Yesterday, the first thing I accomplished in the morning upon arriving to school at my usual 6:30 a.m. was to print out 2 months worth of forensics practice sign up sheets. These get taped to my door and the team members sign up for practice times. (As much as I would like to use google calendar etc, I’m really a hard copy type person and I love seeing my team dedicate their precious after school hours to an activity I know is important for their growth and well being). After reading Sunday’s post, I thought back to the last three years as a head coach and wondered how I survive the school year/forensics season. People constantly ask me this and I simply shrug. And then, I realized I don’t really consider my days to be “busy.” I get tons of stuff done and I really like knowing exactly what I have to accomplish during the day and when I meet all of those goals, it gives me a little bit of a rush – like I’m wonder woman or something – and if I don’t get something done, well it’s nothing to get super stressed over because, after all tomorrow is another day (thank you Scarlet O’hara). Like any teacher, illness overtakes me at some point during the winter, but I rest up as much as possible and get the kids to help me out. However, coaching usually puts me at school until 6 or 7 at night at least once or twice a week. But I would do anything for my forensics kids; they mean that much to me. I adore watching them practice and perform and gradually improve their public speaking abilities.
As I read the advice on Sunday, I kept thinking how these tips/tricks somehow found their place in my heart. They’ve kept me going throughout my school years and now I’m eager to share them with my friends/coworkers. The last item to truly achieve is to MAKE time for creating art work that I want to create. My sewing sits forlornly in baskets waiting to be picked up. Instead, I always reach for the next essay to be graded. I’ve constantly lived by the mantra, school first, play time second. (Maybe this is my mother’s fault? That’s not really the point though…). I honestly feel bad though, as if I’m doing my students a disservice, if I don’t get all their papers graded in a timely manner. The only way that can happen is if I sit down every night and grade and then keep grading all weekend until they are all finished. And as I write this, right now, I have a sewing project that I’m itching to start, but I don’t feel like I can until I have these papers out of the way. Ugh. So back to my plan. Maybe if I just take a little “creative me time,” I can have a happier/cleaner/fresher mindset when I grade their essays. And even though the last post was about how awesome I was at grading….well now I have my freshmen batch that I’m about a quarter of the way through because my husband drove the entire 9 hours to Kentucky for Thanksgiving while I graded for 5 of those hours. (I am thankful my husband is an English teacher who completely understands). My goal for this school year is to set aside “me” time to make items that I want to make. And I am not allowed to feel guilty about the stack of papers sitting on the floor.
P.S. I also just realized that I was taught by one of my good friends that if a dog tries to get in your face and lick you or nuzzle you, you say “busy, real busy” and avoid eye contact and it goes away. This method totally works too! Haha.
