Did you know its not Wednesday?

No, really, its Tuesday. But all day I was convinced this was my 3rd day of work this week. Ah, its great to be back in the swing of things, right? So far this week work's been good overall, but crazy. The more I get into it, the more I realize I have to do; always a great feeling.

I'm also having trouble making myself actually get to work. This is the procrastinator inside me. I think the way it works is when there are really huge and daunting tasks, I avoid starting them because they feel so huge, hence the procrastination. Once I can find a place to get started, I'm usually good, but finding that place can take a fair amount of time, and several trips around the school first. I really do avoid things I don't like, don't I?

I got up to watch selections of the total lunar eclipse last night. It was pretty cool. I've seen totallity before, but never watched as the eclipse approached totality, so that was cool to see. Nothing like an orange/red moon at 3am, right? Needless to say, I'm pretty tired and don't really want to go to work tomorrow. Our training tomorrow is on the "Nurtured Heart Approach" and "building inner wealth" . Thankfully, today our principal told us that we aren't necessarily adopting this approach as a school, but instead going to listen and take the parts we like and adapt it to fit our school. That's a nice, balanced approach I like to hear!

Oh experienced one

That's right, with my whopping 1.5 years of teaching experience, I am now the experienced teacher in both grades that I teach. We just hired another new science teacher to replace the other 8th grade teacher (we got a new 9th grade replacement last year about this time), making me the most experienced 8th grade scicence teacher. Of the 4 science teachers in our building, I now have the 2nd highest amount of experience, which is a little scarry, to be honnest. Don't get me wrong, I do feel confident that I know what I'm doing, but it is a position I didn't think I'd be in all that soon.

As far as what this means for me, depending on what the new teacher has done in the past, I will probably be leading her thru this first year (for her) of our curriculum. This probably means I'll have more work than I would have had otherwise, but hopefully not too much more. Only time will tell. I haven't met her yet, but might run into her sometime this week, we'll see. Don't know anything about her other than she's a she and is taking over for the other teacher. Oh the beginnig of the year is exciting, isn't it?

The End is Here

As much as I didn't think it'd start until next week, I'm really feeling like I'm at the end of my summer. Tomorrow morning I go in for an hour to the district office to sit on a pannel for the new teacher orientation. Basically I get to field questions about the consulting teacher program (like mentor teachers). I get paid, so that's good, but it really means I have to start thinking about the beginning of the school year, which I'd rather not do. Since I'll already be in work-mode, I'm going to go back into my classroom after that and hopefully get the rest of my cleaning stuff taken care of so that when I go in next week I can just focus on curriculum.

I have enjoyed my summer so much, its going to be hard to go back this fall. Don't get me wrong, I love teaching, but I've really loved not working 60 hours a week and actually having a life (I know, I'm weird). I've also really enjoyed having the staff-type relationships with students again thru the High School group at church, and I think one of the reasons I'm sad about going back to school is that I have to go back to a teacher-type relationship which has a bit more of an adversarial component to it. It also means I can't go into the spiritual with the students and can't share the most important part of my life with them.

So many thoughts and feelings running around right now, I can't really get them all down because I'm not even sure what they are. I know once I get back into school it won't be that bad and I'll get back into the swing of things, but right now I guess I'm just morning the loss of having a life.

I really need to try to work less this year. One of my professional goals is to leave work by 6pm and only work 1 weekend a month (hopefully none by the end of the year). I have to get my life back!