Days 16-20: I Got, Got, Got, Got, No Time

I have skipped a few days this week, actually, nearly the entire week. It seems like I have no time to get things like blogging done because I am full of all the things I have to do as a teacher during the week.

For example, during the school day I have 45 minutes of planning time to do things like, well, plan lessons. Of course, there are papers to be graded, parents to be called, department and professional learning team reports to be filled out. Many days I have to get paperwork to the principal's secretary, the financial secretary, or the activities director. Oh, and there's that man who wants to visit my seniors about a college they might be able to attend. Need to get back in touch with him. Wasn't there a professional development course that I needed to sign up for? And so it goes.

Since the students' learning day has been extended 30 minutes, we are supposed to be able to go home at the end of the class day, 2:40pm, but I have yet to be able to get out of the building before 3:30, and that was only because I had to attend my AFT Executive Board meeting to review our 2011-12 contract. Then we had the ratification vote on Thursday in a fairly raucous session that lasted from 4:30 to 6:00pm. After that, I went to the city football previews because several of my students who play football asked me if I would come watch them, and I told them I would. (I missed the game tonight, however.) Most of the time I get out of the building around 4:30 after arriving at 6:45.

Still, I am behind on my grading. I need to plan my lessons better. (Today, the principal walked into my room at the end of my 3rd period. I ran out of lesson with about 10 minutes of class time, and I stupidly hadden planned for an "enrichment" activity with the dead time.

Saturday is Labor Fest, so Cat and I will be involved in activities all day. That leaves me with Sunday to get lesson plans done for the week and perhaps a little more caught up on my grading.

Anyone who thinks that teachers work 7 hours a day 9 months a year should be boiled in his own tea!

I've caught my annual cold

Today, the Petri dish we teachers work in caught up with me in the form of a cold. This happens pretty much every year. I'm luck if I only go through it once. It has happened as many as 3 times in a school year.

I don't like missing a class day for any reason. My classes lose momentum when I am out. In chess it would called losing tempo. Not much work, particularly meaningful work, gets done. All too often in our building, a colleague has to cover my classes for me since substitutes for the most part don't like to work at our school since the students become even more unmanageable that otherwise.

Today a student threatened me because I had the audacity to tell him to quit hanging out in the halls and get to class. He threatened to physically attack me, used profanity and walked up to me and yelled in my face.

Little will probably be done. Chances are he is a special ed student and on an IEP. If the public thinks getting rid of bad teachers is difficult, they ought to find out what it is like to rid the school of the students who make workings in urban schools a constant stress for teachers and a place where good students are cheated out of their right to a safe and orderly place in which to learn.

Teacher Stress

This year as been one of the most trying I have experienced in my 17 years of public school teaching. It seems like everyone is getting stressed to the max. Much of this comes from the fact that we are facing a sort of educational time clock on our efforts that comes from the fact that we face the real possibility of having our school closed due to low test scores.

We teach in one of the poorest attendance areas in Oklahoma City. Many of us face daunting tasks of dealing with kids with zero family support, kids who live in high crime areas, kids who face long odds of living successful lives. Each day is a fight to maintain order in our classrooms. Many students show little desire to master the material we try to teach. Yet we will be judged as being ineffective teachers if our students do not perform well on the state tests.

In other words, we could lose of jobs not for what we have done, but for something someone else has done who has little incentive to help us keep our jobs.

No wonder we are stressed.