jealous yet?

Thus far I've traveled through New Work Retreat and First Day of In-Service. All systems are go. In relating my experiences to the PIG, he seems to take for granted the things that astonish me. For example, the boss man has decided to change the way coaching happens. Coaching serves several purposes. It's a conduit for information about a child to his/her parent & other caregivers. It's a way for each child to have a formal and strong connection to one of the teachers and to a small group of kids. It's a lot of other things, which is why Boss Man decided to make the coaching teams a little larger and have two coaches per team. He picked the teachers to form each team, but it is up to us to decide how to divide the kids. The PIG says something like "Hmm, sounds like he wants to be inclusive in the way this decision gets made" whereas I am thinking "Hot damn, he thinks we're smart enough to figure out the best mechanism for creating groups ourselves!"

Also, every single teacher has gone out of his or her way to reassure me and to help me understand how things work.

Also also, when changes are announced or suggested, not a single person reacts negatively. They're all like "cool, can't wait to try that!" or "huh, sounds like that might work a bit better than last year". Know why? Because last year they talked about things that were problematic and Boss Man spent the summer going through proposed responses and changes and deciding which to implement. In other words, he listened to the group.