Updates

I'm alive and I haven't decided to stop blogging.

This week has been so busy that I hadn't checked my personal email all week until tonight.

I already have stacks of work around my desk from horrible summer reading assignments, and have begun to come to terms with the fact that I assign too much and myself, I can't handle the load. A former department head who I loved told us that you can never grade as much student writing that they need to write in order to grow as a writer, so she formulated systems where the students chose one piece and the teacher chose one piece at random and that was what was graded.

My load this year is 163 kids.

I'm teaching a lot in teams and it's exhausting trying to figure out what pages everyone else is on. Plus, I seem to be one day ahead in both teams I'm on, so I feel like I'm the one who is inventing the lesson plan every day. It will even out soon.

Tonight, in that hour between meeting with my course team member to create a quiz, and meeting with students doing presentations, and attending the first night of my first of my graduate school courses, I created a socratic seminar outer circle sheet and integrated with the MYP curriculum and the IB curriculum, and I ran down the hallway telling my colleague that it was the greatest thing ever created in education. At least I know that my department is working until 6:30 down the hall like I am, and will suffer through my goofy proclamations.

The first day of school was exhausting. I'm not in peak conditioned form yet. Plus, it was extremely hot, and I forgot an undershirt on the way to the gym in the morning, so I was drenched in sweat almost the entire day. One kid asked me, "Hey, what's wrong with your back?"

The second day of school felt much better, physically. Then, I went to the restaurant and made myself $120 towards my tuition bill, which is due at the end of the month. I was exhausted and physically hurting in every muscle of my body by the end of that 5:30am-11pm day, but I need the money to pay for grad school. I also really need some school clothes, to be honest. I'm thinking of stopping by Target and grabbing a couple of button-downs on the way home, if our professor lets us out in time while it's still open.

I can't find my wallet. When I'm this busy - and it feels like the busiest I've been in a long while - things like that can happen and I don't notice for a while, then I don't worry about it for a while because I'm on the go so much that I'm sure it's just somewhere I'm not. That's about the point that a 7-11 will call and tell me that I left it on the counter a week ago.

I'm enjoying getting to know my new students. I'm struggling with the creation of lesson plans every day for the new course I'm teaching. It's just a lot of work. Starting off the school year with a 5-day week is really throwing us into the deep end and forcing us to swim fast right away. But it's good work. I am enjoying myself a great deal.

The new schedule makes the day fly by. And that's not necessarily a good thing. The pain in my foot just gets worse and worse every moment. I have several doctor appointments in the next two weeks as my body falls apart (actually, it's not that bad - just that lump on my scalp that needs to be biopsied, a checkup on my eye surgeries, and the foot thing), and that's the one I need the most. I need another cortisone shot.

I need to go. Can you believe I'm taking a 7-9:40 graduate course on Educational Research on Wednesday nights?