Cobwebs on my blog.

This week I’ve met over 130 new people.  In the next couple of months I’m supposed to get to know them well enough to ensure that they are academically successful and emotionally secure.

I had to make my academic and behavior expectations for them clear enough for a 12-year-old to understand.  And throw in just enough entertainment to keep them from falling asleep.

I’ve had to help them find their lockers, and help them open them, find their next class and make them believe that the world will not end because they are a couple minutes late to that class.

I’ve kept my cool as 30+ of them at a time were having issues connecting to the computer network, and then the Canvas site, and then the Acuity testing site.

I’ve gone from spending most of my days mindlessly puttering around the house or blathering about irrelevant things with friends, to having 30 pairs of eyes watching every move I make. And trying to keep those eyes on me rather than spending their time catching up with friends they haven’t seen since last June (or at lunch yesterday).

I love my career, can’t imagine doing anything else.  But these first two weeks are completely and utterly exhausting.  That’s why I haven’t been by to visit all my favorite blogs, and why mine has been growing cobwebs.

And why every night this week I’ve fallen into a deep sleep by 7:30 pm.

Here’s to one more week of 10 hour sleeps, as I get the curriculum ball rolling.

I yam exhausted.

Tuesday night was fun.  So much so that I couldn't get to sleep until after midnight.  Which means Wednesday was a lot of fun, running on 4 hours of sleep.  I faked it pretty well until half way through the last period of the day.  We were reviewing for the CRTs (end of year tests mandated by No Child Left Behind) and I wasn't keeping track of things too well.  I was making blunder after blunder, the students kept correcting me when I decided this was ridiculous, I was doing more un-teaching than teaching. Fortunately the students understood why, a bunch of them were down at the board meeting, and were sympathetic.  So I said I'm done and we just looked up make up work for students that were concerned about their grade.  That night I got home from my university class right around 8:30 and went straight to bed.  Head, meet pillow, zzzzzzzzz.  Got a full 8 hours of sleep that night and last night, but I'm still drained from this emotional roller coaster I'm on.  We've heard from many different people across the district that our presentation was exceptional (up), somebody heard one of the board members say that we're just trying to save our jobs (down), kids are planning march on the district offices the afternoon before the public meeting (up), board is just going through the motions because legally they have to do all this (down), gut feeling they're going to keep us open (up), gut feeling they're going to close us down (down).  The board won't vote on it until a week from Tuesday, Cinco de Mayo.  I'm prepared for either decision right now, I'm just not very good at the not knowing.
Oh, and did I mention I have to be prepared to defend my Master's Capstone Project next week.  Yeah.  I truly hope I survive the next 2 weeks.......