Monday, November 12, 2007

Out from under.

I don't know what it is right now. I thought it would be nine months of awesome, but instead it's turning into a slow and painful slog. I'm exhausted all the time and constantly worried that I'm just failing.

What? No, I meant the school year.

I honestly don't know what it is this year. I really thought I was sitting pretty. For my first year as a teacher, I had no new classes--everything was something I'd taught before. I had lesson plans drawn up and the year charted out. I knew what needed to be tweaked and what was pretty good looking.

Okay, yeah, the year got off to a bad start, and then I'm missing a few (ha!) days here and there for some (totally stupid, irrelevant, and time-sucking) training. But still. I've had that before too.

My students say I can blame The Pregnant for it, but I don't like to do that. I just honestly haven't felt caught up yet this year. And I feel like I've NEVER felt this un-caught up.

And today? Veteran's Day, a sacred holiday when we remember touching stories about all sorts of war-ish stuff (or anyway, that's how the school treats it)? It's not so much a holiday as a completely full day of grading--just, unpaid.

And I'm still not caught up.

I'm not worried, though. There's Thanksgiving, four completely unpaid days in a row, right around the corner.

Ah, the glamorous life of teaching.

1 comment:

Kimberly said...

All I can say to this is Hell ya.

I'm so tired of grading. And grading. And yet more grading. It just sucks out your soul. And, while I totally respect high school English teachers, I think I want to hammer the ones my students had. How could some of these kids have passed English? Seriously. There are some big problems here. Do all of us at the university level a favor and fail the ones who don't get it. (I'm sure there are tons of repercussions for you if you do this, though....)