I teach high school English. This simple, declarative sentence has a myriad of meanings. Here's what mine entails:
Friday, March 27:
5am: Wake up and go for a run. If I don't run now, 1) I'll be a step behind my students, not a step ahead of them, and 2) I'm so exhausted at the end of a day that I risk not going at all, which points back to reason 1.
620m: Make tea and check email. There are already five or six emails from my tremulous Freshman Nine Advanced students, concerned about the project that's due today.
630am: Shower, do hair, makeup, and try to find an outfit that will be comfortable, professional, and cleavage/midriff proof.
730ish: Arrive (later than I like) to school. Ms. Brumbaugh needs me to do her hair, and I’m already fielding questions and phone calls from teachers.
Today’s agenda is pretty laid back since all of my students have completed culminating projects this week. All we need to do is take a vocab test, collect weekly work that I didn’t collect during the week (I was out at the training for two days), and put finishing touches on / reflect on the projects. Add to that the following items, and you’ll see why I drink.
First Period
-Adam's printer ran out of ink and his family can't afford more. There are about six more stories identical to this, plus a handful of students who have funerals and other cultural obligations, which will take up all of their time for the next three days. I farm out the students who still need a computer / printer, and pray that it won’t take the computers 20 minutes to log on like it did last time. I help students put report covers on their portfolios and listen to them whine about how much work it was. Most of them had several 3am nights getting this done.
Second Period
-On my way to my formal evaluation with the vice principal, I run into the IB Spanish teacher, who wants to talk about my SLC’s direction for IB Languages. We chat for a while, and I walk away, adding to more items to my mental list of long-term goals.
-My formal eval takes up the rest of second period, which is meant to be my prep period. He wants me to write up a training plan to share with the rest of the staff for my goal sheets. I wonder when I’ll have time for this.
Third and Fourth Period
-Eleventh grade assessments are due, and several students were absent yesterday when we took them, so they need to be set up for the test. Also, I thought it would be great for them to evaluate their own assessments, so I copied them (I’m not exactly sure if that’s legal) and gave them rubrics to score their own. The only problem is that I didn’t write their names on them (I had a good reason for it at the time), and now sixteen year olds are trying to identify their own handwriting—a formidable task, it turns out.
Lunch
-The French teacher has assigned a project which interferes with Monday's field trip, which I've already purchased non-refundable tickets for. This results in a passing period chat, a few emails, and a visit with the involved students during lunch.
-Because of budget cuts, many of the program directors are losing a prep period, which creates a need that my principal seems to think that I can fill, which creates a need in my SLC for some of the Lead tasks. I think of a teacher and run it by him, which results in scads of questions and phone calls. He wants to know the status of things, so I run out the quad to talk to the principal about things after meeting with the math teacher. There goes eating.
-Lucy the Giant Tongan might not graduate. She doesn't really care because she's planning to move to Tonga anyhow, but we're trying everything we can to get her to class on most days. The latest plan is that she goes to my room at the end of lunch and I walk her to fifth period. She doesn't show today, and I don't realize it until 3am--yes, I wake up in the middle of the night and worry about how I didn't walk Lucy with her frizzy hair, gold teeth, and hearing aides to her second time through English 11.
Fifth Period
-The Seniors just found out about a scholarship and are scurrying to get things in on time. They think it’s easier to walk to my class to ask for a transcript (while I’m teaching, no less) than to go ask the counselor all the way up in the A wing.
-My students are editing Mr. Ferlazzo's students' essays, and he wants to know when we'll be ready, but my students are busy trying to turn in a fifteen page report and I'll be out on Monday. He wants to get together before the break, preferably Tuesday, and he's asking me all of this during passing period. I collect the reports that are completed, and get my students started on editing the essays. They grow frustrated with the confusing sentences and paragraphs, and, I look at them knowingly.
Sixth Period
-I have to go to the train station TODAY to pick up the tickets that I have reserved for the field trip on Monday. I do this during sixth period, and manage to snag a sandwich and scarf down my first substantial meal of the day while walking briskly back to my car.
-When I get back to school from the train station, there's a new student folder in my box. It's Pedro, who ran amok on campus last year, and apparently flunked out of Pleasant Grove High. I call home after making his schedule and give him a lecture about making this a "clean start."
After School
-We have a Lead Teacher meeting after school today to discuss the Master Schedule. Since I just became Lead I’ve never done this before, and now have to make decisions about Math blocks and new courses.
-On Friday I reset my seating chart, and in this case I have to type in all of my students' names into the document. I call Dennishia’s mom because of her excessive absences, which her mom apparently knew nothing about.
-Friday is vocab quiz day, but I had been out two days at a training for the new scheduling system, so I also hadn't collected the vocab sentences or the goal sheets, both of which the students take strangely seriously. This means I have to grade and enter goal sheets, vocab, quizzes and weekly participation into my grade book, not to mention all of the late work that students desperately dropped off (because I'm a SOFTY!). All of this absolutely has to be done today because my students receive updated grades every Monday. Since I'll be on the field trip on Monday, I can't do this before school. This leads me to the next issue.
-I have to have 1) my room spotless and organized and 2) a fool proof sub plan printed and ready to go for Monday, including updated grades and copies of articles for the lessons.
6:45pm
-I finally leave class with dry erase marker residue all over my hands, and call my husband back (by now he’s been trying to get a hold of my for a while). All I can say is that I’m exhausted…
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