September 24, 2006

• Wake me up when September ends…

  I am tired.

  
  

  It’s OK to be tired, but not perpetually tired, which is how I feel. No, I don’t have Chronic Fatigue Syndrome or any such malady. I come by it honestly– I’m working seven days a week. True, I only go to work five of those days, but the weekends continue to be consumed with planning, preparation, and, most of all, grading. The pace does not relent. At some schools, you could plan for having an “off” week– when students don’t really turn in any graded assignments– to catch up after they’ve submitted a major writing assignment– say, book reports (which lie in front of me, well, actually on my lap, right now).

  
  

  Not here. We have to do vocabulary every week. We have to do grammar every week. More often than not we test on Fridays. And that’s just Language Arts. Geography– my Social Studies classes– finally got past the rather dry physical geography unit (although I’ve still got grading to do for that as well) and move on tomorrow to two weeks on the big bugaboo unit, World Religions. That leads right up into The Middle East, which comprises the rest of the semester. I still feel like I’m just making it up as I go along in that class. I’ve done a lot of “you read the book and answer these questions” kind of “instruction” rather than actually trying to teach it. In fact, I haven’t read a single chapter of the textbook in its entirety, while they’ve had to cruise through five already. But, I mean, this is seventh grade; I know enough to appear competent when they ask me anything. I probably wouldn’t try this approach with seniors.

  
  

  (Yes, if ever students read this, I’m busted. Hopefully it’ll be long after the fact. )

  
  

  September dawned as a month promising a number of fun outings for us. First was CATS, the Broadway musical. That day my back was racked with pain– it’s a condition that just flares up on occasion for me, but when it does, it’s nigh intolerable. I managed to coast through the school day, got home, and faced a choice. Either take drugs to alleviate the pain, but which were guaranteed to make me drowsy, or go without, and sit in pain. I chose the former. They worked, but once confined to a seat in a darkened theater, the result was inevitable. I slept through most of a performance I’d waited half my lifetime to see.

  
  

  Next, just this past Friday evening, we were supposed to go to a baseball game– our Colorado Rockies against my hometown Atlanta Braves (who will not be in the playoffs for the first time since 1990 ), with fireworks to follow. But Maria was sick with a sinus infection, and the forecast was for the upper 30′s with rain becoming snow, and we decided it best not to go. We also were going to take Caleb to a Day Out With Thomas again since it was in (relatively nearby) Golden this weekend, but tickets sold out.

  
  

  We still have one more event on the calendar, the Queensrÿche concert Friday night. This one was actually supposed to be Maria and Dora, but you have to be 16 to enter the venue so I get to go instead. It should be an educational experience for me.

  
  

  I hope that works out. I am, honestly, a real homebody, but even I don’t care for putting on loungewear Friday night and still wearing it Monday morning– i.e. never leaving the house all weekend. So it has gone for the past few, though.

  
  

  Until the next quasi-monthly update…

  • 11:21 pm
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