the first week

The 2008-2009 school year did not start well. There's always some struggle to transition from summer mode to school mode, but this year, when that early alarm went off Monday morning, it took all I had within me to just get out of bed, forget trying to muster up an iota of excitement for the school year.

I started the day with my final trek to morning prayers for the summer (sadness) and then drove up to Mason. First on the agenda - a meeting with the AXA representative from the school. This sounded like a good idea a the time and then I remembered why I tend to avoid those kinds of meetings - my brain implodes whenever I think about financial matters. I know it's important and vital and poor Alex did an excellent job of presenting my options, but about ten minutes in he turned into the teacher from the Charlie Brown cartoon. He attempted to get me to sign up right then, but I told him I had to look it over first, which was true, since I had no grasp whatsoever on what I was signing.

Unfortunately, this was only the beginning of my torture via financial planning. My second error of judgment was agreeing to meet my insurance agent that day. You know, get all my meetings out of the way at once. Yet what I thought was going to be a brief look at my coverages turned into two hours of being sold more things I didn't understand. I had hoped to finish the meeting and have about an hour before my next meeting to eat lunch. Instead, I ended up being walking in late and being challenged to find a seat for the next three and a half hours of my life - diversity training.

This I was not looking forward to.

Don't get me wrong - I think diversity is a great thing and I am all for teachers and staff being more sensitive to other staff and teachers. But I usually leave meetings like this crushed under the burden of guilt for what I have done and what I have left undone. Which I suppose is the point, but I've gotten to the place where I've decided life is too short to feel guilty all the time. The "training" went faster than I had thought, which was good and the group presenting did an excellent job outlining the challenges. But after three hours thinking about finances and no lunch as an opening band, I was not a happy camper by the end of the day. And I didn't get to spend nearly enough time getting my room and everything ready. Which meant I had to do it all on Tuesday. I still don't have a firm grasp on just how long it takes to get everything ready for the first day. At least I don't seem to be alone.

Then Wednesday. I was the teacher everyone hates - I gave a writing assignment the first day. 20 sentences on writing - what they thought of it, what they liked, didn't like, etc. It meant for once I didn't spend the first day talking for hours at a time, but it also meant that after day one, I was already behind on my grading.

Day two came- I gave a "pop quiz" over my syllabus to see who had read it. No one got all the answers right. Since I was using it primarily as a means to go over my policies, I gave students full credit if they starred the correct answers for the ones they missed. I still had students who didn't get all the points. This was my fourteen hour day because the powers that be thought we should have Open House the second day of school and it seemed silly to drive all the way home only to turn around and come back. At least I had one parent in each of my classes - that doesn't always happen.

Finally, Friday was the summer reading test (Tuesdays With Morrie). I've decided summer reading is not accomplishing its purpose. We ask them to read to keep their brains from completely atrophying over the summer, but the majority read it the night before the test or not at all, and so I end up with students getting 18/60 on an easy, easy test. My solution? We need year-round school. But I don't see that happening for at least another decade, so a trip to the drawing board is in order methinks.

There's lots of other stuff that happened - Rob Lewin's birthday party, fighting with Old Navy and losing miserably, a spirited talk during house church about the body of Christ, catching up with old friends to name a few - but I've used up all my writing energy for the evening. Here's hoping once school finds it's groove that I'll be able to be a bit more consistent. Night! Æ

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