Teaching and challenges--

I woke up a few times during the night, but most notably, the 4am wake-up: I was wondering where I stored (digitally) the new standards for English classes. 

Gee, whiz, how 'bout sleep?

I know that they are on my work computer, but then I got wondering about whether I have them stuffed somewhere in my work email that I can access from home. And then I got thinking, gee, the new English teacher (whom I have not yet spoken to or met) is supposed to use those same standards, per the NHLI curriculum people from the state...I wonder if anyone has briefed her. Hm.

I still have today, school-duty-free. Likely, I'll go digging in my email, and maybe I'll find something but maybe not. I will have plenty of time to jet those over to our IT guy to get them uploaded to the Power School platform tomorrow, but now it's in my head. Or, it was in my head all summer and I didn't feel it bubbling up 'til 4:00 this morning. 

Teachers don't stop working in the summer, not really. My body may not be in the physical building, but my brain is always sorting and filing and red-flagging things. "O, I can use that for..." and "I should do..." are never far from my mind. I suspect this is true for most teachers-- I can't imagine it not happening to most of us, no matter how many years' service. It's who we are. This is why my head was about to explode every single time someone kvetched during the pandemic lock-down and hybrid learning about teachers not working as hard, or at all. That schools "should be open"-- the building may have been closed, but by golly, we were still busting our asses and brains. I know I spent 8-10 hours a day, sometimes into the late evening, working on school stuff and working with students who were doing school work asynchronously. Why were they up doing assignments so late? Because the governor never mandated that companies not schedule kids for what would be school hours. One of the biggest errors made, in my mind, was allowing kids to be scheduled for their part-time jobs while we were trying to keep them safe. Their employers filled Covid-depleted ranks with vulnerable students; the kids didn't want to lose their jobs, so they didn't say no to the hours. Most of my students who work do so because their families either need the money coming in (and some of the adults had lost their jobs, so the kids filled the financial gap), or because the kids know that they have to work in order to afford things like sneakers and sweatshirts, or food. 

Commerce trumped common sense. And yes, I use that verb ironically. 

So here it is, and apparently my brain is about ready to go, even if my body is not quite willing yet. I don't know what challenges await in SY23-24, but I'm sure there will be some. And I'm equally sure that I --and my colleagues-- will meet the challenges to the best of our ability. 

O, and we'll teach subject matter, too. 

Wish us luck and grace,

C