Home today with a physical ailment, I'm conscious of the ways the busy end-of-school affects us with regard to energy, health, and effort. Not only are we facing this rise in events and needed energy in our school lives, but it affects our parenting too since our own children are part of multiple end-of-year events, decisions and celebrations.
Like everyone, I try to schedule and pace these days so I don't get sick, tired, or frustrated, but year-after-year there's always room for improvement. The key is to continually prioritize and set your focus forward with what matters most. For me that means getting all the paperwork done sooner than later so I can give my full focus on the students. One challenge of school life is that most paperwork is relegated to a teacher's own time, not time-on-task in school hence it takes a toll on our personal schedules including evenings, early mornings, and weekends.
In a perfect world, teachers would get time-on-task to correct papers (about 4 hours a set), write report cards (about a six hour task), complete cum cards (one hour), list conference reports (about a hour), clean classrooms (about 24 hours altogether), order supplies (eight hours), and more administrative tasks that don't come to mind right now. But it's not a perfect world, and everyone does the best that they can do to meet the expectations with care and competency. Onward.
