The first day is always the worst.

With all of the bewilderment from the construction stuff, I forgot to fill you guys in on the rest of my first day back at SLHS. In the morning we had the Kickoff Faculty Meeting in the auditorium. Be there or be square!

Everyone was there indeed. That is, everyone that wasn't part of the Workless Seven. That's how teachers are remembering those that didn't make it.

Most of the teachers showed up a little early to shuffle around their rooms and trade uneasy jokes with an air of gallows humor hanging over the hallways, workrooms, and offices.

At 7:00am we had our welcome back breakfast. It consisted of strong coffee and nothing but an industrial sized container of instant creamer to cut it with and plain bagels, accompanied with an eight ounce tub of cream cheese. Which is great--if Jesus were there to feed the masses.

At 7:15am we dead educators walking shuffled off to the auditorium with all the enthusiasm of a herd of POWs on a forced march. As we took our seats, the realization sets in that yes, here we are again--it's too late to get out of another year of service. Pécan, sensing the unease in the room, tried to soften us up with some levity. He broke out the standard drivel of stale pop culture humor.

"So were back."

Feedback from the microphone rips through the room.

"We must love what we do."

Nothing, but silence.

"I wish I could quit you."

Pécan's chuckle dissipated and out of desperation he eked out, "Brokeback Mountain... Ennis Del Mar... Heath Ledger..."

The teachers just stared at Pécan. Not out of confusion, but because they couldn't believe that they had to endure such corniness... yet again.

"I suppose I should just get down to it," Pécan conceded finally, "There's no way of tiptoeing around it any longer. We've done something revolutionary," muttered Pécan with an uncomfortable smile.

What was going on? I could only guess that they weren't finished letting all the teachers go.

"In a move to give the school fresh blood..."

Here it comes...

"All teachers will be teaching new grade levels this year."

A long pause followed, broken only by a solitary gasp somewhere in the back of the room, as the reality of that statement sunk in.

"We all think it's a great idea, don't we?"

The cadre of Assistant Principals nodded in unison and Pécan smiled the smile of a man who has just confessed a sin that's been weighing on his mind all summer, or maybe it was the smile of a dictator gone mad with power. I guess the latest "administrator workshop du jour" thought playing mad grab with the schedules was a good idea. No chance Pécan came up with this on his own.

After a video of a bunch of obscure motivational quotes set to some Enya song, Pécan dismissed us to our department meeting where we would get our new assignments.

You'd think that the department would have been in an uproar, lighting torches and grabbing pitchforks. But we weren't.

There was no pounding of fist. There were no outbursts like, "How can we be professional, if we're being thrown for a loop at the last second!"

Instead, there was this defeated peace in the room. This new scheme was just the next stop on the absurdity train.

Comparatively speaking, after taking a quick survey of some of the other schedules, I found that I got off relatively easy. I got my usual "normal" junior classes (here, definition of normal is relative--see last year's blogs), along with a lone Freshman English.

Don't worry. I'm going to talk to my counselor tomorrow about a schedule change on that one.

Oh. Wait a second. I'm not a student anymore. I guess that means I can't have my mom call and complain either, huh?