January52010
aaand. we’re back.
after vacation + one more day due to travel problems, I trudged back to school today. Day was mostly fine, though energy is low all around and everyone’s mood hovers around grumpy. None of that “rejuvenated to tackle the new year” stuff around here. After spending precious minutes going over the plan for the next two weeks leading up to finals with all of my classes, I was then alerted near the end of the day that…
*surprise!!!* finals are NEXT WEEK INSTEAD! leaving another full week AFTER finals before the semester ends… where we’re supposed to…. twiddle our thumbs?
The worst part about this whole thing is that they have been doing PD (professional development) after PD about long term planning and following unit plans and making sure we’re planning for success. They’re requiring monthly calendars now to be turned in, something I have no problem doing since I do it on my own anyways, but I’m not *quite* sure the point if they are going to change things around at the very last second like this ALL. THE. TIME. Carefully planning each day leading up to a final exam so students doesn’t really work if you move the final up by a week.
Also, once again, it was left to the teachers to figure out how much time we should give for each exam and to coordinate our own schedules accordingly - switching classes and pulling kids who need additional time from other classes, etc. In most high schools, they have a school wide finals schedule.
You know what was really bad, though? Usually, I’m infuriated by this kind of thing. Like, why do they do these things that don’t make sense and hurt our kids?! and me (and other teachers…. but I’m a little self-centered at times)?! I thought those questions today but sort of uttered them out with a sigh instead of outright indignation, like this was expected, like this shouldn’t be something for me to be angry about anymore.
*cue: burnout*
Tags: /burnout /Daily Grind
