Can't Help Myself: This day's ups and downs were pretty dramatic.

privilegedwhitegirl:

On the one hand my computer had a kernel panic (“Oh that’s a really bad sign, but I wouldn’t worry about it unless it happens again” - Mac support guy) and I lost three days worth of work because my current project was completely corrupted and I had to start it completely from scratch. That was…

A change of scenery can really work wonders on the brain and productivity.

You are one of the best purveyors of advice I know :)

If the cloning thing doesn’t work out perhaps you should just move to Baltimore.

Source: privilegedwhitegirl

Somehow,

throughout an entire genuinely productive teacher workday—I worked pretty steadily from 8 to 5—I managed to do everything except tomorrow’s lesson plan.

Tumblr, my calendar for February makes me sad. I am so swamped; it looks like September all over again.

And Engineering Boy is penciled in (writing in the planner FTW) for Date #2 on Wednesday. Why did I think this was a good time to start dating someone?

My Goals for this Week

were extremely modest:

  • Eat more
  • Sleep more
  • Take at least half of lunch at school

Not happening this week. Let’s try for next week!

There is No End

This has been the most important thing I’ve learned about teaching in this first week.

The lesson planning never seems to be over.  I have a hard time writing something down in ink, printing off the lesson plan.  It can always be improved, changed, modified.  While I’m teaching it the four different ways I might be doing it better come to mind; afterwards I re-write the whole lesson.

There’s the short term stuff: what will I do this week?  Then the longer-term questions: how will I introduce the next unit?  What classroom projects should I use this quarter?  And the longer-term stuff: do I have enough room to reverse the genetics sequence?  Should I worry about DNA modeling during biochem or during molecular genetics?  How can I work in the body systems throughout the year?  Will I have to time to spend on science and society consistently?

Then there’s the grading.  A constant stream of stuff.  I don’t mind grading and I am pretty efficient, but there’s always something that needs entered in the gradebook.

And the organizing.  The constant, unending sorting of sheets of paper into binders and filing cabinets and stacks and folders.  Books to be stacked, pens to be collected, forms to be signed and returned, lab requests to fill out…

I don’t feel overwhelmed, and I don’t even think of all of this as negative.  It just strikes me as strange that even when I’m all ready to go for the week, as ready as I can be, I’m not done, because there is actually no being finished with this job.