So, as a teacher who finished the last school year at the beginning of June I should be feeling totally rested and rejuvenated and ready to go for a new school year, right?
Since I have had 10 weeks of no teaching, I should be excited and anticipating the new year with alacrity, yes?
I wish.
Today as I was wildly putting together AP binders and student-parent contracts and syllabi I wondered where on earth my summer went. It was supposed to be the first summer I didn't do any major travel, so it was going to be nice and relaxing. At least that was the plan.
June 9th-June16th: I went to Cincinnati, OH and graded about 800 AP Spanish tests. Ok, maybe not 800, but it felt like that many, at least. Eight hours a day of grading for 7 straight days. Now and then some very funny stuff, but mostly listening to bad Spanish and rethinking my career choice!
June 17th-30th: I found out that a colleague and I received a grant from the Rhode Island teacher's association to create a teaching unit. So we started creating forms, setting up interviews, begging for equipment and mapping out the plan project.
July 7th-14th: Lovely trip to North Carolina to visit friends and see if it is really as wonderful as I remember. It is.
July 15th-21st: Non-stop filming for teaching unit project.
July 22-August 4th: Visit from my mother and four sisters from out west. We had a great time and gallivanted all over New England. Made the vow that I will never drive through Boston again.
August 5th-14th: Catch up interviews and review of footage for project. Realization that our primary interview footage is totally unusable and that we need a new video camera to redo some of the interviews.
August 19th-23rd: My first performance at Tanglewood. I went to rehearsal Thursday and drove back 2.5 hours to meet Juan Carlos, who had been in Spain for the previous month. Spent Friday the 21st together, then I drove back 2.5 hours again to Tanglewood for the orchestra rehearsal and performance on Sunday.
August 25th: Went back to school for pre-year meetings.
So it turned out not to be the summer I had envisioned, and I face the school year a little less rested than I had hoped. Since I am trying to focus on the positive, though, I just look forward to next summer and tell myself it's not as far away as I think.
