The Tuesday Effect

It's nice to know that some things don't change after decades and decades (and decades) of teaching. It's Tuesday night and I'm channeling my first-year teaching self.

As a beginning teacher in a tough school in the Dallas Independent School District, I would go through the same cycle, week after week: I would spend all weekend polishing up the most perfect lesson plans ever. I imagined what I would say and how the students would react. It was beautiful. Masterful. Thoughtful.

Then Monday came.

Monday came and I got a little bit behind.

Then, by the end of the day Tuesday, I was completely behind, thrown off track, and feeling buried in a mire of papers.

I call it The Tuesday Effect.

And if you think this is the part where I tell you how I've come so far since those first years, and how I'm so on top of things and have it all figured out now...well, you'd be wrong. It's happening again, right on schedule, with technology thrown into the mix.

The only thing I've got figured out now that I didn't know then is that it's okay -- even necessary -- to leave the avalanche of work for tomorrow and get a good night's sleep. Wednesday will come and it will all work out...somehow.

Poetry Friday -- Take a Deep Breath and Count to Ten

Flickr Creative Commons Photo by Claudio Vaccaro

SOME DAYS ARE LIKE THAT

My teacher’s sitting in her chair,

her head between her hands.

She’s mumbling and muttering…

I think she just said SAND!

This really isn’t like her.

I know she lives to teach.

But that was unmistakable…

my teacher just said BEACH!

© Mary Lee Hahn, 2013

It's been a rough week. Sometimes the only thing that kept me sane was my poetry writing goal. 

Linda has the roundup today at TeacherDance.

Nuff said?

Hugh MacLeod reads my mind (Franki's, too) once again.

Another Cure For Drowning

A trip to Pink Moon Cupcake Bakery helped me to leave behind the
stressful week/month/start of school.


Some folks go for an alcoholic TGIF, but I'm all about the sugar rush!

Poetry Friday -- Drowning

Today I'd like to share my favorite lines from Not Waving but Drowning by Stevie Smith:

I was much further out than you thought
And not waving but drowning.

During the first six weeks of school, it feels like water we're "swimming" in gets deeper and deeper. I'm hoping that this week the water has been the deepest and the waves have been the highest and now both Franki and I are on our way back to shore. Parent conferences are half done. Interims go out today. We have completed all of our fall assessments (math, reading, spelling) and the database has been turned in.

Deep cleansing breath in...deep cleansing breath out...


(Poetry Friday is being hosted by Two Writing Teachers this week.)