A star sign out of whack, a fraudulent zodiac.
You know those days when you feel like you just suck at everything? Yeah, I'm having one of those today. I think a lot of it has to do with the fact that I was at home for a week and got nothing done pertaining to work. So when I came back on Monday, I felt completely overwhelmed. I'm still feeling that way a little bit, although I've gotten quite a bit accomplished over the last 3 days.
We had a meeting at work yesterday--kind of a "new faculty pow-wow" to discuss the things we're doing well as teachers and the things that need to be improved upon. There were other things discussed as well, and we were all assured we were doing a great job. We were also officially told that we'd been invited back for another year, which most of us already knew since we'd decided upon fall classes almost a month ago. I really feel like this is a place where I can spend most of my teaching years. That's why it's really important to me to do a good job in all aspects of my work. But I know that there are places where I've fallen short, especially when it comes to being "involved" on campus. I often forget that there are events going on, get stuck grading during an assembly (we call them "listen at lunch") or am in such a rush to get home to Jude that I slough off any activity that goes past my last class of the day. I wish I could blame it all on those three reasons entirely, but the truth is that I'm just not much of a joiner. I got all of that out of my system in high school, and I'm not particularly interested in spending my free time hanging out on campus. I wasn't very good at showing up for events when I was full-time at the U of A, and it came as a welcomed relief when I was adjunct in St.Louis, because adjunct faculty members don't have to do anything but show up and teach classes (and draw a paycheck).
Like I said, I really want to excel as a teacher at this school. So I'm really going to make an extra effort to attend functions and be seen. I know it looks bad when I show up only to the "mandatory" events. Even though it doesn't say so in my contract, part of my job is to be involved with campus activities. I have to start telling myself that if I don't want to do my job, then I have no business even expecting to get paid. I wish I was more like my mom. She's been a teacher for almost 30 years, and she's always up at her school doing something--tutoring, going to basketball games, working late on IEPs...it never ends. People don't realize this, but teaching is unlike any other job on the planet because your work never ends. You take it home with you at night, it rides with you in the car in the mornings, and it follows you into every holiday. There is no relief from teaching, contrary to the whole, "teachers get the summer off" philosophy. I don't know a single teacher who just kicks back during the summertime. Most of us are working second jobs, teaching summer school, attending professional development seminars, or are at school working on stuff we didn't have time to finish during the school year.
Wait...why did I decide to become a teacher???
I got a little off track with that last paragraph. I have a tendency to do that when I'm ranting. Anyway, while I was not singled out as being Miss M.I.A., I was told that there has been a complaint in one of my classes that I'm not getting stuff handed back in a timely fashion. As much as I hate to admit it--this complaint is probably well-founded. I have had one assignment for a good 3 weeks, and another one for at least 2 (both of which I gave back today). Two weeks isn't that bad, but it's not great, either, especially when the students really need the feedback in order to complete the next assignments. However, I want to defend myself, here. Even though I physically had the assignment for 3 weeks, the grades were posted in Blackboard the Friday before spring break. I even brought the assignment to class with me that Friday, but out of a class of 26, only 5 students showed up. The other assignment was an essay assignment, and was due March 11. I handed it back today. That means I had the assignment for a total of 2.5 weeks, and 1 of those weeks was spring break. I also have 5 classes worth of essays to grade, which amounts to about 100 essays, give or take.
That's a lot of grading, kids!
I'm really ready for this semester to be over, even though I honestly love my classes. All four of my classes this summer are online, which means I'll get to spend more time with Jude. It also means that even though I will technically be working, I'll be much closer to the ever elusive "summer off" than I have been in a long time. Bring on the sunshine!
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