Cat-astrophes

Oh my...what a fortnight.

The next person who says that teaching is an easy profession is going to find some sort of implement lodged between their eyeballs.

I love it, I do...but let me give you a run down of the past two weeks:

1. Tuesday - Newsletter report due: create a three page report on what the class has learnt this year, experiences, quotes etc and add cute photos...
2. Wednesday - program due (anyone who knows a teacher will know that creating/submitting your program is a BIG stressful ordeal)
3. Thursday - Observation of colleague: Set work for the Deputy Principal to teach my class whilst attending two meetings and observing another teacher, then providing feedback information. Photographer leaves a voicemail message to say probably can't do the wedding after all....ARRRRRRRRGH!!!!!
4. Friday - Demonstration lesson: more meetings. Try to settle a crazy class on a Friday to demonstrate a Quality Teaching Writing lesson...HA
5. Weekend - family, friends....REPORTING
6. Monday - a VERY 'trying' student returns: back to his normal ways in a matter of hours. Mother jokes 'you must have enjoyed the break. You probably felt sick when you saw him return'. I smiled and said 'not at all'...but on the inside I was screaming "TAKE HIM BACK!!!". Supervisor noticed I'm a little stressed and offers for me to hand my reports in on Friday (when they are due anyway....?) I decline as that is the busy part of this horrible fortnight.
7. Tuesday - finished reports (HALLELUJAH!!): Supervisor away and not planning on coming in for the rest of the week....so I could've handed them in NEXT TUESDAY!
8. Wednesday - Breathe....went to bed at 6pm
9. Thursday - Observation lesson - again...watch teachers, prepare work, meetings, feedback. Went shopping with mum, had nails 'done'. On an aside...I like now just being able to say I had my nails 'done'...I feel like a should add 'darling' on the end.
10. Friday - okay...get ready for it....meeting, art groups, sport, assembly (yes...my class were presenting it...so that includes a LOT of coordination), demonstration lesson, duty, choosing time. I didn't have time to pee. Literally. By the end of the day I was dancing around waiting for late parents to pick up their kids just so I could visit the toilet. PARENTS PLEASE PICK UP YOUR CHILDREN ON TIME!!! Your teacher will love you for it. On another aside I have one student that is consistently picked up at least 15 minutes late daily. That is an extra hour and 15 weekly. Given the course of a year, that is more than an extra working week that I spend looking after this one child! To top it off, anyone living in Sydney (or central coastal New South Wales for that matter) would know that the weather was hideous yesterday. Pouring rain galeforce winds...and all of that equals CRAZY KIDS. I was shaking with the stress. Apparently I appeared very calm though...amazing.

So now it is Saturday morning and I'm listening to the rain outside from my nice warm bed. The wind has finally subsided. My reports are finished. My program is finished. All of those horrible extras are over. My Deputy Principal happens to be into photography and has done a few weddings...and offered to do mine for the price of a memory card. I have 3 days off!!! Huzzah for the Queen...Oh...AND (I just remembered) I get to see lots of my beautiful friends for a bridal shower today! It certainly will be a shower with all of this rain...less than 4 weeks to the wedding and just over 2 weeks until my hero returns.

All is well in the world once more...

xxx

Whilst at the school Cross Country Carnival I received a phone call on my mobile. Being an 'organiser' I had been receiving a barrage of calls all day - including missing equipment, late people, locked gates and lost buses...

...this one was in regards to a little darling who had hurt herself along the track. So I did what any teacher would do...

I took a short cut.

The short cut consisted of walking out a gate, sliding down an embankment and climbing through some bushes. Of course if I have to go to that much trouble, I was going to make the most of it.

So when some snotty usually 'too-cool-for-school' senior boys came running past, I did what any teacher would do....

I leapt out of the bushes and roared.

I think I can take some credit for the two boys who won the race - I have never seen kids run so fast during an endurance event....

Oh yes, I did find the little girl eventually. She wasn't too impressed when her teacher turned the corner wailing like an ambulance. Apparently that's not very cool either.


xxx

So there are now two weeks left of holidays.

That sounds like a lot. And it is...I'm grateful for it...but this is the time that it suddenly dawns on me that in two weeks time, 28 little midgets are going to walk into my classroom and though they have been to school before, they would have forgotten everything - 6 weeks is a long time for a 6 year old.

Last year I thought I was prepared...until I told them to sit at their desks, open their books and fold their arms.

Mistake #1 - don't give multiple instructions to kidlings just out of kindergarten.

Then we played sound (phonics) bingo.

Mistake #2 - assuming your class know their sounds is too optimistic. There are a lot of letters in the English alphabet after all.

I won't even begin with the disasters of lunchtime. Or when I discovered that two of my girls had severe emotional trauma and would swing into sporadic violent tantrums with no warning.

So this time I realise that in my little group of 28 I may have some knowing everything, and some knowing nothing, with the ones in between full of many many surprises. I decided to start planning, programming and organising things ready for that first week.

The only problem is although I have had 3 and a half weeks of 'almost nothing' my body feels as though I have worked all the way through the holidays. I have a list of things to do, and phonics games to create and all I can think about is laying my head down on the keyboard and ZZZzzzzzzzzzzzzzz.....

oh yes, and eating all those Ferrero Rochers so I can use the boxes to put the phonics games in....


xxx