So, yesterday was Mother's Day. We're not big into celebrating holidays like that - all I asked for was to sleep in and then go to King's Island (a local amusement park at which we have season passes).
I slept until 10 (ahhhh) with only a few "Mommy, when are you going to get up?" interruptions. Unfortunately it was a rainy gross day so KI was out of the picture, but I ended up taking the kids to see a movie while hubby changed the brakes on my car. I actually spilled my son's candy and he got mad at me, but other than that we had a good time.
The problem came last night when it was 11:00 and I was lying in bed wide awake. I got up to play on the computer (hoping it would tire me out) and made a comment on facebook about how I knew I would regret it in the morning for my early wake-up. A friend commented back about how she was still awake and "At least you're done at 3:30." Um, what? Never mind the hours of work that I could (and often do) bring home every day? Really? The only thing I can say is that she's young and dumb. But I was annoyed.
I saw a link from @coolcatteacher on twitter today saying something about the number of hours teachers work (we do 99% of the work in 75% of the time) and a link to a cool infographic that I'm thinking I might share with my friend. Or I might just let it drop and not let her get to me.
Today's been a good day at school, but I'm getting tired and the kids are doing stuff that's making me mad. A few things:
1. In first period, there's a boy who missed Mon - Weds last week because he was chaperoning some of the younger students in the district at an outdoor-ed type thing. There were bunches of my kids gone. We took a quiz in class on Friday with the expectation that they would take the quiz on Monday. Everyone was good with it. Today, this boy told me that he wasn't ready to take the quiz because he didn't have any notes (even though they're on the class blog and he knows that) and asked if he could stay after school TOMORROW for a STUDY SESSION. I (not so politely) told him no. I said he could get help today and take the quiz tomorrow. Know what he did? Put his head down and went to sleep. I have no pity.
2. There are APs going on like crazy around here nowadays, so my kids are in and out a lot. I've given up trying to keep track of who's supposed to be gone when and just let them ask me for work when they know they won't be here. Today, almost halfway through our class, two girls came in from an AP test. I was fine with that and they sat down as we discussed limits at positive and negative infinity. What I wasn't fine with was them sitting with no notebooks open, with their phones out, and the constant chatter they had with each other. They'd been in class about 3 minutes and I'd already told them to be quiet, put their phones up, and stop being rude. Then the bell rang that marks the beginning of the next lunch period (ours are staggered a bit) and they got up to go to lunch. Because they'd been taking the test and hadn't had lunch they were sent back to class (for 10 minutes) and told to go to last lunch. So basically they interrupted when they walked in, continued that interruption while I was speaking, and then interrupted on their way out. All in 10 minutes. I was so annoyed that I didn't show this class the clip from Mean Girls that I was going to show. Phoey on them.
On a different note:
I've been keeping track of thoughts I've had while getting ready to think about next year. Here's my list so far.
I slept until 10 (ahhhh) with only a few "Mommy, when are you going to get up?" interruptions. Unfortunately it was a rainy gross day so KI was out of the picture, but I ended up taking the kids to see a movie while hubby changed the brakes on my car. I actually spilled my son's candy and he got mad at me, but other than that we had a good time.
The problem came last night when it was 11:00 and I was lying in bed wide awake. I got up to play on the computer (hoping it would tire me out) and made a comment on facebook about how I knew I would regret it in the morning for my early wake-up. A friend commented back about how she was still awake and "At least you're done at 3:30." Um, what? Never mind the hours of work that I could (and often do) bring home every day? Really? The only thing I can say is that she's young and dumb. But I was annoyed.
I saw a link from @coolcatteacher on twitter today saying something about the number of hours teachers work (we do 99% of the work in 75% of the time) and a link to a cool infographic that I'm thinking I might share with my friend. Or I might just let it drop and not let her get to me.
Today's been a good day at school, but I'm getting tired and the kids are doing stuff that's making me mad. A few things:
1. In first period, there's a boy who missed Mon - Weds last week because he was chaperoning some of the younger students in the district at an outdoor-ed type thing. There were bunches of my kids gone. We took a quiz in class on Friday with the expectation that they would take the quiz on Monday. Everyone was good with it. Today, this boy told me that he wasn't ready to take the quiz because he didn't have any notes (even though they're on the class blog and he knows that) and asked if he could stay after school TOMORROW for a STUDY SESSION. I (not so politely) told him no. I said he could get help today and take the quiz tomorrow. Know what he did? Put his head down and went to sleep. I have no pity.
2. There are APs going on like crazy around here nowadays, so my kids are in and out a lot. I've given up trying to keep track of who's supposed to be gone when and just let them ask me for work when they know they won't be here. Today, almost halfway through our class, two girls came in from an AP test. I was fine with that and they sat down as we discussed limits at positive and negative infinity. What I wasn't fine with was them sitting with no notebooks open, with their phones out, and the constant chatter they had with each other. They'd been in class about 3 minutes and I'd already told them to be quiet, put their phones up, and stop being rude. Then the bell rang that marks the beginning of the next lunch period (ours are staggered a bit) and they got up to go to lunch. Because they'd been taking the test and hadn't had lunch they were sent back to class (for 10 minutes) and told to go to last lunch. So basically they interrupted when they walked in, continued that interruption while I was speaking, and then interrupted on their way out. All in 10 minutes. I was so annoyed that I didn't show this class the clip from Mean Girls that I was going to show. Phoey on them.
On a different note:
I've been keeping track of thoughts I've had while getting ready to think about next year. Here's my list so far.
According to this study, being "done at 3:30" is totally reasonable, provided you start working at 4:30 am: http://news.illinois.edu/news/12/0409CPSworkload_RobertBruno.html.
ReplyDeleteI so appreciate your honesty. Teaching is awesome. But not every day. And it really helps to know there are others out there who get frustrated by the same kinds of annoying behaviors I get frustrated by. Sometimes I feel like a bad/inexperienced teacher when I "let" laziness or plain rudeness in my students get to me. And then I read a post a like this and realize I'm not alone. Thank you. :)
ReplyDelete