First Day

This is my 7th first day.   I'm no longer a novice, but there is still anxiety.  Instead of, you know, explaining all of it, I'm just gonna write the happenings of the past 24 hours.  My purpose is simple: I just want to share.  And, this list amuses me.  

I should also explain that my Principal actually gave me and a couple of my colleagues paid planning time.  This means that I'm starting the year a solid 12 hours ahead of everyone else.  I'm MUCH less stressed now than I would otherwise be.  

Monday Evening 

9:30-  Go to bed early, as tomorrow really is the first day of school.

10:40 - Look at the clock and begin to worry that I may never sleep.  

11:39 - Wake up to excruciating tooth pain.  Apparently I am more stressed than I thought, for I had been clenching my jaw to such a degree that the entire right side of my jaw was throbbing.  

Tuesday Morning

5:30 - Roll out of bed, hop in shower & stand there for a long time wishing today hadn't come.

6:00 - Get my little one dressed, combed, fed, & sufficiently cuddled for the day. 

6:25 - Leave for work.  Become annoyed at the lack of anything intelligent or worthwhile on the radio.  Flip to NPR, become depressed about civil war in Syria.  

6:50 - Finally acknowledge that the day is here, that I'm really going to work, and for the next 9 months, I'm only gonna see my little girl for 1 & 1/2, maybe 2 hours in the evenings on weekdays.  

6:51 - Commence annual weeping due to the acknowledgement that I miss my baby girl.

7:10 - Flip the lights on in my classroom.

7:30 - 9:30 - Staff meeting where we are promptly re-introduced to the "no acknowledgement of biological functions" mindset, as the 2 hour meeting had coffee & bagels, but no breaks for those of us who may have consumed too much fruit the night before.  

9:30-10:35 - Set up computer, rearrange desks, clean shit.

10:35-10:45 - Chat with Edith.

10:45-11:15 - Continue cleaning shit and organizing papers.

11:20 - Become concerned that my flash drive hasn't materialized yet.

11:22 - Lip sync to "Benny & the Jets."

11:26 - File folder paper cut.

11:27 - Walk to the office to check mail, get band-aids.

11:40 - Settle in to deal with e-mail, as my computer has finally started up.

11:42 - Feel sad that my "I try my best" ribbon was damaged by the tech guys when they did whatever it is they do in the summer with our computers.  

11:50 - Watch common core video.  Wonder what the hell a "think tank" is and how I might get one.

11:55 - Microwave a burrito to eat whilst I watch riveting video which tells me things I already know.

12:15- Throw a grape at the garbage can.  Miss.  

12:20 - Walk away from computer and e-mail tasks for the moment in annoyance that fellow English teachers don't read the e-mails I've just sent.  

12:21 - Back to filing and cleaning shit.  Spend some time cursing GN, the student who smeared gum all over my stool, while I scrape both gum and the wood to which it is attached from my stool.  

12:35 - Read a newly purchased book on writing instruction.  

12:40-12:50 - Chat with Kathy as we get our things ready for our meeting.  

1:00-2:30 - "Existential" conversation with college professors regarding writing instruction.  Good idea in theory, I guess.  I did draw an interesting shark on my notebook, however.

2:35 - Stand in my room and become overwhelmed at all the shit that still needs done.  

2:36 - Read over my "to do" list.

2:38 - Decide to continue organizing my room, as I still can't find my flash drive.  

2:29 - Decide that if my flash drive is lost, I may as well just quit.  Continue filing shit.

3:00 - Sit down and prioritize tasks for tomorrow.  Sigh with the acknowledgement that there's already too much on that list.

3:12 - Throw another grape at the garbage can.  Miss.

4:30 - Home & cooking dinner.  Decide that raw chicken is the most disgusting thing to touch.  Like, worse than hagfish.  Cook it anyway.

4:45 -7:00  Family time.

7:00-9:30 - A mixture of work (I had to scan a bunch of documents, but it ended up taking forever, finally got back to those e-mails which had annoyed me this afternoon, and various other little tasks), a little socializing, and some blog time.  

10:00 - Try to get to sleep.  

Summertime Teacher

Aaaah.  With as many gripes and complaints as I have about teaching, I must acknowledge that during my summer break, teaching is a really great gig.  I mean, I am taking a class for professional development, meeting with colleagues to plan for the upcoming fall, and teaching a group of youngsters in a writing camp, but I'm also enjoying the hell out of my summer.  

Today was my 2nd day of our Young Writer's Camp.  A colleague and I are team-teaching a two week Myth and Fairytales unit to a mixed group of middle & high schoolers.  They're extraordinary kids.  Sadly, only the cream of the crop would sign up to spend two weeks of their summer in a classroom writing.  

The course is taught at a local university.  I had the expectation that because it's a well-funded, private university, that we'd have proper facilities.  Nope.  Today it got up to about 95 degrees (it is August, after all).  And of course, no air conditioning.  We have a small, crappy box fan that I propped up in the back to cool 29 sweaty little bodies.  Yesterday they brought us a broken upright fan.  As we were desperate, we used it.  We had to put it up on a chair, however, because the head of the fan was broken and dangling sideways.  The only way for us to create any circulation was to turn it on to medium, as high and low didn't function, prop it up on a chair, and hope for the best. 

It fell on a student who inadvertently touched it while stretching.  It bruised his little hand.  

I opened the windows first thing this morning in the vain hope that some of the cool morning air might waft in and provide some much-needed relief from the staggering heat.  I think it just caught the heat radiating from the already hot roof of the building below us.  But the windows are complicated old devices, and I could not reach the lever to close them.  I left them open.  

It was fine until the students were presenting summaries of their creation myths.  Once the students started presenting in their shy, quiet, brilliant little voices, the maintenance guys started using a jackhammer on the sidewalk outside.  And I'm not kidding; I couldn't make this shit up.  We adjusted, and they continued presenting.  When the last kid was talking, somebody else picked up a chainsaw & started trimming trees.  

When it was time for them to compose their own myths, I decided to send them out of the horrid room & into cooler air.  The rest of the building has A/C.  The offices have A/C.  29 brilliant young kids dispersed within the building and out on the lawn to write quietly.  It was pristine.  Well, until I gathered them all up and realized one was missing.  Nobody had seen her.  So I managed a lesson while my colleague frantically searched the building for our errant child.  10 minutes pass, 20 minutes pass, a half hour, and nothing.  She's vanished.  I begin doing the worst-case scenarios.  My colleague takes over teaching the lesson, and I proceed to check the building.  At the end of class, 45 minutes have passed, and we're nearing a panic.  The university is right downtown; any psycho could have nabbed her; what if she's having a medical emergency, passed out or bleeding profusely somewhere; what the hell are we gonna tell her parents?

Finally, after we've alerted all the staff and we're all subtly panicking, the child emerges from a stairwell.  Apparently, she had been so engaged in her writing that she didn't notice 45 minutes had passed, and that's on top of the 30 minutes we gave to write.  

It's never just teaching.  It's never just an educator in a room full of kids going about their day.  It's ALWAYS something.