It's rare that I miss the old days teaching at the Book or the March. The violence, the incompetent leadership, the complete lack of parental involvement--those days were high-stress, low-return, and emotionally draining.
But sometimes I miss being confronted with that Wild West situation, that sink or swim, fight or flee edge. I used to be pleased if I had only a couple bloody fights a week; now I get frustrated when my kids talk too much.
I'm super-stressed by work right now. Back in the day I taught language arts and nothing but; I could focus on literary analysis and grammar and bang out lessons and get results. Now I teach language arts VIA social studies, and instead of getting my objectives from the Baltimore City curriculum guide, I have to create from scratch our curricula. We're tackling WW2/Hitler/The Holocaust and after an initial excitement at the material I'm now fucking freaking out. How do you distill this down to 14 weeks? How do you make it OK for 6th graders without diluting the gravity of such a horrible time period?
But I will overcome. I spent 3 hours working with national social studies standards and the Maryland VSC to try and match our goals with approved objectives. I think I have a good initial draft.
Further stress: trying to clean and prep the house for Friday's Back to School Party. And also trying to prep the house for the in-laws to move in with us in October. They're at a point where they can't take care of themselves any more, and we have the room, so we're giving them our second floor. It's the right thing to do, but it will be a huge adjustment. I already feel like it's hard to find an uncluttered spot in the house where I can be creative and think because of Hurricane Cha. Now I'll have to put a desk on the roof.
1 comment:
Did Ma and Pa agree to move in with you? That's huge. Maybe you can add another floor or room?
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