Orientation-ing

This is it, folks. I am sitting in my new apartment in Owatonna watching a video about one of the classes I will be teaching at my new job. I have New Teacher Orientation M-Th of this week, and I hope to have a better idea of what I'm supposed to be doing pretty soon...

I'm mostly moved into my new apartment. It's on the north side of Owatonna, down this little road where all the apartment buildings in the city seem to have come to die. It's actually a two bedroom apartment, which is probably more than I need, but I got it for the price of a one bedroom so I'm certainly not complaining. Bedroom #2 seems to be becoming my office/library. I have a lovely family who helped me get all my stuff down here (except for the pile of crap still in the trunk of my car), but my belongings are mostly strewn all over the place. I hope to have it together by the end of the week.

Orientation today included breakfast with the principals and the other new hires (I'm the only brand-new high school teacher), introductions, a bus tour of Owatonna (yeah, that didn't take very long...not a lot to see), meeting with the tech guys to set up our school e-mail accounts, lunch with the high school principals, a tour of the new Alternative Learning Center (where I'll be teaching 1st semester) and a conversation with the ALC principal about my schedule/classroom/materials/etc.

Here's what my 1st semester schedule looks like at the moment:

1st/2nd hour Read 180 (a remedial reading program in a box)

3rd/5th hour Language Arts--I think I'll have some flexibility with this. My principal asked me today what I'm interested in or have already prepared for that I might like to teach a course about. I said I'd let her know tomorrow, and I took a look at which books are available as class sets. Here are a couple of my ideas:
-Survival Stories
-Sci-Fi/Utopias/Dystopias
-Social Justice topics (Immigration, Justice system)
-Poetry Workshop
-Lit Circles/Book Club
-Shakespeare/drama thing
-Immigrant narratives
-Documentary film/non-fiction/argumentation

LUNCH

6th hour prep

7th hour RTI tutoring (pulling out 1-2 students for individualized reading help)

8th hour prep

I'm exhausted just thinking about it, but it's really just two courses to prep for and I think they'll both be fun. Please post your course suggestions for me--as long as I get to pick I want it to be amazing.