Working Working Day and Night

You know, when you get into teaching, the things they always talk about are the long summers and Christmas breaks. They talk about how your day ends somewhere between 2:30 or 3pm. But they never tell you about the amount of time you will put in outside of the classroom. That took some adjustment. Staying up late on the weekends to grade papers or to work out lesson plans and set inductions (that last one was for you Dr. M). Trust me, the state will surely get their money out of you. So do the kids. I have found that if I do not have a lesson fully planned, I turn into a babysitter. I was not prepared for the amount of constant behavioral correction I would have to do. I have learned over the past few weeks that students have varied paces and some can finish a lesson before you get all of the words out of your mouth while others will still be working on something at the end of the semester. It is very tricky managing the two of them. I am starting to engage the students more and more. It allows me to buy time for my slower students without piling more work on other students. I know when I was a student, if I got more work for being good, I would simply be bad. I have a lot of good kids and I don't want them to feel punished. And lastly, I have to comment on the standing. My legs hurt so much the first two weeks. Its like I never sit. But that is getting better too.