Day One

I teach high school English in north western Minnesota. As my description states above, this blog will offer the reader a look into my life as a teacher. I consider my home and class lives inseparable. Even though this is my eighth year in the classroom, I still am unable to separate the two, much to the chagrin of my fiancé. But that was part of the deal when I went into teaching.

I also hope to show the many highs, lows, successes, and frustrations of the teaching life. For the past year now I have been addicted to several blogs - most by teachers, and I hope to offer any readers the same things I've found in other blogs.

We are currently on our second day of inservice. I hate it. I have found that many people in the general public think we just show up on the first day of school and leave on the last day and that's it. Well, that is a load of crap. Now I'm not one to complain about being a teacher. We have enough of those around here. I love my job. I love my salary. I love my kids. I love my room. I love my work. Again, I am not one of the teachers who rants and raves about being too many papers to correct and not enough money to do it. I know how fortunate I am. But inservice days drive me nuts.

First, they usually entail listening to some hired gun 'expert' educator our administrators overpay to come in to get us revved up. This isn't always bad. But more often than not, as has been my experience, this 'expert' is usually someone who has only observed a real classroom. Yet somehow they managed to write seven books on how to manage a classroom or motivate students. It's kind of like being in college again where I had a few professors, usually in the ed department, who have very little experience (if any) in the classroom. But since I'm in the role of student during these inservice days, I give the 'experts' my attention. But usually I get very little from them. Plus, I could get more accomplished in my own classroom focusing on my own classes.

I do prefer these 'experts' and their presentations to the higher ups in our district, such superintendents and principals, getting up and blathering on at length. During my second year here, we had a superintendent who spoke for over an hour reminding us that it was our role to motivate our students to achieve. I have never been more insulted in my life. It's not like I forgot that I was supposed to motivate students to achieve over the summer. Sometimes, like it or not, superintendents are as out of touch with classroom reality as the so called 'experts.'

The rest of the inservice days are usually spent in department meetings, cleaning out my room, getting my computer up and running, get the classes entered on my computer, making sure my supplies all arrived and so on. What drives me nuts about all of this is that it has so little to do with what I enjoy most about teaching: the students.

New teachers are often amazed at all that goes in to just being ready to teach on that first Tuesday in September. But right now I wish it was all over and I had some kids in here writing. So I guess I'll stop procrastinating and get back to my inservice day.