A New Start

Today was an exciting day. For the first time, I stepped into our new community, and met several of our new students. Two things really hit me, first of all, the fact that this whole thing is actually happening!
Over the past few months, and especially the last five weeks, we’ve been simultaneously trying to prepare opening a school and building our foundation.  A lot of work has gone into this process, from big picture things like what the values of our organization will be, to extremely detailed decisions like how we would track behaviour in classrooms and assess our students over time.

All of this work is really important, but it also pushed the day-to-day school experience out of my head a bit. Today, as I was walking into the community, it hit me. We are starting a school in less than a day and a half. Starting on Friday, I’ll be walking the same way, into the first 321 school. It was a bit surreal, and a daunting thought at least.

Our goal for the day was to invite all of our students and their parents to opening day. It was exciting to go and meet them for the first time. Turns out, kindergarten students are tiny and adorable. I played with a few, mostly teaching them to high-five. The second thing that hit me was that I was going to be starting anew. On the train ride from Bandra to VT, I passed Mahim station, where I got off almost every day for the past two years to teach at my old school. It felt strange not getting off there today, especially since it was the first day of school for my old class.

As I met with parents and children, I realized that I was going to have to build new relationships with students, with my parents. This whole time, I’ve been thinking, “this is my third year teaching!” But this is going to be totally different, which is scary and exciting (funny how that dichotomy keeps reoccurring). One thing I was really proud of over the course of my fellowship with Teach for India was the strong relationship I built with my students’ parents, and the effect that had on my impact. I’m excited to start that again on Friday.

Just a quick note – I am going to try to write something every day, to keep this running. I will likely just write in one go and post, so please let me know of any grammatical errors. And subscribe so you can get updates to your email. Thanks!