A Day In My {{Black Flats with the Bow}} Shoes

I LOVED the idea for this linky that Adventures of a 6th Grade Teacher has been hosting!

I loved this idea since I ALWAYS hear from EVERYONE (minus those who are teachers, love a teacher, or actually recognize what goes on it schools....that last group is very small) that teachers are lazy, "have too much time off" etc...you have all heard it.  Anyway, I'm glad we are setting the record straight! :)  So here is a day from last week:

Around 5am my alarm goes off.  I roll over, and change it to 5:30 when it goes off again and I snooze until around 6am.  The next 40ish minutes consists of getting ready, remembering the final odds and ends that I needed for my lesson (on this day it was flashlights), packing my boyfriend's lunch together and leaving it in the fridge, starting my car early because for the past week it has been all this:

and then finally pulling out of the driveway and being on my way.  I drive to school which takes about 20 minutes (as long as I leave before 7 and don't run into buses).  I get to school around 7:10am and make my way into the building and up to the third floor.  I turn my computer on, set up the projector/MIMIO

Love.

check my mail in the teacher's room, make any final copies for setup, pick up everything I left over from the day before, and try not to go too crazy.  At 7:50 the first bell rings and my kids are up to my room around 8am.  One of my super helpers sets up the TV (it's so old and on this rolling cart but it's the only way to get the morning news show) and we are in homeroom until 8:10 when the bell rings for my planning period.  There's a study hall in my room run by another teacher and it is so so noisy but it doesn't matter since I'd say 3 out of 5 days a week I have some kind of meeting...Response to Intervention (---does anyone else do RtI?) and I'm on a planning team for next year since the Middle School was labeled as a SINI---School In Need of Improvement.  So I usually don't get planning time.  Then the day is on! I teach two periods of Science back to back 9:00-9:40ish and then 9:45 to 10:30am.  The kids go off to lunch and I have some time for myself time to have all my kids who aren't doing their work come up and finish.  At 11:05 ELA begins until 12:35pm.  ELA is structured with Quick Write topic & share. Then it's either Centers in my room (2 rotations)

or we break up between two classrooms for The Test skills prep. Depending on what we have done we do Writer's Workshop, some activity relating to the book we are reading, or both.  After I started writing this I realized that it's never really the same day to day. 12:40-1:20 is our lunch.  All 3 6th grade teachers, the SPED teacher, and the Reading Teacher all have lunch at the same time.  My room is used for French so I can't do any work so we go to the SPED teacher's room.  On this day we planned out our Literature Circle/Book Club groups between our three sections:

...it looks like a professional football draft as we divide our 66 kids into 16 groups.  Easy...right?  Again, this isn't a time for total relaxation because there's always the school psychologist coming to meet with us, or things like this, or general issues that have sprung up.

Then the bell rings for another section where I teach Science to a group of accelerated students.  It's mind bloggling what they come up with. This is from 1:30ish to 2:12pm.  Then I have study hall at the end of the day in my room until 3pm dismissal.  I don't get much done because I am helping the kids, making sure they aren't bouncing off the walls, and picking up from the messy science stuff so not much planning or grading gets done.  Then, we are required to stay until 3:30 Mondays-Thursdays by contract.  I usually end up having a handful of kids who choose to stay after for whatever reason (it's quieter here than home....my brother has detention so I wanted to stay until that's over...I need help on...).  I never have the heart to say no but I am thinking I should start setting up specific days when students can stay because it's getting to be every day and it's exhausting.  I just need some quiet time to get things done.  I usually stay at work until around 5:30 but have to take work home.  I get home around 6pm.  6-10pm I cook dinner or go to my parent's to see them/eat.  I plan or grade papers.  I blog, go on Pinterest, shower, and wear pajamas.  I sometimes watch a half hour of TV or read a book.  By 10pm I am exhausted and after making salads for lunch and picking up I fall asleep right away....

....just in time for that 5am alarm clock... :)




So there we have it!  A day in my shoes!