Day in the Life... teacher edition.

Just a glimpse of one day in the life of a teacher. No two days are ever the same, but all of them are busy.

February 1, 2021 (Monday)

4:00 am: Morning Meditations

4:30 am: Workout

5:00 am: Getting ready

6:00 am: Packing lunch, preparing breakfast and tea

6:30 am: Leaving for work

6:45 am: Arrived at work one hour early. Making copies, hole-punching and sorting copies, typing up an activity, responding to emails.

• Arriving at work early allows me to work without interruptions. If you want to know what I mean by interruptions, just keep reading.

7:30 am: Lesson prep for tomorrow

• (8:05 am) A student comes barreling through my door with his talking points on a sticky note about humanity and world issues. I continue to try to work and listen at the same time. I often stop working just to make sure he knows I'm listening. Is this a distraction? A welcomed one. But I recognize how much he needs this time too.

9:10 am: Teaching class

10:13 am: Updating quarantine work

• This entails turning all of my in-person materials into electronic documents for uploading. Then I have to create all of the directions for assignments. Nobody will read them, yet everybody will email me asking me what to do. Finally, I upload all of the documents.

11:00 am: Lunch and bathroom

11:30 am: Grading

• Another email from an online student saying she’s been out with Covid and needs her assignments opened, so now I have to relearn how to open assignments for a specific student since I don’t do that often. Now I have to go through and open up two weeks' worth of assignments. That’s a lot of clicking. A lot of clicking.

12:00 pm: Back to grading

• nevermind... internet just went down

12:10 pm: Back to grading

• 2 interruptions from two different teachers but each was no more than 3 mins.

1:20 pm: Email

• stopped grading to address an email from a student that doesn’t know how to use Canvas because they just flipped back to online from in person (didn’t get to finish the email)

1:25pm: Teaching class

2:20 pm: RAN to the restroom.

2:30 pm: finished email and preparing online presentations for tomorrow

2:38 pm: my principals messages me asking me for data and pictures for a report he needs to complete so I stop to gather that information for him

3:02 pm: back to working on a presentation for tomorrow

3:31 pm: teacher dropped in for 2 mins.

3:37 pm: another teacher dropped in with her son (my former student), I’m losing focus quickly

3:40 pm: Switched to working on grading

• another teacher came in again to tell me a student story

3:45 pm: Back to grading

• finished a class and I have three more classes to go but I’m not starting them now. Going to work on the slide presentation for tomorrow again.

4:00 pm: Clock out

• I've been really diligent this year about clocking out at 4:00 everyday, no matter what. I could stay late and finish the work, but the work will never get finished. So I just made the decision to be good to myself, even if the system won't, and clock out at 4:00pm even if the work isn't done.

Home: didn't feel like cooking and thankfully I had some leftovers. After eating, I emptied and loaded the dishwasher, cleaned the kitchen, washed my hair, styled my hair, sat under the dryer, and now it's time for bed @ 11:00pm.

And that's it! That was my day. The funny part is... Monday's are my easy day!