This week was intense. I put off thinking about my job until the last minute and I ended up in kind of a stupor as I stepped back into my teacher shoes. I remember almost nothing from the first day of meetings. I didn’t even realize they installed this giant new monitor and resituated the entire library until I returned five days later and noticed- I spent a whole day in there prior to that and realized nothing. My friend Christina mentioned I looked a little out of it. Apparently she was more correct than anyone knew!
{Jude asked me to put on the ‘rappiest Macklemore song’ on the way to school the other day, which turned out to be ‘Thriftshop’. Emphatic lip-syncing ensued.}
Steps on Soapbox: On the first day of school, with about fifteen minutes until I needed to meet the students, I found out that I had 31 kids on my roster. It’s been whittled down to a reasonable 29 students at this point. Yes, that was sarcasm, if you were wondering. I’m left questioning the way education is valued by our government and public with the lack of funding. The voters approve mandates and then the legislature marginalizes the necessity, paints the teachers to look like greedy, money hounds and we all turn a blind eye to the fact that the voters said grades k-2 should have class sizes less than 20… And I have 29, now. It’s just nuts. With the increase in numbers there’s also a mathematic reality that the number of kids who have special needs also increases per class, putting a greater load on the teacher and whole community. Seven year olds shouldn’t have to compromise like this. Steps off of soapbox.
By the way- it’s going ok. There’s a lot of management happening and my ability to teach is definitely challenged, but we should be able to make it another 177 days with continued smiles and learning. I’ll have earned my summer next year, though!
I’ve been taking it easy on the exercise front of late. When I came back from Disneyland my hips hurt from standing in line a lot. Then I ran a 5k on that Saturday followed by a half marathon the next day and ridiculously sore hips the day after that. And the next. And all the way through this past week. I was getting pretty nervous about the Beat the Berch half marathon next weekend until Bradley and I went out and played on trail and tossed the frisbee around a little this afternoon. We did the 3.6 mile St. Edward loop today at a pretty decent pace and my hip never started hurting! A lot of my anxiety washed away after that. While I am planning to continue to take it easy this week on mileage, and I may end up walking a little bit, I think I should be able to make the miles on at the race on Saturday.
Lesleigh
Good luck with your half this weekend!! Hope your hips don’t cause you too much pain after
And that stinks about your class size. I can’t imagine teaching that many kids! Wow. 29 kids sitting still is noisy!