Wednesday, September 1, 2010

Third Day

It is never a good sign when you feel yourself beginning to feel like you're losing it on only the third day of something.

Enter the third day of the school year as a new teacher.

Joseph put it well tonight when we were waiting for class to start.  "Stress is often caused by a lack of information."  You know, he's absolutely right.  The things I was worrying about during my prep period today were all based on not knowing the answer to something.  If anyone knows me, they know that I rather enjoy being in control.  I have very little time available at the moment and therefore I must make damn good use of it.  If I don't know something, I can't effectively use my time to cross things off my ENORMOUS to-do list.

On top of an already full day of teaching, we had a department meeting today after school.  Oddly enough, this department meeting which I was essentially dreading provided me with answers to my questions.  Because of this, it was rather nice in some ways.

My challenges right now are how to assess my students on a daily basis and how to keep them excited and engaged in the lessons.  I need to figure this out NOW so that I can effectively lesson plan for the rest of the year.  Fortunately the kids are all taking a diagnostic test tomorrow which provides me with a total of 6 GLORIOUS HOURS in which to work.  I truly thank God for this because I think if I had two more days like yesterday and today in which I'm on my feet both physically and mentally and have to think about rehearsal and online homework and how the math department at this school does things I would just fall over and cry.

Once again, here we are at 10:32 pm and I am not in bed.  September 18th cannot come soon enough.

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