While standing at the photo copier this morning, I had a few minutes to kill as it spent thirty "warming up." Above the machine a document was posted, outlining all of the tedious tasks that a teacher deals with during the day, including, but not limited to: keeping grade report records, attendance records, picking assignments, grading assignments, behavior management, drama counseling, parent appeasement, administration appeasement, excessive professional development hours, uncompensated continuing education, etc, etc. At the bottom it said, "thank a teacher."
This kind of document does not make me want to be thanked. It makes me think of all these components, blank out for a moment, and then after rousing again, I ask myself, "WHY AM I INSANE??" None of these things seem overwhelming when I see them as a cohesive, manageable whole. But when dissected into all of the tedious, annoying tasks, I do not feel as though I should be appreciated, I feel as though I should be committed.
Today is sort of an example. When I was a student, (all of last year and every year prior), I never realized what all went into creating the lessons and activities that I participated in, and I was an elementary school teacher's kid! Yet I still did not rise above oblivion in regards to everything that goes in to producing and orchestrating a typical school day. Now that I am the one creating and conducting these events, my appreciation has obviously grown exponentially. Usually, I think it is fun to choose and prepare fun activities, even if they are time consuming.
One successful example was for my Lord of the Flies unit, which was done like the show Survivor, where each class started with some silly "physical challenge," (team game), and the winners got a head start on their "mental challenge," (essentially an open book, timed, group quiz). One of these games involved passing lifesavers across coffee straws from one cup to another. This seemed simple, as I used to receive life savers in my Christmas stocking, and they always came wrapped together like a roll of pennies. After making a special trip to the grocery store the night before the game, I found that this is not the case anymore. Lifesavers no longer come like pennys, but instead come wrapped in individual bags, all housed within a larger bag. WHY!?!?
Two hours, and a million plastic wrappers later... I had unwrapped all of the stupid lifesavers so that each team could have a ziploc baggie full in order to play the game. Please take into account that 1/3rd of each large bag had to be thrown away because of breakage, and I had to take into account that none of the game pieces would be reusable, but instead be quickly consumed without thought as to the painstaking process of UNWRAPPING each and everyone of them. Oh well. It was fun and a great success. Well worth it.
Today's example of teacher tedium... not so much. I decided I wanted to play Spanish vocabulary bingo. I spent two days figuring out how I would create this game from scratch, and finally decided that I would have to make a blank game board in a word document, type all of my vocabulary words separately, cut them out, and then tape them to the board, photocopy it, untape them, mix them up, retape them, and photocopy again. I would repeat this process for every kid in the class, so that no one had a matching bingo board. Did I mention that when I went to photocopy my first board, that the copier broke? It wouldn't spit out my copies, so each time I copied a board, I had to physically pull apart the machine to pry out the wrinkled papers, then unlatch and relatch every part of the machine so that it would stop displaying "paper misfeed," and I could begin the process over. I made it to class with one minute to spare, a handful of "Baile Bingo" game boards, a box of fruit loops for playing chips, and high expectations.
Does the game work if no one has studied? Um, no. Does it work if half the boys eats all their game pieces in the first five minutes even though I tell them not to? Um, no. Do I leave frustrated, annoyed, and wondering why I didn't major in business? For a brief moment, yes.
But then it passes, and I'm glad I made a spare copy of each board so that I now have master copies and never have to re-do the process again.... until I want to play the game in literature and have to create a whole new word list. Let's not rush ahead, though.
Oh teacher tedium... how shall I fight thee, and not go insane. I know one way - don't read those annoying lists of all the worst parts about your job!! I think about the two kids who did well on my Spanish test, regroup, plan another review, and breathe. Yay, weekend...