Summer is Gone

We are now two days into August, and it's still more than two weeks until students return to my school district for classes. You wouldn't know that if you walked into the offices at the Board of Education, though. Things have been humming all summer long.

I've made several posts before, including one not too long ago, about how one school year bleeds into the next these days, how the old, 20th century idea of three months off for teachers is just so much hogwash. My wife is returning to teach in my school district after 15 years away, and her entire department is meeting tomorrow to talk curriculum realignment.

Every year about a week and a half before school begins my district has a new employee orientation. This is my 8th year as district technology director, and in each of the other seven years, I've always given new staff members their computer user accounts, email addresses, and passwords at this orientation. In the last couple of years, though, there have been two or three or four staff members who would contact me in advance because they wanted their email accounts set up sooner. This year, of the 24 new staff members, I have already given computer account information to more than half of them. They're being pressured to get them from their new administrators and department chairs so that they can keep in the loop about what is happening over the summer...

...Because so much is!