Expect the Unexpected

On any given campus, in any given year, there is usually some kind of turnover in faculty and staff. This year is no exception for AMCMS except this year has been particular hard on me on a personal level. I will miss the camaraderie of LuAnn and Belinda. We finally got Janet back to the 100 hallway after being deserted in the 600 hallway out in Nowhere Land. I found out a couple of days ago that Janet has accepted the position of Coordinator of Distance Education at a nearby university. To top it all off, Sherry, the English teacher on my team, was informed last week that her husband's company is transferring him to another town, effective immediately. Yikes! By a divine intervention, Sherry yesterday was offered a teaching position in Bandera, and therefore, can move with her husband. As much as I hate to Sherry go, her heart would not have been here if she had to stay.

Yes, students arrive on Monday, in three short days. I spent all afternoon yesterday interviewing potential candidates to fill Sherry's shoes, no small feat in itself. Her unique mixture of quirkiness and eccentricities was the right combination that appealed to middle school kids. I am going to miss Sherry.

There are no guarantees in life. When stuff like this happens to you and catches you off guard, you must be flexible and go with the flow. Math teachers with Type A personality like myself can spend more time upset about how a lesson isn't or didn't go as planned instead of using that energy to adjust and move forward with an alternative plan. Luckily I am slowly evolving and am not as uptight as I was 10 to 15 years ago. I've come to realize that I shouldn't let learning come to a complete halt when life throws me a curve ball. Roger during Carnegie's Math Institute reminded us that you should always have a Plan B, a Plan C, . . . , a Plan X, a Plan, Y and a Plan Z!

I am not going to give you false hopes and try to convince you that your year is going to go 100% smoothly without any bumps or bruises, but I am confident that the journey is definitely worth taking for both you and your students. Bon voyage!