Whew! I have an extremely busy, busy, busy two weeks! At school, we had Homecoming Week, which is always a fun collage of activities on top of an in-service day; then on top of that week, I had parent teacher conferences, which are always nice to have, but man oh man, do they wear me out.
Many of you may not know or remember that I teach in a 4-day a week district, meaning I only have to teach class from Tuesday through Friday. In order to do this successfully without the state breathing down our necks, we've had to cut out any professional development days that would fall on a scheduled school day, so a few days a year, we have to (gasp, I know!) work on Mondays. Another part of working Tuesday through Friday is that our contract times for those four days a week have been extended in addition to lengthening the school day.
I quite like this situation: I have Saturday and Sunday to play with the people I love, and I use Mondays to get work done like cleaning the house and grading. My commute is 120-miles round trip, so that extra day off really does help morale since I'm gone from 5:45am-6:30/7:00pm on an average school day. I also love how quickly the weeks fly by when we're only working four days a week! You wouldn't believe how fast things go by--Wednesday is hump day, yes, but it's the second day of the week too, so it seems like there is no time for "Monday Blahs," etc. Most Thursday mornings or evenings I'm thinking, "wow, it's Friday already?"
Anyway, back to the point: I've had a crazy two weeks. Homecoming was a blast, and by Friday morning, I remember telling a student, "I hope we have a lot of fun today, but man, I am ready for Homecoming to be over!" My school has a great time with Homecoming--we have dress up days all week, small contests, and on Friday, they have a nice day-long jam-packed assembly. I partook in some of hte activities, including imitate a teacher day, which I imitated the school's gym teacher, complete with mannerisms and Sharpied-on tattoo created by an artistic student. There were a few kids who imitated me too, which was quite funny. I actually had to make one kid sit down and take their seat because said kid was trying to run class at the podium.
All week, students were decorating the halls to show school spirit, which I always love. One thing I love about school is when the school gets together to show that they are one, like in pep assemblies, football games, etc. Each class was given a hall to decorate for a contest, and my kids needed me to stay late to help out. I wasn't home once all week last week before 9. Not once, but the halls turned out to be spectacular! I just loved seeing all the green and gold in the hallways.
We started Friday morning out with an assembly in which I had to dress up a freshman boy into a dress for a contest (he was Homecoming Royalty), and let me say, when I was in college, I never thought I'd be dressing up a 15-year old boy in a beautiful formal dress, adding bronzer to his decolletage, or coaching him how to walk in heels. Needless to say, my freshman boy looked better than his sophomore, junior, and senior counterparts.
We ended the school day with the annual tailgate, which I have to say, is my favorite part of the school's Homecoming activities. Each of the classes gets a spot in which they can bring in a car or two to tailgate off of. All the kids bring food, and we all get to mill around and eat for about two hours. Obviously, booze isn't allowed, but it's honestly a good clean fun activity that gets students, parents, and teachers out mingling.
Though the kids were out that day at 1pm, teachers had to stay to finish up quarter end grading. My colleague didn't have a chance to finish her grading, and her class was in charge of decorating the cafeteria for the Homecoming Dance, so I told her I would sit out there with the kids and help them decorate. About 2,500 hand-cut neon foam stars and 15 spray paint cans of graffiti sprayed onto black-papered paper later, I was tired and had a headache--and it was only 3pm. The kids were decorating for a "rave" themed party, so there was neon and black decorations galore, and an abundance of black lights, glow sticks, and glowing jewelry. One of my colleagues who chaperoned the dance said the kids were awesome--they were amazing with the way they pulled the dance together and how well they behaved. So though my head was pounding, it was all worth it.
The game was mercy ruled in our favor, which was kind of sad because this was the only game I'd been to all year. I was running the bake sale for my freshman class, and they did make quite a bit of money, but it was too crowded for me to get to watch more than a peek of a play here and a peek of a play there. The game was apparently awesome.
End of why week 1 left me so tired...
Week 2 started out well--I was proud of myself becuase I had a complete menu planned out for dinners all week, and I was going to be a good little wifey while working hard at school.
Well, my plans were foiled. We went to dinner with D's Dad Tuesday night, leaving me with a bunch of prepped veggies and precooked meat in the fridge, and two days of parent teacher conferences, and a Friday night football game. I ended up freezing the meat and I still haven't made the dish.
Wednesday, the first night of PT conferences, I also realized I had a massive ear infection. Boo. I wasn't too pleased with that, as I was feeling like the walking dead. In all both nights' PT conferences went well, and I was extremely pleased that I honestly had nothing negative to say about my kids. Awesome.
The football game Friday was also mercy ruled in our favor, meaning the boys are going to state championship playoffs. The second time in two years, but prior to their new coach last year, the first time in 20. Again, awesome.
I knew that being a teacher was hard, hard work, but I never really realized how much I would love it until I started doing it. I'm exhausted, feel ragged, but I'm happy to be doing it, and that's what matters...right?
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