Teacher Orientation Day

Front view of the school where I will be working (English Station)

Today was my first official day of work at Christian Academy of Louisville, English Station.  The campus is really big and beautiful, they have just about 1,000 K3 - 12th grade students on this campus alone.  Between all of their campuses, Christian Academy of Louisville has 3,000 students.  As I drove to my orientation this morning, I was quite nervous, mainly because I'm a country girl at heart, and I love teaching in small rural schools.  Now, here I was on my way to the largest Christian School System in all of Kentucky, and many other states as well.  Not only is it a large Christian School, but it's located in America's 16th largest city, Louisville.  To say that I was feeling a little bit nervous and overwhelmed would definitely be an understatement.  

As I arrived on campus I once again marveled at how large and beautiful their campus is.  God truly has blessed this Christian School with amazing state-of-the art facilities.  Yet, it hasn't always been this way.  This school had very humble beginnings as it met in Sunday school classrooms at two local churches during the 1970s.  As more and more students began to come to the schools, facilities had to be expanded.  Through the school board's amazing faith in God's provision, there are now 5 beautiful campuses located in Kentucky and Indiana.  As I listened to the history of this Christian School, I couldn't help but think of Anza Valley Christian School.  With it's humble beginnings I pray that God too will use AVCS to reach hundreds of children and their families in the future.  

Arial view of the entire campus, including athletic fields, where I will be teaching.

Arial view of the building where I will be teaching. 

When I arrived in the preschool side of the school at 8:30 a.m. I was immediately introduced to the lead teacher in the classroom where I would be teaching.  She is really nice, her name is Mei, and she is from Korea, there is also another assistant teacher in the classroom and her name is Shelly, and she's from America. :)  They were both getting their brand new classroom ready for the start of school next Wednesday.  So I jumped right in and started disinfecting cubbies.  There will be 22 students in the class, the maximum number that can be in the class, so I cleaned out 22 cubbies.  Then we had to disinfect and clean all of the toys.  Yikes, that took a long time, but we were all able to talk together and get to know each other more.  Both of them have been working at the school for about 2.5 years.  At lunch time, all of the preschool teachers went out to lunch at a local Chinese restaurant.  We all had a good time laughing and telling stories with each other.  It felt so good to be able to be with people after having been pretty much "stuck" in our apartment on campus for the last month and a half.  After lunch, it was time to go to our actual orientation meeting in the High School library.  

Orientation, was just what it was supposed to be, it was very informative.  We got to meet all of the new hires, as well as all the school administration.  We also got to attend an entire session on the health, and life insurance that the school offers to its employees.  I felt really bad for some of the younger teachers fresh out of college, because they looked really confused as to all the health insurance terms that were being thrown around.  I'm glad that through my mom, and the first college I attended and purchasing health insurance multiple times in my life, I was already very familiar with all of the terms.  The school offers pretty good insurance that Matt and I are definitely going to take advantage of.  After the session on life insurance, we were dismissed to go home.  Tomorrow I will be attending a preschool teacher training session on a different campus called Rock Creek.  I'm looking forward to this, as well as getting my CPR and first aid certification.

I wanted to thank all of you who have prayed for me in that I would find a position in a preschool.  God truly is good in providing me with this position where I can learn how to properly run a preschool.  My long term goal is to be able to open up a preschool wherever Matt becomes a pastor (I'm hoping for California.)  In order to be the director of a preschool in California, I will need to have four years of actual experience in a preschool.  Because Matt's degree will take him four years to receive, I will be able to get that four years of classroom experience while I'm here.  Isn't God good?  Well, my stomach just started growling, so it must be dinner time.  Until next time, you are all in my prayers.  

See, it does snow in Louisville.