PHEW. I have been so completely busy this school year. Alright, I guess that's not any different from before. At least it's a more satisfying busy, and a different kind of busy.
In addition to being determined to be a great teacher for my students, which takes hours and hours more planning time, I have also taken on a variety of roles at school that can sometimes kick my butt. But I know in the long run it will look good on a resume.
We just finished our fifth week of school yesterday. Five weeks of teaching 5 sections of 7th grade social studies, one 7th grade SFA reading class, and one vocabulary intervention class. My students this year are sweet hearts, but unfortunately they are starting off much lower than where my students last year were. I would say writing at a 3rd to 4th grade level. Plus by the end of last year, I had brought my students from 63% meeting on their reading tests to 84%. So that may be clouding my vision as well.
In addition to my teaching, I have also been chosen as the team leader for 7th grade and a mentor teacher to another social studies teacher here on campus. Then I am working with the National Honors Society to set up a middle school branch, and working with ASU to teach an anti-gang/bullying class to my students, heading up our school for the district social club, and maintaining my position for the fitness club where I teach students about health and exercise, and we work out every week. It's a lot, but it's definitely rewarding. I feel like I have a much better classroom culture already. The part that drains me is the weekly required meetings for Language Arts/Social Studies teachers that go until 5 pm, and the weekly staff meetings until 5 as well. Yeah, a lot of you are like "you're still done by 5..." Well, I also get to school at 6:30 am, and that's after I've worked at home for an hour, and then come home after work to work for another 2 hours. All in all, I think I am handling it pretty well so far!
The end of September to mid-October is normally when teachers start cracking. We'll see how I feel in a couple weeks. My biggest concern right now is creating a social life for myself so I can be happy and find people who don't think of me as a last priority and ditch me for any other opportunity.
