Chit Chat: Great News

Even though last week was such a busy week, I had some great things happen to me at work! A few weeks ago I shared my recent work successes and now I have a few more to share!! On Wednesday, the principal stepped in my room and said, "When you get to a good stopping point, Noble is going to watch your class and I need you at the office." A few minutes later I had the class instructed on what they needed to do and I left Noble in charge. On the way to the office I was wondering what was wrong. I was wondering if I had done something wrong. Then I get to the principal's office and our curriculum specialist from the board and the superintendent are also there and I was thinking, "OMG, what's happening?" I said, "Good Morning" and took a seat. The superintendent said that we were waiting on Mrs. Hall, a science teacher, and then we could get started. This relaxed me a little.

When she arrived they offered us a grant that would pay for a Master's degree in leadership and for us to get our National Board's certification. This grant would pay for everything including textbooks. The superintendent, our principal, and our curriculum specialist had received word about the grant the day before and that morning they met and discussed it, because they had to send in our names by the end of the day.. They decided to offer us the opportunity to take part in this experience. As soon as they received the email with more information that morning they would forward it to us and we needed to email back to let them know if we were in.

We left the office and stopped to talk about it before parting ways to go to our classrooms. This would relieve us of a huge financial burden, because classes and books are so expensive. Plus this shows that our administrators have some level of faith in us and believe that we would make our district proud. Also, we had to work together last year as senior sponsors and know we can count on each other for support and help so we were glad to be paired together in this. This will take three years to complete with most of the days we have to go to class is on actual school days so we will get to miss work to accomplish this with some days over the summer. Also with the new degree we would get a pay raise and then the National Boards Certification would earn us an additional pay raise!

During this meeting I reminded them that I already have one Master's degree that I finished last Summer (so this new degree would technically be a Rank 1 for me). This led to my friend Stacey (the curriculum specialist), who works at our board to check on things for me and she found out that I had not been getting the raise that I should have been getting for having my Master's. So from now on I will be getting my raise plus over the next 4 months I will be back-paid for the money I should have been getting over the other months this year. All in all an excellent week for me last week. Free education and extra money coming my way (that technically, I should have already been getting but now I will)!


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