Here's something that I posted on my flickr page a few days ago.

I feel like I'm just posting pictures taken a long time ago, and I'm not actually doing the whole "photography" thing anymore.

Oh wait. Maybe I feel that way because I'm just posting old pictures and not taking any.

*sigh* I love teaching. Honestly, I do. But unless you've done it yourself, you have no idea.

Try this. Develop an engaging 45 minute lesson. Something that will teach the students something, meet state standards, build on what you've already taught and point towards what you will teach later. Now do 15 a week. Don't forget to include writing (in all forms), literature, public speaking, grammar, and visual literacy. Consider the two Spanish speaking students you have. Make modifications for IEP students.

You got that? Cool. All that great lesson planning you did just created 5 journal entries per student per week, plus one writing assignment per student per week. So come Friday you have 660 items to grade.

Start with the journals. It may seem like 550 things to get through and grade, but remember, each student left 5 bits of his/her life in there, and you need to treat it like it matters (because it does). So be sure to leave some sort of comment on each journal (550 comments). Now read their writing assignment. You have 40 descriptions of a dream vacation (7th grade), 30 descriptions of an event (9th grade) and about 40 pieces of essays (11th grade). Read the paragraphs from 7th and 9th grade and leave marks by mistakes that need to be corrected (we'll do that in class next Wednesday) and then read the 11th grade papers. Leave coments on each of these telling the students what they need to change, remove, add or modify in their paper. That will be their writing assignment for this coming week.

Now go take pictures for your 365.

(If you read this whole whine-fest, then you seriously need to get a life. Go take some pictures or something. I'll get over it.)