Friday, July 11, 2008

Gearing Up...

It's mid-July.

I'm a bit depressed.

Wanna know why?

School starts in just over a month.

Lesson plans, endless in-service meetings that get us nowhere, going from un-airconditioned room to unairconditioned room (I don't have a class room, I have to take over other peoples' rooms when they are on their prep. period). Ugh.

Don't get me wrong. I LOVE my job teaching 10th grade English. I'm good at it. It's the first time in my life I really feel like I'm GOOD at something. But I have to be honest, I don't want to go back in August. It's the same every year.

It's so hard gearing up after time away. Yes, I worked another job this summer (2 if you count teaching summer school for 2 weeks), but bartending wasn't every day and I still had DOWN TIME. Ok, not down time in the real sense. But at least I got to take my daughter to school every day and got to take her swimming and stuff like that. Now, I'll be on someone else's schedule all the time, I'll hardly see my family, and let's face it...I'm just TIRED.

This doesn't make one excited about endless meetings, hard to work with colleagues, or organizing Freshman Orientation which I still have to do in the next 3 weeks.

The answer? Suck it up. I gotta do it. And really, once I'm with the kids and doing my thing, it's okay. I guess schools need to stop having these 3-4 days of meetings before the kids come, because it just sets a bad tone.

How much you wanna bet we can never change THAT? Thank you No Child Left Behind for adding so many meetings and in-services.

1 comment:

Laura said...

I hear you on all of this.
You know my room has ac- come and visit me (it's safe in the morning!).
You are WONDERFUL at teaching 10th English, and don't forget that. But I understand, I don't want to go back. I have to go and fix my room and I don't want to do that either, I don't want to deal with the others that I work with- it might kill me I think (you know who I'm talking about).
I think that I'm going to bring a book to the in-services to survive those stupid things.