2019-2020 Week 1 Begins with a Train Wreck

From Wednesday to Sunday night I spent over 40-hours prepping for Monday morning. I was reminded of my first day teaching my first classroom, coming in early that morning, hoping to finish putting away things, only to cover my large table with a blanket because I wasn’t ready when I needed to bring in kids on that first day 24-years-ago. You do what you can, make sure you have the lessons ready to go and in my case all these years later make sure to have the student info correct so that I can build the photo/info database needed to manage the whole school for the next 180 days. Alas, admin dropped the ball and had conflicting info in the master schedule such that the first three of my five classes that I’d planned for were not the three classes waiting at my door. Good lord. Really? This is the beginning of my fourth year working this gig and foolishly I expected others to pay attention to the details of which class was supposed to be at my door. Being professionals we worked around the confusion, got the kids into the classroom and I did my thing (rules and roster). But, forty-hours of work went up in smoke in less than one-minute. Yeah. I wasn’t happy. I’m still a bit pissed.

My main concern is which class am I working with at which block and making sure that I have the latest info on the classroom roster because I’m going to have to record ID images and create user accounts/passwords for every single student I work with. It doesn’t help when I’m expecting class X and class Z shows up. I should have known that because I needed to triangulate the partial info from three different lists to create my roster when all of this info should be all in one spreadsheet/database/chart that we’d end up confused when the wrong classroom showed up at my door. Talk about recycling crap from last year and hoping that it all works out without double-checking. Ugh. Now I need to prep the lists for tomorrow, but I’m frustrated enough that I wonder why bother. No one is purposefully screwing things up or targeting my work, but, damn, why bother.

Obviously, I’m beginning my 25th year not because anything goes as planned but because I’m driven enough to do whatever I can to improve last year’s efforts. It’s just so frustrating to begin with what should have been an easily corrected f-up. Damn. Okay. I’ve got a couple days worth of data and student info to organize. They can shrug their shoulders and say, “Oops,” but I know better and expect more from myself.  Damn. Happy beginning of my 25th year, y’all.

I don’t think I would make it without the other crazies I work with. Like a breath of fresh air…