C'est la vie.

This afternoon I took the dogs for a walk. It was a much needed walk for me, as much as for them. This work week was short in days, but long in hours. Mid-terms are upon us, and the disparity of work equity in public school education becomes painfully apparent during these cycles of assessments.

C'est la vie.

The Mid-terms began a week ago and finished today. Only, due to the butterfly effect of my being so sick the first week of December that I couldn't go to school at all, and the following week learning to eat again, regaining my energy and focus (mandatory requirements for being an English teacher), I became behind with grading. Now one week of grading is a lot. Add to that, the fact that many projects were coming in, units were ending, daily grading not done, and the substitutes can do only so much about the end process of such assessments; it's as if I missed two weeks of school.

So for the last month and a half (with a true break for the holidays, as I was the hub of our family activities this year), I've had to make up two weeks worth of work, while continuing to work (if you follow). Last Friday, according to my plan book, I should have been done grading my individual term projects, papers and unit assessments; not to mention the co-taught term project for World Studies!
 I only finished all of that today, after 4 days of administering Mid-Terms, and now will spend the entire stormy weekend grading 130+- Mid-Terms.

Every department, except English, has text books. The English department has a woefully under-stocked supply of well worn books. So under stocked, that we squirrel away books before we need them, just to make sure we will have them to teach; if there are even a full class set (as my classes are large, most over 25, and a class set is 25 -- before subtracting the reality of "missing books"). If you have two sections of the same class (for me this year, Regular Juniors and Senior Honors Women's Literature), I may be teaching 4 different texts, not 1 and 1. This gets political contractually, as I'm supposed to only have three classes to prep for a term. However with 5 classes and low supplies, I can often have five preps a term.

So back to the text books. The other departments have text books, access to software that they can use to select which units they want to have on the Mid-term, the test will then be generated and be at least 50% multiple-choice answers. No such option for generating or correcting the Mid-terms in the English Department. Most of my colleagues, in other departments, are done grading their Mid-terms. If I hadn't been so ill, I might be halfway through mine now.

C'est la vie.

Yes, I enjoy the autonomy of meeting the Common Core standards with whatever I can lay my hands on in the Dept. stacks, and supplement with youtube, and public domain books, but it's tiring to have to juggle and not be able to plan around which resources I can actually have access to and when.

Then, god forbid, you get sick, and have to miss a whole week of school after being in the hospital. Well, that just puts you out of synch, no matter that you were weeks ahead at the time of getting sick and thank goodness you'd mapped out all the assignments (and left them posted on the whiteboard) and due dates with the students for the three weeks around the illness before you got ill.

I wonder how many other professionals have to do that much tap dancing just to stay in place?

So this afternoon, I was bleary eyed, brain-drained, grade-grubbing weary and just plumb tuckered out...but I saw the sun in my eyes, I saw the dogs prancing about my legs and I thought ~ Go for it!
Go for the walk in the woods with the woofs that will recharge your batteries before returning to the Mid-term grading you'll be doing ALL weekend and before the snow storm hits tomorrow (maybe up to a foot).

C'est la vie.

And so I went, shook of the gossamer threads of excel sheets and Engrade, and thoroughly enjoyed my time in the sun.

Good night, academics and adventures, G'night.