Still Standing After Day Three

I have now finished my third day of full instruction, grading papers, TRYING to keep on schedule, getting to know my students, an after-school Writing Committee meeting, arriving early to prepare for the day, trying to get students to their pull-out services on time, and on and on (and on).  Good thing I'm still loving it!  My principle warned me that this would be an overwhelming month.  Looks like he's right.  There's just so much to learn and stay ahead of and adjust to.  NEWS FLASH!!  Teaching is NOT an 8 to 4 job.  I have been putting in 12 hours days and think that "hitting my stride" will be somewhere down the road.  It isn't going to happen for awhile.  I can't imagine how stressful it would be if I were also trying to adjust to a new school and new staff.  At least I am in a place that is very comfortable and familiar to me.  It is a joy to go to work everyday and be among friends.  Double joy that my daughter is also a student there.  I love seeing her everyday in her school environment!

I smiled today when I opened a package containing my Who's Who in American Universities plaque.  It's fun and funny to be in Who's Who at nearly 50 years of age.  I thought it was really generous of the University to recommend me for acceptance.  Life is just so interesting and full of surprises sometimes.

I'll close with a journal entry from my student teaching describing my worst day.  Enjoy!

"I had promised the kids a party today for being so well behaved over the last several weeks.  I had arrived early this morning and I got cheese sauce going in the Crock Pot for nachos later in the day.  It's an ancient building, which translates to virtually no electrical outlets, so I had plugged the darn thing into an outlet at the front of the room.  I had just begun my math lesson this morning, when one of my very rambunctious students asked if she could raise the projector screen up.  What could it hurt????? (kind of like saying to the captain of the Titanic, “Sir, its just a SMALL iceberg...”) I'm standing in the back of the room watching her do this simple task.  Bless her heart, she gave that projector screen the snap of its life.  As it went flying back into its cylinder, it hit with such force that one end of screen came off its hook, swung down like a scythe, slammed into my Crock Pot, the Crock Pot became airborne, and half-cooked cheese sauce and milk went sailing through the air like it had been shot out of a cannon.  I'm STILL standing in the back of the classroom, watching this horror with my jaw resting on the floor, 9 shocked students startled into complete silence, and milky cheese sauce soaking into the carpet, the globs of Velveeta dotting the floor like some Martian landscape.  I'll shorten it enough to say that I spent the next 30 minutes scraping congealed cheese of the floor, scrubbing carpet, and comforting the poor student who had set all of it in motion.  We got zero math done.  Ahhhh, I CHOSE this, didn't I…."