamous Dukes Headquarters in Downtown Albuquerque was coming to and end, and I was still jobless. I had a feeling I would get some interviews as the 1st day of school approached, but I wasn't too concerned about it. And finally, the interviews came rushing in, and I got a job offer to teach 3rd grade in a small town just outside of Albuquerque called Los Lunas. I took the position with 2 days until school started. And, with my classroom a complete mess, my loving girlfriend - Arlene and her family came to the rescue. I got most things situated within the class, before the chaos of the first days of school began, and then before I knew it, school was already in session.
Most 1st year teachers are never prepared for everything that lays ahead of them. And I completely agree with that. Right now I'm trying to stay afloat and hope I can generate the best educational experience for these kids as possible. After the first day of school, we had a quick staff meeting, and we were informed that on a normal A-F grade scale, my school is performing at a "D", and more than 50% of the students are BELOW proficiency, when compared to the rest of the state. I'm thinking to myself how completely different this year is going to be when compared to the experience I had student-teaching at S.Y. Jackson elementary school and their nearly 92% proficient school rating. It's like night and day. Raymond Gabaldon Elementary school is on a completely different level, but it's going to be my new home for the next 180 days:
As you could imagine, my running that very first week of school (August 14th-18th) was, lack there of. And because of that, my sanity was starting to fluster with overwhelming amounts of emotion. I almost lost it with the amount of unpreparedness I had for that first week of school. But, I got through it, and this last week without incident. In fact, this past week went very well with school and with running. Almost an erie parallel between the two. And today, I got my 22 mile long run with mile repeats with 1 minute rest. It went up on Tramway (6000 ft. alt.):
4 miles easy, 4x1 mile, 8 miles easy, 2x1 mile, 4 miles easy [5:27, 5:22, 5:19, 5:17], [5:17, 5:11].
I know this year is not going to be easy, and I know I won't get the mileage I really want, but with proper fine tuning of my daily schedule, I think I can mange some good training, and preform well at New York City. It'll be interesting!
