October 20, 2006
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3:00 p.m. Right now, the bell would be ringing. School’s out.
Except, there was no school today. We finally got our only “comp” day of the semester. Sure, we had Labor Day, but that’s only a fortnight into the calendar. I’ve missed one day for Language Arts Induction and another, two weeks ago today, which I took as one of the two days I’m “entitled” to as a first-year teacher– days we don’t have to come to school, but still have to spend doing something “curricular.” In my case, it was grading. Grading is a relentless pursuit (see previous post) but I find it keeps getting pushed to last priority after P&P– planning & preparation. Veteran teachers don’t have any less grading to do, they just have far less P&P, especially if they only teach courses they’ve already taught for years. One shouldn’t follow lockstep with what you did last year, much less five years ago, but down the road it becomes much more tweaking and much less creating from scratch. Plus, when it does come to grading, when you’ve seen this same assignment for five years, you can crank it out pretty quick. Which, to some extent, makes it ironic that most new teachers quit within the first five years, just before it really does start to get easier.
Hold on… let me grade a book report.
Hrm, a little under three minutes. Need to get faster. This is what they call a day off? One day I’ll figure out how the make the most of every minute during the day and take nothing home. I see other teachers doing it and just scratch my head.
On the upside, first quarter is done, I got my grades posted, I had my first evaluation and was told I’m doing most things right, and at least as well as can be expected at this point; and I’ve endured my first parent-teacher conferences as well. Consecutive 12-hours and meeting with 30-40 parents– I lost count– was not difficult but definitely exhausting. By 6:30 on the second night, my mind was slipping and I had to tell myself to focus. The last parent told me that her son had never liked Language Arts– until my class. That made the whole marathon, in fact the whole year so far, worthwhile.
