Sistah Pat

It feels good to be the only one up. Sitting here with my coffee, taking a few minutes for myself. I’m feeling a little angry (perturbed? resentful?) that so much of my weekend is going to be consumed with work. I’ve been trying desperately to get caught up but I finally decided, yesterday, that it wasn’t going to happen. I realized that I would have to bring a lot of work home with me and do it over the weekend. Once I accepted that, I felt a tremendous amount of stress leave me. I was able to just do my job yesterday and I didn’t even try to work on more than I could handle. In theory, my job is full time resource and I should be floating into classrooms assisting other teachers and performing my computer fixing miracles. Waving my magic wand and making everything alright. The reality, however, is very different. I’m run ragged with trying to plan lessons for my own students, teach them, grade papers, and still keep a handle on 1,500 computers and the needs of 100 teachers. Then there’s that vague aspect of my job that says I’m in a “leadership role” and have to take on other duties to promote the school. Duties like writing a four page newsletter and getting all my ducks in a row for the Nazi to do my evaluation next week. Organizing and presenting Professional Development Sessions and marketing the school. How come I get to do the “leadership” things but don’t get the administrator pay?

So…much of this weekend will be taken up with the newsletter and getting the paperwork in order for my observation. Steven was chosen as one of six ROTC cadets to participate in a parade in the little bedroom community where the school is located this morning. It’s quite an honor and, of course, he wants me to be there. I should also take pictures for the damn newsletter. I’d love it if I could just drop him off, come home, get some work done, and have him call me when he’s ready for me to pick him up. I don’t want him to be disappointed, however, so it looks like I’m going to be involved with the parade from 10:00 this morning to around 2:00 this afternoon.

I’m dreading getting my paperwork in order for my observation. Every day, I’m supposed to have a written lesson plan with my “essential question” and “learning objectives” that come directly from the Kentucky Core Content Guide”. What that means is that I know my students need to learn to use PowerPoint and I’m teaching them to do it. That won’t get it in the lesson plan book, however. In my lesson plan book, I write “Text Animation” which means I’m teaching them how to animate text that day. However, to appease the Nazi, I’m going to have to go back and formalize my lesson plan book to make sure each day’s lesson has the formal and correct “Essential Question” and “Learning Objective”. This may be useful for new teachers but experienced teachers should not have to write a formal lesson plan each day and look up all the corresponding Essential Questions and Learning Objectives when that time could be better spent doing other things. Most administrators recognize this but I’ve been assigned to the Nazi this year and I know I’m going to have to cross all the t’s and dot all the i’s.

I’m about to draw blood sitting here because my arms are itching and burning like crazy. I have a strong feeling that this is being caused by stress which brings me to today’s title. Where do we go from here? I’ve noticed that so many of us are feeling the pressure of the realities of day to day living and we’re struggling with the committment that it takes to stay the course. I see a common thread among us. A desperate attempt to hang in there when our lives are pulling us apart. I’m looking for a little peace. A bit of comfort, if you will. I’m feeling like the diet and exercise take so much when I have so little to give. I love this site and I love the blogging but I’m starting to shortchange it because of the time committment. I plan on giving this a lot of thought this weekend. Where do I go from here? How do I keep the fire burning?

1:15 - Taking a deeeeeep breath. I started itching and burning so badly this morning that I had to jump in the shower and try to see if the water would help it ease off. It didn’t. It felt like I had hives but nothing was visible. Now I have an 8 inch bruise down my right arm where I actually left claw marks from scratching. DH insisted that I take a Benadryl which I didn’t want to do because it might make me drowsy but I finally had to relent. I sloshed Caladryl Clear all over my arms and, if I hadn’t had to take Steven to the parade, I would have gone to the doctor. My arms were on fire! I have extremely sensitive skin and I must have had a reaction to something but I don’t know what it was. I’m highly allergic to Zest soap and don’t even allow it in the house but DS brought some in when he came in the other day and left it in the shower. I didn’t realize it was Zest and used it when I took my shower yesterday but I don’t know why it would cause such a severe reaction more than 24 hours later. Anyway, it’s eased off now. It was at its worst when the phone rang and one of the ROTC cadets called to see where we were. I told him we would be there by 10:30 and he said we were supposed to be there no later than 9:45. Seems the kiddo who spread the information told us the wrong time. At any rate, it caused me to go into panic mode and I didn’t have time to itch. We got to the park with about 20 minutes to spare and I found out that it was a one-way parade and I would have to walk with the parade for 4 miles (in my flip-flops). The president of the Booster Club and I were right behind the Color Guard and he and I had a fun time laughing and cutting up all along the route. I’m sure no one knew who we were. Even I don’t know why we were supposed to be in the parade but we had fun throwing candy and waving to everyone. By the time the parade ended, my itching was long forgotten. Here’s a picture of Steven and the other cadets. Steven is the one on the right holding the banner. His “dream” is to be in the Color Guard. He was so proud and I’m glad I could be there for him.

I see I’ve had a couple of comments since this morning. Susan, thank you so much for your committment and for recognizing how much work teachers do. It means so much. Brandie and kt, I have NO intention of stopping being here. My concern is with getting back on track, not getting farther away. This blog and all you little chickies mean so much to me. There’s no way I’m going to stop. It’s just that I have to figure out a way to make more time for it. This entire week I’ve been wondering how everyone is doing and trying to make time to catch up and I just couldn’t do it. I have to take a hard look at some things this weekend and make changes but it will not be to shortchange the chicks.

Right now…duty calls. I’ve got to get to work on the newsletter.

9:00 p.m. - Okay, I’m calling it quits for today on school stuff.  I’ve spent the entire day working but at least I’m getting a handle on things.  I’ve been working diligently all day except for jumping up now and then to attend to something about dinner.  I have two copies of a wonderful desktop publishing program that I use to do newsletters and my plan was to take the work I did at school, download it on my computer here at home and continue working on it.  I downloaded it and then found out that the program isn’t working on my computer here at home.  The CD won’t run and the entire program relies on the CD.  I wasn’t able to do the newsletter but at least I managed to write all the articles in Word and I can take them back to school and cut and paste into the desktop publishing program.

I also got a pretty good chunk of my lesson plans updated and written up.  All the little lessons matched up with their corresponding essential questions and learning objectives.  All tied up with a pretty red bow and attached to the Kentucky Core Content for Assessment.  Now all I have to do is finish the last little bit of the newsletter and write up two weeks worth of advance lesson plans in my book so the Nazi can see that I have everything under control.  In case I get hit by a truck, my substitute will be able to sail right along for at least two weeks.

DH must be able to tell how stressed I am because he’s been exceptionally compassionate and considerate today.  Bless his little heart, he went out and bought me a blood pressure cuff that you wear like a bracelet.  Guess he thought the itching episode was going to give me a heart attack.  How thoughtful.  I’d rather have something a little more romantic but I guess it’s the thought that counts.

Thanks for all your kind comments and support, Chicklets.  Hopefully, I can get things back into some semblance of order tomorrow and be ready to tackle the new week with a little more sophistication and poise.