Two Weeks In...

It feels like the first day of school was a lifetime ago. I feel like I have been hit in the head by an iron skillet every day since I started teaching (for lack of a better analogy).

First of all, I’m a bad teacher. It’s pretty much a given. I make about 10,000 mistakes a minute. I misspeak. I trip in front of my students. I forget things. I get flustered. I react unfairly. I never finish my lessons in time.

Yet I love this job. My kids are lovely. They get so excited about anything out of the norm (e.g. we “rode” a roller coaster in class the other day via a YouTube video…and the kids went wild, to say the least). Also, they smile. They greet me. They help one another. They clap. They cheer. They love figuring things out. But more notably, they LOVE candy.

If I could re-do the first two weeks of school, there is a lot I would change. But since it is over and past, all I can do is change what I do tomorrow and in the future. Some of my goals for this week are the following:

-Give a solid presentation to parents tomorrow at Back to School Night

-Get my class websites up and running

-Find a couch to put in my room to make it homier

-Find an exercise ball to keep in my room for kids who need to constantly move

-Find a way to work all the knots out of my muscles……….

I have found out that I carry stress in my neck. Literally 100% of my stress concentrates in a 1 inch knot in my neck. So far, I wake up every morning with a stiff neck, and it only gets worse as the day goes on. And don’t even ask me what it is like when I carry my backpack full of pounds and pounds of books, computers, files, etc—it’s NOT pretty.

Oh, and on top of that, I had my first teaching nightmare the other night. Woke up panting thinking that my class was spiraling out of control and my kids weren’t going to learn anything as a result! Ah! The horror!!!

On another note, I have found that time management is KEY to being a good teacher. And lack of time management makes life difficult, to say the least. Right now it takes me about 4 hours to write a lesson plan, complete with handouts and activities and all that. 4 hours a night seems manageable, right? Well, not when you have THREE DIFFERENT CLASSES that require separate lesson plans. How am I supposed to fit 12 hours of work into the hours of 6pm-12am, during which I also have to eat and take care of other life issues as well?!?! Haven’t quite figured that one out yet.

On Wednesday last week, I stayed at my school for 16 hours in one day. When I told veteran teachers about this feat, they looked at me like I was from another planet. So my question is…how did THEY do it as first-year teachers?!

Well, I’m out. Sorry about the stream of consciousness post. This is how my mind works apparently!

Anne Marie