I've turned into the worst blogger ever. The last time I posted was the first day of school and tomorrow is the first day of second marking period. At this rate it'll be another couple months till I'm back here.
Typically the "are you ok?" e-mails motivate me to post something, but even that hasn't been enough lately. This year is SO hectic. I've never been so extremely busy before.
This week's Exploring the MTBoS Mission seemed like a perfect way to document the craziness and offer an explanation for my absence. I haven't done any of the other ones yet, but that's ok.
This is last Thursday:
6:00 alarm goes off
6:10ish get up
6:10-6:40 get ready, make breakfast and coffee that I'll eat in the car
7:00 Arrive at work. I am the first one there (this is normal). 8:30am is the time we actually have to be at school but the morning is my only peaceful time of the day.
7:00-8:00 Drink my coffee. Put on Pandora and get things ready for the day. Make copies for my classes. Make copies for some club projects. Realize I left a sheet of paper at home where I had brainstormed possible names for a new club I am started this year that is still nameless. Do my best to remember the names and type out a ballot to vote.
8:07 Use Remind101 to send out a text that the club meeting will be in my room this morning.
8:15 Kids start drifting in and out waiting for the meeting to start.
8:25ish Meeting starts. Actually have more kids that usual which is good because I have a lot to talk about. Discuss a Saturday open house, a charity 5k walk/run, conduct a poll for a new name, take volunteers to go around to homerooms tomorrow to make an announcement about the new school hoodies we are selling. Around halfway through the meeting about 5 more kids came in so at the end I have to go over everything I said for them.
8:45 Meeting ends
8:48 Homeroom starts. The PA system isn't working so I have to tell kids to sit down because the bell didn't ring. I'm frustrated because even when the bell does ring I still have to ask them to take their seats every. single. day.
9:00-10:25 Algebra 1 block period. We are working on systems of equations and solving them using a table. During second period the office secretary comes in and tells me that I need to cover a class third period (my duty period). While continuing to teach figure out what I'm going to do because I already had 3 students that were planning to come for extra help 3rd period.
10:25 Duty period. Stand outside my door for a minute waiting for my students to come to me. Tell them to wait while I go get the class I'm covering. Instead of going to them, I'll just have them come to my room. Work includes books so we'll have to bring them down to my room too.
10:27-11:13 Work with my kids on various geometry things they need help on while the other kids work on the work their teacher left.
11:13 Class is over, grab one of my kids to help me bring back all the textbooks we brought from the other classroom. Leave my door open because next period is lunch and my juniors like to spend lunch in my room. If I'm not there when they get there they don't know what to do.
11:15-11:45 Lunch. Another teacher and anywhere from 3-8 kids usually spend lunch in my room. The majority of the kids are my juniors who I had last year and have again this year. Depending on the day lunch could consist of anything from doing work they need help with, talking about whatever is currently upsetting them, joking around, decorating my room, or other totally random things.
11:45 Lunch ends and geometry starts. The majority of my class is already there since they are the ones that eat lunch with me. A couple kids come in that didn't come for lunch today.
11:48-12:30 Geometry. We are finishing up triangle congruence proofs and I'm thrilled because they are getting to the point where they can for the most part do them from scratch on their own.
12:33-2:00 Second Algebra 1 block period. We are also working on solving systems using a table, but this period takes a little bit longer to work on things and really get them. I'm actually very happy with how fast they catch on.
2:03-2:45 Prep period. Today is a meeting for a different club that I advise. Leave my room and go down to the classroom we're having the meeting in. Pop my head in and tell the other advisor I'll be right back, running to the bathroom. This is ONLY two minutes I've been without students today. Discuss fundraisers and some important dates. At the start of the meeting a student comes in and tells me he really can't stay for the meeting because he needs to be in class, asks if he can just stay after school for a little bit instead to catch up what he missed.
2:48-3:30 Enrichment math. This is a sophomore level semester math class that has very little guidelines on what to cover so I have a lot of freedom. Take them to the library to begin a project on patterns. Kids log on to computers and go to visualpatterns.org but of course it's blocked. I don't feel like taking them back to my room so I give them some sections on IXL.com to work on instead.
3:40-4:15 Kid from earlier comes to catch up what he missed at the club meeting and also work on some skills that he wants to requiz on. Work on a number of different skills that I've been working with him all week on.
4:15 Sit at my desk and appreciate the peace and quiet. Remember that I asked my club kids this morning to hand out school sweatshirt order forms in homerooms tomorrow so I need to go copy more order forms.
4:15-5:00 Get some stuff ready for my classes tomorrow. Make copies of sweatshirt order forms. Come up with a plan of which kids will go to which homerooms and type up a guide of what they should say.
5:00 Leave school. I am one of the last ones to leave (this is normal).
So this is where I've been. I feel like busy isn't even a strong enough word, but the part that may be strange is that I'm really having a great year. I like to stay busy. Coming from teaching 8th grade this is the first year that all my former students didn't graduate and leave. I love it. Sure I could easily give up all of the "extras" and be less stressed- the clubs, the extra help, allllllll the time spent talking with my students about what's bothering them (there's SO much of this)...but that just wouldn't be me. It is however why I haven't been here. When I actually get home the last thing I have energy for is to write about my day or what I taught. We had the first week of November off and I needed it desperately to reenergize. Perhaps winter break will be enough time off to actually get me back to sharing things, but no guarantees.