Week in Review

I didn't blog yesterday. I'll try to write three entries this weekend to make up for it.

I just got home after happy hour and was too tired after this week. Here's what happened:

1. I woke up at 4:30 am every day and made it to the gym every day, except for Friday, when I just woke up at 4:30 but realized I was too sore and behind in work, so just went into work early.

2. I've figured out Power-Teacher Gradebook, and love it, because it means I can do grades at home without worrying about saving a version of EasyGradePro and e-mailing it to myself. I'm a luddite, so this is impressive that I was able to figure it out so quickly. But grades are do Monday and I still have much to enter. Each night this week, a significant chunk was spent grading and entering assignments.

3. Two pre-season workouts with the baseball team. It's mostly 9th graders and a few returners who aren't playing other sports, and I'm making them pretty sore, plus myself pretty sore. In fact, if I don't say so myself, I feel like I'm getting in pretty great shape.

4. Finished up a break-neck (10 class days) teaching of Richard III, and tried to order the Baldwin collection of essays (total cost each: $22.65) when I'm completely broke. I'm still hurting from the summer, so ordering these books on different credit cards is the way I've got to go. Stressful, to be sure.

5. Watched my colleagues turn in their Model Teacher Pathway applications. When the signups were happening, I didn't have power or the internet, and I thought I'd get in for the spring cohort instead. I'm kind of regretting this decision, but we'll see if I can figure things out or not when the new cohort opens up. I also want to see how many people actually get it. Frankly, I think National-Board certified teachers (there are only 40 or so of them in the system, I'm one of them) should have been grandfathered in anyway. I think it's much more indicative of being a good teacher than the grandfather rule they did use (10 years of experience, Masters plus 30 - I had the 10 years and the Masters but not quite "plus 30").

6. Banged my head against the wall about one of my afternoon classes, which has the distinction of being the class I've taught in my career that has the most problems controlling themselves. I really need to reboot next week for the 2nd quarter.

7. Every day this week was a 12-hour day, and some stretched to 14. I need to get out of this cycle of work, work, work, time suckage, time suckage, time suckage.

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I'm also supporting the other Baltimore Education bloggers who are also blogging every day this month. Check out their blogs!:

http://survivingthesystem.blogspot.com/

http://bmoreschools.org/

http://www.thesmallesttwine.blogspot.com/

http://nyates314.wordpress.com/