Paper Work

Now, why exactly did I bring this schoolwork home? I honestly have no clue. Maybe I thought I was going to find some time this weekend to actually get it graded so I could get it back to the students on Monday. But I think from the start that I was really totally deluding myself, not that I haven’t done that sort of thing before. That’s why I love being a member of a four-teacher team. They remind me that we’re all there to help each other, that I don’t have to fight it out over the weekend. And yet I still brought this work home.

I remember when I was a new teacher and I had absolutely no idea how much work I needed to assign my classes. It’s one thing they don’t teach you in “teacher school,” aka my education courses. I learned so much about methodology, how students learn, creating a lesson plan, and ideology, but not one instructor taught me how to truly manage time. That’s why I found myself that first weekend drowning in paperwork. I had assigned four writing assignments that week and promised to get them back by Monday. Needless to say, I got no sleep at all that weekend, and I looked like one of those zombies from The Walking Dead when I got to school that day.

Never again. I learned pretty quickly to stagger writing assignments so that they didn’t swamp me and so that the students aren’t constantly asking why they haven’t gotten their work back yet. I also learned not to promise that papers will be back to them on a specific date unless I know for sure I’ll have the time to get to them. And that’s how I gained back some semblance of a weekend while teaching. So, these papers over on the desk. Perhaps I’ll get to them later tonight.

Sam