Day Off

Let's see, its been...almost 2 months since my last post. What's happened in those 2 months, you may wonder? Enough to keep me from posting, that's for sure!

This school year has been really good in some ways and really not so good in others. The good part is the actual teaching part. I've got a good raport w/ most of my students, classes are good, scores are up (in my classes compared to last year, at least), and I'm feeling like I'm doing a decent job of teaching the content. The bad part is that I'm working even longer hours this year than last year. Granted, I've only gone into work twice since school started (which is a big improvement from going in every weekend last year), I'm also staying until about 8pm every night during the week. And its definatly taking its toll.

A big reason things are taking longer is because I have so many additional responsibilities beyond just the teaching this year. I'm on at least 4 different committees/groups that meet regularly, some at the district office in Redmond. I've also been the building go-to guy for our rollout of our new grading software, which means I get all the questions. People are really great about it, but it definatly keeps me from getting to my work.

Another reason is that I'm now the senior 8th grade science teacher, so I need to be helping the newbie along (she really doesn't need that much help, but I feel like I want to be there for her like so many people were there for me the last 2 years). Oh yeah, and, through some scheduling things that came up, I'm about a week ahead of the other 9th grade science teacher, and since we decided to scrap and re-write our first main unit (Mechanics), I ended up writing most of it myself. Usually we'd switch off who creates what document, but I was always ready for the next one before he was, so I ended up doing the lion's share of the work.

I've really noticed the toll this has been taking on me as well: I'm not as quick on my feet while teaching, I can't talk clearly (ok, so less clearly than normal), and I'm getting irratable much more easily than usual. Oh, and I've been getting headaches and being uber tired. Many signs that I've been really stressed out. This day off is REALLY needed.

So is there an end in sight? I sure hope so. I'm really hoping that 2nd quarter ends up being easier than 1st quarter. Some of it should be just because there are actually breaks in the school week now (today is the first day off since school started). Also, I'm now done w/ the Mechanics unit and am into stuff that I've taught before again in both 8th and 9th grade. We're also thru the 1st quarter grading process, hopefully making less questions and such for me on the grading program. All this, I hope, is shaping up to give me an easier time from here on out.

There are many other things in the back of my mind currently, like holidays and splitting time between families and such, but I'm not really going to get into that now, as this post is already fairly long.