Mr. Baalerud is Back!

I got a job at Summit High School!

Last Friday I received a phone call from Gretchen (assistant principal) at Summit High School about a part-time math position opening up. Last year one of the math teachers had a brutal head injury and it has forced her to leave her math position. So they moved the part-time teacher up to her spot and me into the part-time position. I talked with m supervisor at Copper today and she said I should be able to work both jobs :)

My interview was originally scheduled for Tuesday evening. So I left for Denver on Monday night to pick up my teaching credentials and portfolio and to clean out whatever was left in my storage unit. As I was heading back up to the mountains (to go skiing at Loveland), I got a phone call from the call center and apparently I was supposed to be at work at 7am. A week ago one of the girls at the call center got fired, so I figured I was done. That also meant I had to possibly lose my job opportunity at Summit High School. However, I just ended up getting written up and they rescheduled my interview.

The next day I was getting off the shuttle and received a phone call from Gretchen offering me the job! This school could potentially be my dream job. I've been trying to get a job here since I moved out to Colorado. It's located about 10 minutes from my apartment in Breckenridge. They have a great school system and an International Baccalaureate (IB) program. I'm actually having coffee with IB program coordinator this morning (which definitely could be in my future plans). Summit High School is on a modified block schedule (the length of the class depends on the day). Since I have a .5 position, I will be teaching two sections of pre-algebra and one section of algebra every other day - this is which allows me to keep my job at Copper Mountain. Life is Great!!!

I'll be spending the holiday period skiing and planning for my upcoming semester. This is going to be a similar situation as my very first semester of teaching (the students have not had a consistent teacher during the semester and pre-algebra class will have a very similar demographic as West High School). However, I presume the parents will be much more involved and even after living here for a only a month of so, I feel a tremendous sense of community (Julie-head of the IB program won't go to Starbucks for coffee because she'd rather support a local coffee shop).

On a side-note, we are still waiting for a major snowstorm in Summit County. Usually the entire mountain is open by Christmas day... I don't think any of the resorts in the area are even above 50% right now :( Regardless, after my coffee I will be trekking to A-Basin to play in the terrain park with my buddy Tripp.

Christmas of course will be sad without seeing all of my friends and family, but I need to stay out here, work and keep pulling myself out of debt. Thankfully, my teaching job will get me health insurance again and allow me to come home for a few weeks over the summer (I also get this nifty laptop so I can keep everyone updated on my life out here). Jonny and Lauren are expected to make their way up here for the holiday and I have an ugly-sweater party to attend later that night to keep me occupied during the holiday.

MERRY CHRISTMAS EVERYONE!