I.
am.
so.
tired.
Oh my gosh. It’s 6:30pm, and I’ve been wondering for a least an hour if I can go to bed. This time of the school year is totally exhausting. And just for fun-zies, my school decided to LOSE THEIR GOSH DARN MINDS by concocting a torturous schedule today that included…
- Late start (read: 2 hours of meetings)
- FIFTEEN MINUTE CLASSES
- An assembly that included a 10 minute video with no words
- An hour long advisory period
- And, oh, did I mention that I found out about this schedule yesterday?
I tweeted about this last night, and true to form, MTBoS did their darndest to give me excellent suggestions.
It just wouldn’t end. My god. All of these thoughtful, helpful suggestions. I’m not even including them all because I’m tired of copying and pasting the darn links.
Allow me to be perfectly clear. I adore each and every person who gave me suggestions (especially Bowen, I really needed that laugh). It was nothing if not thoughtful of them to see, “Geez, Annie needs help planning for such absurd classes, allow me to remind her of all our MTBoSy awesomeness!” (I imagined each and every one of these people wearing a cheerleading outfit as they typed to me.) I am not here to disparage them. I am here to declare instead of planning an awesome, amazing lesson using their super duper helpful suggestions: I spent 15 minutes answering kid’s questions and had them make a cheat sheet for their test tomorrow. That’s right. I went #UNSEXY, and I feel freaking fabulous about it.
When I’m up and excited, MTBoS is constantly cheering me on and totally there for me. When I’m grouchy and exhausted…MTBoS is….constantly cheering me on and totally there for me. Which, frankly, is occasionally dreadful. Yesterday, I just wanted to vent that I was going to have an horrifically disrupted day, but MTBoS was all, “Come on, Annie! You can do it! Think about how awesome all these teachers are, and they seem to never ever get tired or ever feel overwhelmed!” Like a twerpy little sick kick that’s always trying to pump you up. All thoughtful and s***. Ugh. (But seriously, I love you guys.)
I completely understand that I am a jerk for whining that I have a supportive community that’s always trying to pour energy and love into me. I know. And I know that I have been that twerpy side kick many, many times. But I just wanted to make sure that OTHER people also know that while I love the MTBoS completely, am SO stinking grateful for all it has given to me and my students, it’s okay to occasionally plug your ears, say, “LALALALALALA!” and give the kids a worksheet. It is emphatically NOT okay to do this on the regular, but if it’s what you need to do in the moment, don’t necessarily feel like you’ve let them down, nor that you’ve utterly failed your students. Teaching is a long game, and if you’re volunteering for every play, you’re going to run yourself down and burn out. I truly believe that.
And you know what? The day was fine. By not having a phenomenal activity planned for our fifteen minute sprints, I had time to chat with students that I don’t have every day. I got to have some conversations about what I really love about math and what I think is ridiculous. I got to hear about what they’re up to. So, honestly, I feel pretty good about phoning it in on the lesson planning today.
And then when I got home, I saw this kind mention, which brought me back to a blog post I’d written over a year ago, that reminded me of all the good stuff.
Teaching take a lot of energy, and it’s okay to conserve for a while. I’ve learned my lesson that MTBoS is not always the best place to get an empathetic “that sucks”, (although I’m sure that if I asked for it, I would get it) but it is a great place to turn for help when you need to know that someone out there believes in you and wants you to do well for your students.
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