A balancing act

Alright, please bear with me as the only topic that I have to blog about these days is teaching. I am literally eating, breathing, and sleeping my classroom. The night custodian and I are on very friendly terms and the other staff joke that I need a cot put in my room to sleep. It has become more than a second home. It is labor-intensive, time-consuming, and engaging all at once. I am loving what I'm doing and feel truly challenged for the first time in years. However, I can't recall ever having to give sooooo much of myself over to a job before. One great side effect to all this overtime has been the weight loss. I've lost almost 5 lbs in a week. It had been taking me a month on average to lose even 1 lb. If this continues, I will be at my goal weight in a couple of weeks. See? There is always a silver lining.

I realize that lots of people put in 12-13 hour days and work just as hard. I have personally had jobs that I worked my tail off for too. The biggest difference I think I'm feeling is that I never had to sacrifice quite so much of my personal life before...with the exception of a residential treatment facility that I worked at awhile back. That was way harder than teaching...physically and emotionally-speaking.

Teaching has been more or less a difficult juggling act. Teachers are expected to wear so many hats...Educator, entertainer, librarian, nurse, disciplinarian, counselor, social worker, and more or less a jack-of-all-trades with the subject matter. It is mentally-exhausting trying to keep all the balls in their air and balance everything else on your plate. I am simply struggling to find an organizational system that is effective, get a handle on how to implement the curriculum, plan activities and homework for 5-7 subjects daily, be "on" all the time for the kids, attend a meeting nearly everyday afterschool, contact parents, track grades and student progress accordingly, plan fundraising events for outdoor school, collaborate on a data team, and still make in home in time to have dinner with my family. I think you get the point.

Please don't get me wrong, I am very happy to be a teacher. I am just the kind of person who needs to vent for awhile about stuff that is stressful and overwhelming until I figure it out. Then all is dandy. For instance, I had one coworker come to me yesterday to talk about how things are going for me and he commented how much calmer I seemed. I said that yes I was more mellow because I was adjusting better and feeling more familiar with things. I also shared with him that I have a freak out factor at first when I feel lost and in new territory...then I'm fine. He got a kick out of that.

As for life outside the classroom...this is hard for me as I haven't seen my kids much the last two weeks...N is enjoying first grade so far. He likes his classmates and new teacher. He's not feeling very challenged though and we fear that he is getting bored. His class is recapping all of the basic alphabet as his class has a lot of struggling readers. N doesn't struggle though and is way past this learning stage. We worry that he will have other issues as a result. We are keeping a close eye on things. K longs to go to preschool. We plan to get her enrolled in the next few weeks if certain things pan out like we hope (see below). In the meantime, I read books almost every night with N and K. K reads by telling about what she sees in the picture, N and I take turns reading the actual story. This nightly ritual has been a great bonding experience too for all of us, especially on my late work nights. N even told me tonight as I tucked him in that he missed having me home. That was hard because I miss being with the kids more. I keep reminding myself that things will improve soon and I will be around more often.

On completely different note, hubby was laid off due to corporate downsizing. However all is not lost, he already has an interview next week and we have high hopes for that job. In other news, we got our land line back for the first time in 4 years! It feels so nice to hold a phone that is smaller than my hand. It's one of those luxuries that we took for granted, but no longer. Anyhow, I am starting to babble incessantlly so I'm gonna go get some sleep.