(Yes, I’m still behind and will pay for it this week, but I’m still at peace with myself.)

Just because I have chosen to be a teacher does not mean I should be expected to slave away every weekend.  I need time to myself, and I shouldn’t feel guilty for wanting it or taking it.

This weekend, I was at the game Friday night; that’s 3-4 hours doing school-related stuff (personally, I do not understand football, so I don’t enjoy watching it.  If I didn’t have students involved in the game, I would not go.  Though typically considered a social event, in this case “going to the game” is work-related, not social).  Saturday night, I chaperoned the Dance; that’s another 4 hours of my weekend given to school.

When you think about it, I already put in an 8-hour workday, doing school-related things, this weekend.  Why should I feel guilty that I did not sacrifice my Sunday night as well?

Does anyone else think Twitter would be a fun resource to use in a language classroom?  Express yourself in 140 characters or less… makes you stretch your vocab muscles!

I also want to find a way to incorporate Six-Word Stories into my language class.  These, however, are projects that will have to wait until later on in the semester.  Once my head resurfaces from underwater.

I wrote the following “To-Do List” Saturday morning, then hit “Save” instead of “Publish” (because I’m brilliant like that).  You can see how much I have accomplished since then…  although I should acknowledge the fact that I planned out what I was going to teach in Sunday school this morning, and had a semi-successful lesson (I did get to say a thing or two about prayer in between all the stories about my new baby sister and my dog ate a bug and I went to see a movie yesterday and look at my dress, it’s pretty and I can sing a song do you want to hear it here it is!)

This weekend:

• get caught up on grading (*edit* though by no means “caught up,” I did grade the level one quizzes yesterday)
• create an innovative, inspiring, intrinsically-motivating compare/contrast two video news clips in the target language lesson for my upper-level classes
• find relevant assignments for my upper-level classes to use the class blog I made them set up
• organize lessons for my level-ones
• play with Google Reader and organize my blogs
• write at least five pages (of the 15 more I need) of my Master’s dissertation

This week:

• be involved in Homecoming activities
• attend a football game, which I have told my students I was going to do the last two home games
• create and turn in the Emergency Lesson Plans I should have turned in two weeks ago

(Which makes it much easier to type this post, and the emergency lesson plans I still haven’t turned in even though they were due last week, and the grades I need to have in my Thursday morning.  See? It wasn’t an entirely frivolous endeavour.)

Last night I felt good about my lesson plans.  I felt I had decent lessons, real lessons – that I was actually going to teach the kids, instead of keep ‘em busy.  I’ve known since the year started that my classes were going to be seriously shuffled, so I’ve been pretty much on hold, doing things with the kids which I hope are meaningful, but they don’t go with The Textbook.  I’m not checking off TEKS (but I’m making my kids think, and hear and speak the target language).  Today’s activities combined “Learning” with “The Textbook,” so I was happy.

Until I arrived at school and my laptop STILL wasn’t ready (the hard drive still hadn’t arrived from Admin or wherever), which would make it slightly difficult to play the video I needed for my level ones, and the audio clip I needed for my level threes.  But, being SuperTeacher that I am, I managed.  Only griping most of the time (… as opposed to all of the time).

My bubble was burst royally when I read the email reminding us that progress report grades will be pulled out Thursday morning… and guess who has NO grades entered in the gradebook?  Part of the reason for this is I’ve been too busy impersonating Usain Bolt as a headless chicken; part of the reason is that the technical difficulties – and complete and total lack of a laptop for the past three days – have kept me from accessing the students’ work (which they all turn in online – PAPERLESS HEAVEN).

So, my newly-manicured nails and I shall be reading and grading this virtual stack of documents tonight.

I know I, like the rest of you, got that extra day.  I had it.

I have no idea where it went.

Last weekend I was supposed to plan out the six-weeks (OK, skeleton plan the six-weeks)… yeah, didn’t really happen.  Most of Sunday and Monday were taken up with family get-togethering, but still!  I should have had something to show for the extra day of rest/work… shoudn’t I?

As a result, all last week I was at school until ungodly late hours.  Just playing catch-up.

Part of the problem was my computer was not cooperating: Internet Explorer crashed every time I tried to access the website we’re supposed to use to post assignments (and where students turn them in, therefore where I retrieve said assignments), which kinds sorta hindered my ability to, well, post, edit, and retrieve assignments.

Thursday I gave up and took my (school-assigned) laptop to the tech office, where the hard drive decided to crash during re-imaging… so I was laptopless all of Friday.  (This is a HUGE deal – our district is uber gung-ho on technology, which is why they issue a laptop to every teacher and made laptops available to the students.  This year, we’re supposed to be all-tech, all the time… which I love, because it eliminates paper waste, but when I can’t use my laptop, or when they take it away for an entire day, well… might as well remove both my arms and a vital internal organ, while you’re at it.)

That was part of the stress on Friday.  There was also some bureaucratic blahblah going on that really wiped me out, but I’m not going to go into it now (I probably will at some point in time… tomorrow is when the shrapnel hits the fan, so if I have any energy left I might write that rant then).  The end result was that I barely made it home without falling asleep on the drive, and even though I had been looking forward all week to going to the football game Friday night, and I promised all my football players I was going… I didn’t go.  I just didn’t have the energy.

I wanted to go, I really, really did, but it was just not going to happen.

And now, here I am, again, Sunday night at 6:30 pm, and I am just now sitting down to plan out the skeleton for the last four weeks of the grading period.  Wish me luck.