Employed

It has been a very long road, but I can finally say that I have a job to show up to next week!

I signed a contract way back in May with a company that recruits speech, occupational, and physical therapists for schools. Normally they have no problem placing their therapists and they didn't anticipate how difficult it would be this year. My contract said I would start on August 17th but that date came and passed with no contract for any of the local public or private schools. Luckily once school started last week "the man" must have okayed schools to start looking to contracting agencies to fill their vacancies. After months of anxiety I finally have a job :) (had I realized a few months ago how difficult it would be for the company to place me I may have gone straight to the school districts, but now I am glad that I can work for the company I wanted to be with).

Some facts about my school (as listed on the school's website, I have no idea how up-to-date they are):

• It's a title 1 school with 87% of students receiving free or reduced lunches.
• Greatschools.net says there are an average of 17 students per teacher.
• There are a total of 671 students: 50% African American, 47% Hispanic, 2% Asian, and 1% Caucasian. This will be very different from Utah but I am excited to get to know people that are different races and have different cultures.
• The district supervisor said that the current speech and language caseload at this school is 30! (this is VERY small and manageable in my eyes)
• Attendance is apparently a big issue as they have implemented a program called PANTS (Perfect Attendance, No Tardy Students). I hope the students think that's as funny as I do :).
• The school's mascot is a Tiger.
• Students are required to wear uniforms.
• Google maps say the school is only a 15 minute drive from our apartment!
• The district observes all major Christian, Jewish, and Islamic holidays (although many fall on weekends or during winter/spring break so breaks won't be that different from schools in Utah).

I am very excited to start working with these students and hopefully making a difference in their lives!

Bye Utah!

Well, we started our journey to Maryland on Saturday. We have lots of pictures and things to post from the past few weeks and from our trip, but since we're staying in Atlanta with Steve's family I don't want to spend the whole time on the computer.


Here's one of the family pictures with my family that we took the night before we left. I think the colors turned out nice. Click on the picture if you want to see it bigger.


And here is the sad moment when we left the driveway, waving goodbye to my family. It really was sad. I cried for the next half an hour of the drive. We are going to miss seeing our family in Utah so much!! In a few short days we'll finish our trip to Maryland and see what it's like. Even though it's hard to leave family, we are excited for all the new experiences we'll have in our new home. I'll post more pictures and stories when we get there.