Exhaustion

The first few weeks are hard. Early mornings and late afternoons (into evening)...it's hard to teach all morning and then go to class and still have lesson plans and preparations when you get out. I'm just hoping all this work will pay off in September when I'll have a few useful lesson plans and some experience to make it all a little easier. And it's also hard to make the distinction between doing enough preparation to be a good teacher, a great teacher, or an obsessive teacher with no life outside of school.

I think it's probably hard for all of us, because we want to do our best for the students and we're all overachievers.....I just hope I learn where to make the distinction.

On a more positive note, I absolutely LOVE working with the students. They are all such great kids with unique talents and abilities. I really feel like it's such a wonderful opportunity to get to work with them. I guess maybe that's what makes it hard to rest. I want to give them the best I possibly can, because I feel like they deserve it.

Teaching today went better than I anticipated, although I do feel like I was focused more on myself and details like my lesson plan and how to work the overhead projector instead of the students. I feel like maybe I wasn't as receptive to their needs as I should have been...or as flexible with my plans as I should have been. I'm hoping maybe that's a skill that comes with practice.

I'm looking forward to teaching tomorrow because it was wonderful to be up there in front of the class and maybe I'll have the opportunity to do a little bit better this time. But I'm also looking forward to not having to teach again after that until Monday because I'm tired! How do you do it 5 days a week?