I officially now see why teachers are choosing to leave the profession... it's never enough.
I have been teaching for a decade, and am on year 4 of coming to terms with balancing:
-balancing paperwork (IEPs, annual reviews, self-management data sets, etc.)
- creating lessons to adhere to the curriculum and standards
- grading
- helping students individually and collectively
- managing emails from colleagues, administrators, students, and students' PARENTS
- texts, phone calls from colleagues while teaching
*I also teach behaviorally challenged students so I have been working with managing those behaviors etc. and I only have an assistant for ONE class period, versus the several I teach every day.*
Ya'll, I'm sorry -- I'm being whittled away and the feelings of 'less than' or 'it's never done' continue to creep in. I feel like I can never catch up and am doing my best to meet the demands of everything aforementioned, and when I come home, I do my best to decompress. When you're ON for 8 hours a day working with children, and then doing your best to make sure they grasp the materials all the while marking data sheets for IEPs and self-management goals, etc. for a TON of kids, I have little left for my partner at home, my hobbies, etc. This is not me or who I want to be.
I'm in my 40s and am wondering how you all keep up! I have even started to work on the weekends to catch up. :( This is the first time in my 10 years of teaching where I have had to do this as the paperwork was never as insane as where I work now. I am grateful for this job as it's somewhat less stressful than my last one from a student behavior perspective, but the paperwork is crushing me. How are we supposed to be teachers and bask in the joy of sharing knowledge when we're bogged down by a ton of paperwork and deadlines, outside of submitting grades?!
Happy Friday.