Orientation Day at St. Adam’s Classical

So, welcome to St. Adam’s Classical. We’re really glad to have you on the faculty and I hope you enjoy teaching here. I’ve been asked to help with your orientation, so I’m going to tell you a bit about how we do things around here. If you have any questions, great, just let me know at the end.  

The first thing I’ll say about St. Adam’s Classical is that you should expect the unexpected. There are a lot of events on the school calendar that you’re not going to hear anything about until the last minute when they completely upend your plans. I mean things like Speech Meet, Spirit Week, Senior Week, Senior Night, Senior Sneak Day, Grandparent’s Day, Kingdom Prom, Kingdom Homecoming, the Christmas Concert, Music Fest, Book Fest, Book Week, Mission Day, Signing Day, and the Calendar Deadline—all of which will pop up on your radar with no advance notice. There are going to be days where you’ve scripted every single moment of a beautiful hour-long lesson that ties together an eight -week unit on Augustine’s Confessions—but then half your class won’t show up because they’re tying ribbons in the auditorium for some random fundraiser. Also, I’d say hold all your plans loosely for the month of December, the first two weeks of January, the last two weeks of March, the last three weeks of April, and the entire month of May. Those are really busy times at the school and huge numbers of kids will get called out of your classroom on a completely unpredictable basis.  

All new teachers get a mentor. Your mentor is Gary and he’s great. He’s been our math teacher for the last nineteen years. He teaches twenty-seven blocks every week, so you’re going to have lunch with him once during the first week of the school year and then you’ll probably never speak to him again. Make sure you ask every question you have for him at that time. 

Here’s your copy of the employee handbook. There’s some stuff in here that’s really important, but a lot of stuff that no one really pays attention to. You’ll figure out the difference over the next four to seven years.    

Here’s a copy of the student handbook. Make sure you have a look at the dress code section. It was written by the Sybil of Cumae.  

You’ve been entrusted with human souls, which is a very different thing than being entrusted with access to color copies on the printer. You can have all the human souls you want, but if you need color copies, well… “Color copies are for closers,” as we say around here.    

This school has its share of awkward family dynamics, unexpected political affiliations, incarcerated uncles, embarrassing chronic illnesses, obscure mental health diagnoses, trial separations, and messy divorces. You will become acquainted with these scenarios throughout the year when you unwittingly say or do something which is perceived as insensitive by the relevant party. After that, you’ll learn all the particulars from the people you’ve offended during an intense and inconclusive reconciliation meeting that runs for two hours. If there’s a better way of doing it, we haven’t figured it out yet.    

Here’s your copy of the org chart. I know this is weird, but you know how some people give names to their cars? Or their guitars? Our org chart is named “Sisyphus.”  

All the forms you need—from student progress reports to reimbursement forms—are either on Dropbox, Teams, Asana, Canvas, RenWeb, Basecamp, Slack, Discord, Limewire, Megaupload, Myspace, Friendster, that one library next to Costco, or the big file cabinet next to where Tina’s desk used to be.    

We’re really proud of being “a low-tech school,” so when there are problems with your doc cam, overhead projector, television, laptop, smart board, VR goggles, 3D printer, Seesaw account, Sycamore account, or Google Classroom, you’re going to have to fix it yourself.   

I think you’ll see that we have a really special community here at St. Adam’s. We’re not like other schools. We’re a family. We take care of each other, and so I want to give you a really important piece of information. At the end of Wednesday afternoon faculty meetings, Dr. Skinner is going to ask, “Are there any other questions before we go home?” If you ask a question, Gary will let the air out of your tires. And that’s going to be true even if it’s a really good question. 

Good luck and God bless.