highlights of the day:
- panicked and realized i had to use my entire morning to set up for testing instead of setting up for teaching. just barely finished in time. how do they expect people to set up in 30 minutes? especially someone like me, who's only done it once before? i was supposed to read this whole packet of instructions and i didn't have time for a word of it.
- while setting up, i ran into this other teacher who said a whole string of words i didn't comprehend at all. it was something about how he heard i know something about trading card games. i was BEWILDERED to say the least. i just said i owned a lot of pokemon cards but didn't actually play the game and he seemed vaguely disappointed. where did he hear that i know anything whatsoever about trading card games??? what is happening. and then i rushed off to continue setting up and i felt really bad cuz i was cutting off the convo and i suspect he had more to say about it but i simply did not have the time.
- my students were extra annoying today. i yelled at my 7th period yesterday for talking too much, and they came back twice as bad today. like excuse me. did that mean nothing to you. i literally gave up, wrote the answer to the first question on the board, and told them to do the rest on their own. good luck. i'm done. i also told one student "i'm tired of you doing nothing every day" and she had the audacity to be shocked and offended and hurt. if you feel badly about what i said, try doing your work for once. you have like 5 zeroes. it's not like i don't help you. i literally gave you the answer to the first question and you can't even be bothered to write that one down.
- i had a moment of reprieve where i ended up with lunch and then two off periods for a total of 2 hours and 16 minutes to myself, although it felt like nothing at all. i spent this time journaling about my extremely endless and frustrating to do list, doing a little bit of lesson planning for the next day, and staring off into space. what i really wanted to do was take a nap, but at any moment a random teacher or admin could pop in. also there are no comfy chairs in my room.
- two students excitedly told me they finished their missing assignments and asked me to grade them, and i took one look and saw that it was all AI. goddamn it you guys. i am NOT proud of you.
- went to our weekly after school meeting, where my colleague was asked to teach the other teachers how to write an SCR (short constructed response). i can't help but think that i could've explained it better, but that's probably not true. they just didn't give the other teachers enough time to get used to the structure before having to USE the structure, i think. i knew exactly what i was supposed to do and even i had trouble with the incredibly complex question they gave us. i'm worried for the others who are not english teachers.
tomorrow is my official observation. my lesson is only half planned. my 6th grade lesson is even less than half planned. honestly, the only reason i'm still here is cuz if i stay till may, they'll pay me till august. also cuz my colleagues would have a really bad time if i leave now, and they're great people and i don't want to do that to them. but this is what i'm doing to myself, instead. i'm trying to scrape by with the bare minimum possible, and yet they keep ADDING THINGS to the bare minimum. extra testing days, assemblies, library days, my observation, more more more after school meetings, new emails with new paperwork to fill out. oh god i bet there's going to be a fire drill tomorrow. during my observation? that would take the cake. i just keep telling myself—worst case scenario, i screw up and get fired. that's honestly. fine. whatever.
but if i really think about it, the real worst case scenario is i show up with nothing prepared to teach. and then kids show up. and then i have to come up with something for them to do to kill 90 minutes. it would suck, cuz free time for kids means they go feral and start wandering the room and play wrestling and playing games and screaming cuz they think it's funny. but the funny thing is, admin wouldn't even notice if that happened. it's not like they visit daily or ask me to submit lesson plans. it would just be me having a bad time. nobody else. how inconvenient.
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