Busy Week

Last week was one of the busiest weeks I've had this year.

On the work front (which was at least 75% of the problem), it was the last week of 3rd quarter, and I had a lot of grading still left to do. All grades had to be entered by 3:00pm today. I barely made it. I'm usually better prepared than this. I like to have all the grades entered in time to be able to print out individual grades for each kid and let them go over them. This helps will typos and errors due to how many grades I have to enter. I just didn't have time this quarter. Hope no grades were majorly affected.

Some assignments I was just not able to grade in time to get them into 3rd quarter grades. I often try to do too much in my quest to be a great literature teacher. I want to push my kids and make sure that the only ones that pass my class are the ones who are going to read the assigned literature. I just don't think a student should be able to pass an English class without reading a single story a book all year, and there are many English classes where that is entirely possible...mine is not one of them. You wouldn't expect a kid to be able to pass an algebra class without being able to actually do algebra...would you? I have a whole theory about this, but it basically boils down to the fact that English teachers love to explain the literature to kids...which means students don't actually have to read the story to understand it or even pass the test. It's a lot more work for a teacher to give the kids extra assignments designed to check up on whether they are actually doing their reading or not. That's how I create a lot of work for myself. Currently, I should be finishing a short story and reading another short short...and creating notes for both of those in order for them to be passed out tomorrow. All this has to be done before my first class in the morning. I'll probably do it last minute.

Another part of my busy week comes from the upcoming school play. We are putting on "The Odd Couple" this year, and there's still a lot of work (actually, most of the work) to be done before the play. This means 2 hours of practice every day after school. That is taking up a lot of the time that I would usually devote to grading papers.

I can only force myself to stay in an empty school building for so long, so it is hard to go back to my room after practice is over and do another two hours of grading! This is only my second year teaching this subject, and I am still working on my curriculum. I am hoping by next year to have much of the lessons created so I will be spending most of my time grading. Also, I have realized that I need to cut back on the amount and length of assignments next year so that I can actually get them graded! I have to find that happy medium between enough assignments that I know the kids are learning and reading, and not so much work that I can't get them all graded!

I did have Friday off. It was the only day left out of our Spring Break that didn't get taken away in order to make up snow days. The only thing I did all day was go grocery shopping. I could have/should have done a lot of things, but I needed one day to myself.

I then spent all of Saturday over at my Mom's with my brother's family. I usually come home for awhile during the day (often to take a nap), but I didn't have time to this Saturday. I was kept busy most of the day. I watched the boys in the morning while Mom, the SiL and The Niece were shopping for beds for the kids. Then I went with the SiL after lunch to put the beds together at her house. As soon as we got back, I had to go out and take pictures of cattle (even though it was sprinkling! And I just had to do it again today) for my Dad for a brochure he's having made up for our beef. It was all very hectic.

Sunday was full of church services, praise team practice and youth team meetings. Not to mention that last minute grading that I had put off...just like a kid and their homework!

Now that I have bored you with how much I had to do this week, I will just say one more thing: I hope that I am back to being able to keep up with daily posts, both here and on my photoblog. That's the goal anyway.

Have you ever had one of those weeks where you felt like a chicken with your head chopped off?