Today was the first day of school in my district. I was nervous, excited, overwhelmed, and exhausted. Last week we had five days of pre-planning which simultaneously managed to feel like both too much and not enough time. Too much time sitting in meetings, and yet not enough time to get my classroom ready. Too much time to stress about getting everything perfect, and not enough time to make perfection happen.
This year as part of my blogging project, I am planning to keep track of how much time I actually work. Last week was supposed to be 8:30 - 4:30, at least on paper. After seeing how much time I had in my classroom, I chose to work the week before for about 4 hours to get a head start. Usually by the time the summer ends, I'm eager to get back in my classroom, and the peace of mind that getting a head start provides is worth it. I was not alone, either! Many teachers were there, in their rooms, getting a head start.
Most days I did arrive at about 8:30 - I'm not a morning person, so that's the best I can do. I did arrive 30 minutes early for our staff development day - not only was I presenting, but we were warned that parking would be bad - I didn't need that stress prior to presenting to my peers (the presentation was on games and gamification - you can check out some of the resources HERE).
Most days I managed to leave at 4:30 - even though I probably could've stayed another hour or two. Tuesday I worked for about an hour at home, and Friday I stayed til 5:30. I planned on working a little over the weekend to get ready for the week, but I left a folder on my desk with some of the things I wanted to work on! Worst part was that I left it after putting it together to take it home...I blame exhaustion! I did spend about an hour putting the final touches on my introductory PowerPoint (I was actually having fun finding funny school-related memes to put a humorous spin on my class rules).
All in all I worked about 46 - 47 hours...minus lunch, which is a glorious hour to hour and fifteen minutes during pre-planning - a luxury when compared to our 25 minutes of lunch WITH the students during the year.
So the big day came, and we had a good time, getting to know each other, drawing crazy pictures of scientists, and laughing at my school memes. My husband always remarks about how odd it must be, going from 0 to 60 as teachers do. It is a strange way to work, to be sure, but I'm not sure how you would do something different.
