Out of the Darkness

Tomorrow will be day 13 of school. In these first 13 days I have had or will have (by the end of tomorrow) Parent Night, a faculty meeting, 2 mornings (2 hours blocks each) of standardized testing, a support services meeting, my first walk-through, 3 hours of work to complete the paperwork for my clinical observation, a spelling inventory assessment, a pre-observation meeting, my entire class pulled for Dibels benchmarking, a follow-up meeting on the walk-through, two morning meetings to grade standardized testing open-ended responses, and a data meeting to place students in their appropriate intervention groups. And next week my post-observation paperwork is due, and I have meetings Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday morning before school, Thursday after school, and Friday during planning.

Oh - and I'm supposed to plan and prepare for instruction at some point, too.

<sigh>

I love teaching, but I do so little of it. So much of my time is spent on paperwork and in meetings (meetings, I might add, that could be eliminated through the use of a blog or other online collaboration tools), that I am forgetting the joy I have for working with my kids. And when I am with the kids so many of them are facing so many challenges it makes my heart even heavier.

I swore after reading this that I would not let them suck my fun circuits dry, and yet I'm already starting to feel a little dried out. After 12 days.

Just when I needed something to combat all of this a bright light appeared as I walked past the cafeteria. Five of my kiddos from last year were frantically waving at me so I thought, "What the heck! I'll brave the cafeteria and say hi." 5 minutes and about 20 hugs later I finally made it to the table of the five original girls whose waves brought me into the cafeteria in the first place. There were kids hopping up from tables all over the cafeteria (GASP!! Getting up without permission?!?!?!?!?! What were they thinking????) to say hi and give me a big hug.

Needless to say, I'm not feeling so dried up any more. And I think I'll have to stop by that cafeteria more often.