In our staff meeting on Friday(they waited until Friday!!!), our principal mentioned that our vp was making him repeat "change is good" over and over again any time he complained. I am hearing it all over school, sometimes varied to "I embrace change." So much is going on at the district level and at our actual school site that it is a bit overwhelming. I am the only person left on my team. Two are new to the school, one of those is new to the district and the other two are new to the grade level. Therefore, I am the team leader. TF? Okaaayyy...and I'm Social Studies chair. I've only been doing this for two years. I'm a little freaked out by all this responsibility, although, to be fair, I asked them to let be the chair since I figured it would help me get more soc. studies classes. I embrace change. We are in our first year of PI. Gah! So, tons of change stemming from that. Most of it isn't exactly bad, just annoying, knowing that you had something in place that worked--7th grade went up across the board(I had the highest reading comprehension scores and that is one of my weakest areas as a teacher. Go figure)--and now someone sitting in an office somewhere who has never met your students thinks they know what you should be doing. The district has been asking for our input(what that really means: more work) so we have a smidge of control over the situation. A pacing guide and specific curriculum means less content lesson planning, freeing me up more time to plan on which strategies to use. More mandated testing. Phbtttt!!! This is the first week of school: Monday--Welcome back! Tue/Wed/Thur--Sit down, shut up, take the test. In 3 different class periods!!! Change is good. Change is good. Change is...anyone wanna buy me a drink? New staff and faculty. 15 of them. I realize that is not nearly as high as some, but there were some key players who left and it will be interesting to see how the new people fit in. I am really excited to be working w/a couple of them. Change is good. I embrace change. Weird risk-interevention program implementation. New to our district. In the handout and her talk, the coordinator of the program basically went over a bunch of stuff we already do in our grade level teams, but now we're going to have to follow the program's specific procedures or something to that effect. There's yet another training I'll be going to this year. Change is...is it happy hour yet? At least my teaching assignment stayed the same and I have all the materials. Yay!!! Some consistency is even better than change. I know that what I just outlined is just another day for anyone who isn't new to this gig, and I know that things are likely to get worse before they get better. I am also blessed with the knowledge that I am in the right place at the right time and that I am doing what God intends for me to do. I notice that this awareness allows me to stay positive and focused where some of my colleagues seem burnt out before the year has even started. C'mon everybody! All together now. "Change is good. I embrace change." Repeat endlessly as needed.