Just me and my blog

About me: 

I'm almost 30, a female, and I'm in my fourth year of teaching. I currently teach in a rural, Midwestern town, population 9,000ish.

I teach English. I teach mostly freshman, but I do have a few sophomores, as well as an Advanced Placement literature course.


About my blog:

I'm hoping this blog will, above all, help me maintain my sanity.

Teaching in my state is difficult. Teaching everywhere is difficult, I imagine. Like many other employees in many other places, teachers are overworked and underappreciated.

I have 148 students on my roster. I make less than $47,000 / year. I guess that means I make less than $317 per student, per academic year. I can tell you without hesitation that I exert more than $317 in effort per academic year on most of my students.

I say "per academic year" because I'm sure some of you are thinking that teachers work only part of each year. This is - technically - true.

And yet.

I arrive to work daily before 7 a.m.
I leave daily by 4 p.m.
I have 30 minutes for lunch.
And those are only the hours I spend working when I'm physically at work.

For the past few years, I have held a summer job. I also spend a week planning curriculum with other teachers in my department, and I have been required to attend summer conferences, and I have had to plan and organize new courses each summer. And all of this is in addition to the grading I must complete on a daily basis.

My school's freshmen took a state test in October. Their scores were low. Despite the fact that I'd had less than two months with my freshmen, this is my problem to solve as a freshman English teacher. Which means more writing. Which means more grading. In addition to the increased writing feedback I must give, we also have quizzes and vocabulary and daily work, all of which require time spent grading. And finally, there are lessons to plan. I teach three different classes, so I have three different daily lessons to plan.

I do have one prep period: 50 blissful minutes of my day, during which I must respond to parent emails and jump through bureaucratic hoops to keep my license and my job. I can sometimes plan lessons during these daily 50 minutes, but more often, I have meetings to attend or other teachers for whom I must sub. I rarely have uninterrupted time during which to grade; more often, when I'm actually in my classroom, I'm trying to organize my desk and my to-do list into manageable chunks so that I don't forget any of the 87 tasks I must complete by the end of the day (or before lunch, or before study hall).

All of that said, I don't intend this blog to be a place where I vent only my frustrations, but also my successes. After all, I chose this profession.

I hope that writing will prove therapeutic for me, as it has in the past.

And finally, I hope I can allow many of you a look into a typical, high school classroom.