Must.
2004-12-16 at 12:12 a.m.
Okay, this is the 2nd night I've been up til midnight trying to catch up on grading. This sucks big hairy donkey balls. Clearly, I have to get a better system in place.Part of it, I'm sure, is that I'm just not prepared. These great lesson plans I thought I had all ironed out turned out to be... ambitious. I knew there would be a chance of that, but I didn't anticipate how much time it would take to readjust. So, there's that.
Another part of it I had anticipated--the geometry class, I had no lesson plans for, so I was just SOL on that score. That part will get ironed out as I do some planning over winter break. God, it'll be nice to be able to be all planned out again. So, there's that.
But part of it is just the matter of getting grades entered. I'm falling down on a lot of things, like making sure I get homeworks in and whatnot. I'm sure part of it is pure overacheiverness on my part--this feeling I have to have everything in and graded and really spend time on looking at kids' work and helping them. I don't even know if what I'm doing helps or not, but I feel compelled to do it. Plus, since I truly feel that feedback is what helps kids learn, I feel like it's part of my job. And also, since I feel like in-class work is just as important as homework, I have that to enter in as well. Other teachers are like, well, I don't have time for that and so--well, they don't. They don't grade homework, they don't grade notes, they just don't. It's the reality of how much teachers are expected to do outside of teaching, some of the teaching must fall down. Attendance must be entered into the (ratty, crappy) online attendance in the first ten minutes (dude, I'm lucky if it gets in AT ALL). Teachers must perform hallway monitoring duties twice a week. Teachers must participate in IEP meetings with students, must be available for outside help on occasion, must, must, must. But that doesn't seem fair to the kids either. So, there's that.
We'll see how this goes. Maybe it's just that this is my first year. Maybe it's I haven't been efficient with my time (spending six hours last night writing tests sure took some time out of my day too). Maybe it's just overambition; maybe it's just overacheiving.
But dayam, I also must get more sleep.
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