Know what you want

Here’s what I find so cool about the Elementary Principal and VP here at ISB.

A week before school starts the admin team decides to add another 5th grade classroom. Which, for those of you that are not international educators, is not a recommended plan of action. First, all international teachers are already starting their new jobs in new schools, and second….it’s the week before school starts and you have to:

A. Convince someone to leave their home and move to Thailand
B. Convince someone that the school is right for them
C. Arrange all the paperwork, visas, etc. to get the new teacher here
D. Have a new classroom all set up with supplies, books, etc most of which needs to be ordered from the States because you didn’t realize last year you were going to add another section of 5th grade.

Now, most administrators would be happy with just going out and getting a “warm body” for the year and making things work on such a short notice.

Yes….most would, but not here. No, our principal knows who she wants, knows the skills she wants in a teacher and then goes out and gets what she wants (she got me didn’t she 😉 )!

Long story short and a couple days late to the start of the school year Chrissy finds herself picking up her life from New Zealand and lands in Bangkok.

Our Principal was really excited when she “closed the deal” with Chrissy and after visiting her blog….I’m excited too.

This is what impresses me the most. Chrissy doesn’t know where the closest bathroom to her new classroom is yet, she doesn’t know how the copying system works…but:

At the moment my class is exploring classroom blogs from all over
the world (with a bit of a bias towards New Zealand blogs ……) because
we’ve started our own class blog.
We’re looking at what other classes have on their blog to decide what
we would like on ours. If you and your class currently blog, we would
love you to leave a comment and a URL on our class blog so that we can visit your classroom blog to take a look around.

We’re especially interested in any “must-haves” you think we should include on our blog.

Don’t worry the class wiki is already set up as well.

My favorite part of the story is the first day I walk into Chrissy’s room we start talking and in that great Kiwi accent states:

“I follow you on twitter, but you’re not following me.”

Oh, how I’m going to love working with this woman!

Welcome aboard Chrissy! (Twitter: nzchrissy)

You have to respect an administration that knows what they want, and then goes out and gets it!