Congratulations on making it to the end of Week 5. How are you doing? Progress reports are going out today. How do you feel about that? What are you going to do over the weekend to make next week better?

Skipped my afternoon nap yesterday so that I could finish prepping for Friday AND get all my grades in before calling it a day/night. Today was also the fifth day in a row where I gave up a prep periods so that I could help with the teacher/substitute shortage and cover a period for another teacher. I was running on empty and decided to give the kids and myself a bit of a break and have them spend their class time working with LEGO doing two different timed assignments. Per usual a lot of students enjoyed the activity and gave it a go. But there were more than a few that just couldn’t be bothered and either did something else on their Chromebooks or played on their phones. I try to encourage them to engage but, like I said, they couldn’t be bothered. What’s that saying about being able to lead a horse to water…? 

I am so done. It takes all of my time and energy to prep for the next week and try to keep up with grading. Having a parent accuse me of unprofessionalism because I foolishly attempted to take a student’s phone away after said student threw LEGO at another student kind’a helps motivate me to put energy into building toward my next chapter away from the classroom. I’m reminded of another saying about the foolishness at trying to put make-up on a pig because it doesn’t accomplish it’s intended beautification and just annoys the pig. 

So I’m going to sleep in on Saturday and Sunday. I’m not going anywhere and will make sure next week’s assignments are ready to go (as much as one can anticipate middle school chaos), and maybe work on my web-stuff in preparation to my post-classroom life. I kind’a wanted to work on any of my LEGO projects tonight… there’s something very therapeutic to constructing something with the little plastic bricks. Probably not tonight but maybe some time this weekend. 

Hope y’all have a great weekend and find the means to recharge for the coming week.