steph

A Month of Gratitude:  
November 4 – A person at work, present or past.

Spraying cotton. Babysitting. Tutoring. Waitressing. Waitressing. Waitressing. Nannying. Teaching kids. Teaching grownups. Those are the jobs I've held, give or take a few.

Today, I'll be thankful for my first "professional" coworker, Stephanie.

I graduated from college in mid-December one year and started teaching in January. I had just turned 23 and I had no idea what I was doing. I had the student teaching credentials, the portfolio, the syllabus template, and found out very quickly that I had NO CLUE what I was supposed to do with 32 teenagers at a time! Fortunately, Stephanie was knowledgable and supportive and helped me fake my way through it.

Stephanie is an organized, particular, perfectionist type person and she was exactly what I needed. We  built our program from 2 teachers to 4, and had a great time doing it. I think that one of my favorite memories was when we decided to do a "lock-in" with our student organization at school. This is how I know we were young.... Who willingly volunteers to stay overnight at school? The girls had so much fun... Office chair races down the hall, manicures, movies, and lots of snacks. The funniest part is that all these teenagers were asleep by 3am.... Stephanie and I were the only ones that stayed up all night. (Although in retrospect, it is probably because we did not want to sleep on a cold, hard floor. Plus, we were both single at the time, so I'm sure we had lots of boy drama to discuss.)

Time went by and we have both moved on from our positions, but I'll always be thankful that I spent those 6 years with her. We made a good team!