Day 1 at @NavasotaInt is in the books!

We made it through our first day of school at Navasota Intermediate!  Wow what an experience and thrill that was.

Just like when I was a classroom teacher, I could hardly sleep at all the night before.  I was excited beyond belief but also a little terrified.  This was my first year as a principal and lots of eyes are on me.  There are those cheering for me to succeed and those waiting for me to fail.  But I will say, my excitement definitely outweighed the fear.

Parents started showing up at 7am.  I've chosen to do car duty every morning and every afternoon.  I really want the time to make that face to face contact with parents.  It was so much fun seeing parents show up with their children.  And there were so many smiles, so many excited faces.

As the teachers took their kids to their rooms, I spent the day, as did the rest of my team, rotating through classrooms.  Checking on teachers, meeting kids, playing games, etc.  One major goal of my administrative team this year is to make sure that every single day each teacher sees an administrator in their room for at least 10 min.  I've worked in schools like that, and in schools where you NEVER see the administrator, and I have seen the difference.  We want to be present for our kids.

We've also made it a point as an administrative team that every day we serve lunch duty.  We want the kids to see us all over the school in every aspect.

The other cool part of the day was a surprise appearance by a local news reporter from KBTX.  He showed up, interviewed me, and then allowed me to show him around the campus.  I didn't really think much about it, until we were on the 5 and 10 o'clock news that night!!!!  Talk about a cool feeling!  My favorite part of the interview?  That he got to meet one of my custodians, AND she made it into the broadcast.  Every single member of our team is important and every piece is needed to make this work!  You can see it HERE.

We got every kid home and even ended the day with a quick staff meeting.  If you've seen my posts online you know we're a staff who laughs AND cries together.  We started the meeting with a game called "Wet T-Shirt Contest" where the staff had to take a wet t-shirt that had been folded up AND frozen, and get it open and put on someone with using only their body heat!  Talk about lots of laughing.

Then in a big surprise, the staff gave the admin team a gift.  Last week I blogged about Angela Maiers and how she inspired each of us on the admin team to make special gifts and messages for every employee.  Well yesterday the staff had special bags made for us and they were filled with goodies, along with personalized letters.  Let's just say there was lots of crying on my end when I got home haha.

And I'd be remiss not to thank Jon Harper for his SUPER kind thoughtfulness in having this AWESOME gift delivered to me on my first day.  Life is so much better with great friends.

I love where I work.  I love who I work with.  And I can't wait to continue to watch this year unfold!