Well, it isn’t that bad, but this school year is more difficult than last year and I’ve falling into a common teacher trap. The trap? Next week, life will get normal.
Well, it’s been 9 weeks and life still isn’t normal, why? I have more students and I have more responsibilities.
First the responsibility part, though I freely admit I have taken more of a role than I needed to.
We’re required to do staff development before school, and instead of taking two courses of staff development, I’m leading two. This “trimester” I have been leading a group who have been exploring behavior management, a big hobby of mine. Next “trimester” I’m leading a group on teaching with technology. I should have sat back and let someone else lead the first one, and darn it, I opened my mouth. The good news, is that it will help my pay by a few dollars, but probably less than $50.00
I’ve also signed up to do a task force — Reinventing Hillcrest. Our current superintendent is on a kick to make all the high schools academies and do away with comprehensive high schools. So not only am I over achieving on the staff development but I’m also doing more than I have with the task force — because if we do a task force, we don’t have to do one of the staff developments.
To put it in a point system (which we are using), we have to have 3 points. I get 2 points for each of the staff development things I’m doing and I get 2 points for doing the Task force. That means I’m doing double the required points.
The next craziness is FAC, Faculty Advisor Committee which I love doing. We meet about once a month and solve problems. I’m the recording secretary which means assisting the chairman with gathering requests, recording them and organizing them and helping to create the agenda.
So that means I am doing at least one morning meeting a week and often two or three, especially if we have a faculty meeting. It also means one afternoon meeting a month that usually lasts until 5:30 (we get out at 4:00). Then the random parent conference, ARD, or other extra assignment. Plus co-sponsoring chess club.
Now to the teaching assignment. I’m still teaching the same preps, but I have more students. Last year I had 4 AP Students, this year I have 6. I had 7 web mastering students and this year I have about 40. I think I have the same number of CS and PreAP students though, but maybe around 5 more of each. So I’m estimating that I have 50 more students this year. That means every assignment adds 50 more to grade! With the internet being super sluggish, my grading time has really expanded. I’ve come up with some tricks that help. I’d like to grade in the evening, but the kids really need feedback in the same class period if possible.
All of this means, I’ve been operating in a mode of: it will be better next week. So far, next week hasn’t come.
Thus I’m changing my mode to “here’s how it is”, figure out how to have a life. Hopefully that means I’ll be blogging regularly again.