Beginning at St. Marks

So I’ve now been working for about 3 weeks and living in NY for just over a month. I love my apartment and I was so lucky to have gotten it when I did. I was leaving for Asia in August and I had one week to find an apartment while attending training at my job with last year’s fellow. I only saw one apartment that was listed on the Princeton in NY list but I loved it. When I came back from China, I started working at St. Mark the Evangelist School one week before school came into session. We tackled some last minute registration tasks although with an almost entirely new front office (our principal is new too) we were mostly trying to figure out the logistics of the first few days of school. Since then my job has calmed down quite a bit. I meet with my principal every morning after school announcements and then again on Thursday afternoons for a weekly reflection meeting. Since the principal once held a position similar to mine, he’s very good at managing my position. I perform mostly administrative tasks including tracking donations and registration, updating the tuition collection agency, and setting up the enrichment programs and field trips for the classes. In addition, I am involved in high school admissions for the eighth graders and I tutor several students for the Specialized High schools tests. But I still have quite a bit of freedom in deciding what types of programs I would like to start or contribute to for the students. I’m thinking about restarting the school choir which disintegrated in the middle of last year or helping the students restart the service crew, which organizes community outreach at the school. This year the atmosphere at the school seems to be very different than in previous years. I think the change is due mostly to our new Principal, who himself is an alumni of St. Marks and has a lot invested in the school. Today is back to school night. I forgot about all of the traditions of elementary and middle school.