Sunday, November 09, 2008

Hitting "The Wall" Early and Hard

Hello, QHSTers:

As always, my sincerest thanks for the chance to post to this forum. Your insight is always enlightening.

It's three years that our "brand-new" school has been in existence. We're still trying to find our way, and I guess we will be for a while. But, for the last three years, I've noticed that around this time, I have hit the proverbial "wall" of exhaustion.

I feel very overwhelmed. It just seems as if there is so much to do, and no time to do it. From creating portfolios, to the "assessment for learning," periodic assessment, gathering data, planning, grading, etc., there seems to be no time to get anything accomplished, and it's very frustrating.

In a small school, I guess it's to be expected that you'll do a lot, but how do you handle it all? How do you do what's being asked of you, and still maintain your sanity, and some sense of "life" outside of school?

Whatever insight you can offer would be greatly appreciated. Perhaps one element of training should be "how to handle the pressure of working in a small school."

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

First time blogger here! This is my first year teaching, and I am of course overwhelmed. I want to be involved, and I attend most events. At the same time, I am not comfortable yet with organizing or taking the lead on an event alone. I am just beginning to get into the groove as far as grading, planning, paperwork, etc and am afraid to rock the boat before I get a handle on just this "teaching thing". At the same time, I do not want to appear lazy nor do I want to give the impression that I am not one to be involved. I LOVE to be involved...and I will be- next year! Only kidding- time management is absolutely my biggest downfall. I FORCE myself to take time away from planning and grading. It's a struggle to remind myself that my identity is not JUST teacher these days...though a great identity it is...