Where did it go?

I knew teaching was going to be a lot of work – especially compared to my last job – but I didn’t know it was going to almost completely obliterate my social life. I bring so much work home (and apparently this is odd?) that I am lucky to get it all done before going to sleep by 11pm so I can at least get 6 hours of sleep. Aside from other Teaching Fellows, there’s no real way or chance for me to get to know other teachers. Some are definitely cliquey and haughty but not all (and some of those are too old really for me to become close to). And yet socializing just doesn’t happen.

Am i crazy? One other teacher, my saving grace, who is also new and lots of fun does take work home and seems as overwhelmed and ambitious (for our kids) as I am, but we seem to be a rarity. Another new-ish (she’s in her third year) teacher, who is also a Fellow says she does NOTHING she can’t do in the morning at school or on her prep.

Seriously – how and when do you prepare if not after school?

so alone

I am sitting in front of my class as they try not to fidget in the meeting area. My chart, with it’s ready-made, uniform Teaching Point, hangs beside me on my easel. But I know it won’t connect. I know there is more I must do for my students to make sense of this and work with the lesson to actually learn something. But I had not thought this through enough until now. I resent the fact that our majority-ELL school is using this Teachers College curriculum that has to be reconfigured and adjusted at every turn for it to even come close to what our students needs. I am unprepared because I hadn’t thought this lesson through enough.

sigh … I often use my art skills to improvise visuals. But I hate myself when I am this unprepared. The weight of knowing how far behind these students are and how much each moment matters often makes my heart race.

My partner has at times criticized me for being too passionate or caring too much. I feel like a person would collapse under all this pressure if he/she didn’t care as much as I do and feel as responsible as I do. I think then is when people start to burn out. You aren’t completely spent until you allow yourself to become ineffective. I am so conscious of not wanting to remain there – in that moment, with materials I need, and yet still feeling lost and ineffective. I want to do this right. And I often feel alone in that urgency and that desperate need – and that feeling of being so inadequate. I go into some teachers’ classrooms and they look so well put-together and then I hear them say they do nothing at home to prepare. How do they do it all? I struggle just to keep up with all the paperwork, the notes I’m supposed to keep on kids, the papers to grade, the homework to check, the lessons to write (and not just the lesson for each class but also for each small group strategy lesson)…