As the year progresses I find myself looking back quite a bit. I think about how there were always just a few little things that needed to be done and they kept piling up making things a bit stressful. As I approach the mid year mark, I find myself feeling that although those little things that need to be done keep changing, they are still there.

On top of all of those little things, I now have much larger things to deal with. I know everyone says it, but I wish there were more hours in the day! Thinking back, I wish I had kept a log of the hours I have spent at school outside of contract hours, not for anyone else to know, but simply for my own knowledge. I know that it is quite extensive. I typically arrive to school at least an hour before I am required to be here. Come to think of it, aside from teacher work days, I have never arrived after 8:00am. For us, our contract starts at 8:35am. Unless I have something important to do, like a training or a class, I never leave school right at 4:05.

There are always things that need to be accomplished at the end of the day. I spend time cleaning my room and trying to reorganize it. Monday after school I completely rearranged the back of my room in order to have a larger meeting space. Most nights I find myself leaving between 6 and 7. Last night my cell phone rang around 8pm. It was my mother calling to check in and talk for a bit. After talking for about 5 minutes I asked her if I could call her back when I got home. She then asked where I was and I told her I was still at school. I had been at my DRA2 class earlier that night and since it is held at my school I find myself back in my classroom after the class gets out at 7:30 doing yet more work. My mother was surprised that I was still at school and told me that I needed to go home and get some rest and that everything I need to do would be there tomorrow.

When I thought about that I then had to tell her that I know it will be here tomorrow, but so will the list of things I need to get done tomorrow morning! There is never enough time to get everything done. I always go home thinking about what I still need to do to make my lessons effective for the next day. I think about that student who told me that her friends are being mean to her. I think about the student that came into my room crying this morning. I think about everything. I find myself thinking about it until I go to bed at night. A friend told me recently that he was tired because he had worked 50 hours that week. At first thought I thought wow that’s a lot, how much did I work this week? I realized that it was probably closer to 60 hours, no wonder I’m drained at the end of the week and find myself so tired come Friday night.

My roommates probably thought I was crazy at the beginning of the year, all of the things that I do at home to prepare and the crazy things that happen during the day. When I get home at night they usually tell by my “hello” if I have a good story about the day. They can’t believe some of the things that the kids say. One of my roommates is an IT recruiter and her bosses were getting annoyed with people requesting so much time off of work for vacation time. They sent out an email to the staff asking them to stop requesting time off saying that “if they wanted that much vacation time, they should have been a teacher”. My roommate told me that before she knew me she never understood how much work a teacher really does. She watches me do work at night, on weekends, and during my “vacations”. She actually got angry about her boss’ comment and couldn’t understand why I thought it was funny when she told it to me. I tried to explain to her that I know that is the way that teachers are perceived and I am used to it by now. Even my own family doesn’t truly understand it. I do wish that more people appreciate and acknowledge the work that teachers do outside of the classroom, but I know that unless you are around a teacher you may never truly get it.