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Inside the Work Day
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A Typical Day as a Third Grade Elementary School Teacher
I roll out of bed at O dark hundred. That is teacher talk for about 5:45 a.m. I arrive at school at 7:00. The children are already there. They start getting to school at 6:50. (No, I am not exaggerating.) They are sent to their homerooms at 7:30. They wait in the cafeteria until that time.
I get there at 7:00 to gear myself up for the day. I speak to all my teacher buddies, get a LARGE cup of coffee, and lay out the student's morning work. Then I sit down to pilfer through a dozen or more emails telling me of deadlines, meetings, and what our Principal calls "Other duties and responsibilities."
When the kids come in they are usually either excited or sleepy. If they are excited they are talking and telling me about their time away from school. If they are sleepy, they are whining. Oftentimes, I have a student who comes to school throwing up, with head lice, pink eye, ingrown toenail, and stuff that runs green. Usually mom or dad or grandma can't take off work and sends them anyway. I have tofill out nurse forms and try to get someone to come pick them up. Ugh! is an understatement. This usually happens about twice a week.
We say the pledge, have announcements and our rigorous curriculum begins. Due to "No Child Left Behind," the students and I are graded on our performance. In fact, if benchmark test average goes down in my classroom, one of those morning emails is from admin. letting me know they are watching me. I hand out papers, pencils, tissues, and bathroom passes. I wake up students and I beg students to learn.
There are those days when I want to run screaming from the building, but mostly I just love it when a student makes progress especially in reading and math. I generally take home about 10 emails to answer, 30 papers to grade, and a week's worth of lesson plans to write. I honestly work another 2 hours after school.
My time I can leave is 3:30. If I don't take it home and do it there, I will be there until 5:30. Even when I am home I am worrying about test scores, children who are getting fed at home, and my principal asking me to be on "Just one more committee." Because I get up at dawn, and because the kids are VERY active, I usually fall into bed about 8:30 and I am asleep by 9:00. I get up the next day and do it all over again. I know, I know… “you have summers off!” Yeah, but I make so little I teach summer school, go figure. I love teaching and would not do anything else, except maybe become a writer.
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