It has been another week, and as predicted, things have started to pick up. I started doing my teacher trainings on Thursday. Even though I was a bit nervous and very concerned everything turned out alright. I got a little behind schedule right off the bat and had some other timing problems but I was able to get everything we needed done by the end of the day. My evaluations had me at 3.7 out of four with many notes saying I was an excellent presenter. I had told them at the beginning of the presentation that it was my first day so I attributed the high marks to a sympathy factor. My supervisor told me I did an excellent job for the first presentation and not to worry, the second one always goes better, even though my first presentation was very good. So all night I worried again about how I was going to make my presentation better, even though I had no idea what to do different to make it better. But not to worry. Almost automatically from the very start, things went so much better. I was on schedule, the presentation went much smoother, I felt more comfortable. I'm ready to go for number three now. It should be even better.
The fun thing about the presentation yesterday, was about an hour after lunch, the fire alarm went off and we had to evacuate the building. Now this was no small feat! This is the county education building, and it is located in Downtown Fresno. The building itself was once an old hotel that the county had purchased and renovated. It has a tower and there are a lot of people that work, visit, or come there for meetings, workshops or for other reasons. There were a lot of people evacuating the building. Of course we had no idea where we were going. Once we were out of the building, we had no idea where to go. To make matters worse, there were people shouting it was a false alarm, and other people shouting it was real and to evacuate. I played sheep and simply flowed with the masses. When everyone started going back to the building and lining up to take the elevators back up to the floors to go to work, I thought I could beat the crowds and take the stairs. I only needed to go to the fourth floor. So up the stairs I went. When I finaly made it huffing and puffing up the stairs to the fourth floor, I tried the door and it was locked. I found a sign on the door that said: "For security reasons, all stairwell doors are locked from the inside and floors cannot be accessed from the stairwell." So it was back down the stairs, in line for the elevators, and finally back to work to finish the presentation.
Hobnobbing
For the evening I was invited to attend a high honor dinner hosted by the president of Fresno State University at his house. It was a very lavish affair. The house is in a secluded, exclusive neighborhood, and sits on about a half acre of land. There was a huge swimming pool. There were about 1000 people there. The occassion was to honor the school's baseball team that had won the national championship over the summer. There was lots of good food, mostly wieners of various sorts served by white coated servers. It was delicious. Later on that night I had thought I had made a lasting impression on the president when we passed each other in the crowds and he greeted me again, calling me by name and asking me how I was enjoying the party. When I was bragging about the president remembering my name out of the thousands of guests, my host reminded me that I was wearing a name tag.
Looking Ahead
This next week should continue the exciting times. I have two more presentations on Monday and Tuesday. And then Wednesday I have my orientation at Disneyland and will hopefully find out my schedule and assignment. I am still holding out for steam locomotive engineer. In the meantime, my teacher trainings look like they will expand to southern California. My supervisor was telling me about a huge district coming on line with around 1700 special education teachers that will need to be trained. Things are looking good!
Until next time...
No comments:
Post a Comment