those little silver pieces of cardboard that come with your microwave/frozen pizzas? Yeah . . . they're kinda important. Don't, for example, microwave your pizza without it. It's less than ideal. Hypothetically.
Yes, ladies and gentlemen, I celebrated my first week of work with a nap on the couch and a frozen pizza. I thought about going out to dinner, but was so exhausted the couch seemed like the best place for me. At home, alone. Don't get me wrong - this week has been great! I've met most of my staff - everyone from my managers (the folks who directly report to me), the childcare staff - teachers, assistant teachers, student teachers and teaching assistants (apparently, in fact, there is a difference between all these!), the facilities and capitol project group - mechanics, maintenance, custodians, painters and the grounds crew, the leasing/assignments folks, the community services staff - who handle the programming and resident manager staff, and who run the main office, the office staff . .. . needless to say, there's a boatload of folks. And I'm going to try my darndest to learn and remember their names. ;) Baby steps. Hopefully it won't be too hard. They are all fun and welcoming and genuinely excited to have a new director. I think. Ha ha.
Everyone is quite concerned with the recent election of a new governor. We are in our second year of furloughs, and no pay raises, and . . . well . . . as a new resident of WI who only remotely understands this, it's a little scary. Gonna have to put some time and energy into thinking about staff morale. People are scared, and anyone who is close to retirment (of which I have many of these folks), are thinking about jumping ship now before the new governor/state makes changes to their retirement plans. Then the question becomes - will we get to rehire? Can we get it done "in time"? Will there be a hiring freeze? What the . .. !!
Welcome to my first week!
In addition to the political fun, and meeting great people, I have also mucked around with the budget (it's that time of year! Gotta find out where we are with capitol projects so we know whether or not to continue to set aside money for them in the future, or if it should be used somewhere else.) Do I know anything about this? Not really. :) Not yet, anyway. So I will continue to read a lot. This week I have also done some safety planning/threat management for a family, figuring out how to decide whether or not to rehire a lead custodian position, reading the files/documents my boss has given me (which I have thus deemed "important"), and ensuring my staff that I will, in fact, continue to come back to work the next day. In addition, yesterday I found myself saying to my office coordinator, "this might be a silly question . . . but . . . what's my phone number?" Yep. That came in second for the blog-title.
Baby steps. Lots and lots of baby steps. It was a good week. I've learned a lot. Now I need to pick paint colors (for both of my offices) and find a place to live. Minor details.
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