Don’t get me wrong. If there were not winter breaks, I’d not have survived to be as old as I am. I’ve spent the last month or so of every semester with my mind on its knees begging for rest. But rest never happens. It can’t. I’m a teacher.
Being a teacher is a 24/7 thing. One doesn’t turn one’s mind off when not in the classroom. One eats, sleeps and dreams teaching. At least I have always assumed other people are like me.
So when “rest time” comes, all that really happens is refocusing. The time is meant to be used and the teacher in me will fill it with work.
Originally posted at Daily Kos as part of Teacher’s Lounge
It has never been the case that there is nothing to do. There are the things I should have done. There is always a looming Next Big Thing that I should have started by now but haven’t.
And all too soon classes start again. I’m sure most of the public school teachers are already back at work. We college professors have another couple of weeks…which we will fill with work of some kind. Syllabi are due. I have a new prep this coming semester and really should do a runthrough of everything so that I will be able to anticipate possible problems.
There are the three students who received incompletes…who have one month left in which to “complete.” A letter of recommendation to grad school needs to be written.
Over there is the door behind which Critical Thinking lies lurking, ready to be the death of me. In its way is the ugly visage of Assessment. I look in that direction and wonder what in my life I did to deserve being saddled with these burdens.
In a stray moment, I wonder about the possibility of stealing some moments to work on family and relationship and manage to wonder why I have no rubric for these.
And then there is the Thief of Time, the person who wrote this little piece instead of spending a Saturday morning doing some of that overwhelming stack of work, the Me who fills the nooks and crannies of that other life with thoughts that insist upon being written…sometime, the Me who has a story to tell and who doesn’t want to spend any more time waiting to tell it.
That Me will soon have to be chained so that refocusing can occur. School happens. Education must be served.
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Three diaries open simultaneously is probably more than a person should try to handle.
One could even post one of them to the front page by mistake if one weren’t careful.
Robyn
thus the delay between rec & comment.
I think those who are living their dream don’t turn off ‘work’… for us/them it is not work, but life. I would no sooner ask you to not teach than shakespeare to not write plays or john lennon to not write music…
I think the crap work…sillybies or whatever… is put off because it IS crap work… your head is prolly trying to figure out a better way to explain XYZ to your students so they get-it. Maybe its the artist/idealist in you that procrastinates… that’s who it is in me.
like now… i should be finishing packing…
Do we need to be bugging you here in the comments to submit the poems? If so, consider this that.
May you feel recharged and energized by your break.