Long, hard week

I know, I know. It's been awhile since I've blogged. Frankly, you would probably hear the same old thing over and over. That's probably not a good intro sentence. Let me try again.

Today my students were being little kids. I'm not talking about the adorable/charming kinds. I'm talking about the annoying, fart-sound-making, giggling at fart sounds kinds. You would think that they get the idea by now. "You're in high school. Start acting like it." I've gone over how to act like a mature high school student before.

Thinking about it now, I think I'm being too nice. I think tomorrow, I'm going to pick up a fresh stack of detention slips. Or maybe have them come during lunch for a lunch detention for making fart noises.

Well, thinking about it again, I don't think it's because I'm being too nice. I've been very preoccupied these past couple of weeks. Last week, I got a good taste of what it will be like working full-time. Last weekend, my subject area leader had his baby. He was out for the week so he asked me to cover his classes. I gladly obliged. The extra money is substantial. So during every prep period I had last week, I was covering one of his classes. I covered one AP calculus class. That was easy. I told them what sections they needed to study for the test and they got right to it and studied the entire period.

I also covered three of his Algebra I classes. For those, he had me start chapter six. So I didn't get to do the cumbersome substitute thing and babysit them. I actually carried on with his curriculum. This took time I could have used for prepping or working on UCSD work. So instead, I was there before and after school doing that.

By the end of the week, I was exhausted. No preps the entire week. Teaching my own classes, on top of that, teaching his classes, staying for tutoring and watching personal project presentations on Friday after school was a bit overwhelming. Needless to say, the weekend was well-deserved.

I think I'm starting to get the hang of this. I definitely need to be more strict and more consistent with my discipline. Sometimes I feel I don't want to deal with discipline, but I can't relegate to that sort of behavior yet. I'm not old enough.

Merit-pay for teachers?