Have you ever just had one of “those” days? Yeah, me too. I don’t like them much. But they seem to sneak up on you at times, and before you know it, you’re smack dab in the middle of one of them!
Today was that day.
It started just fine. I slept well last night (first night in a long while). I woke up easily at 4:20 to get busy with exercise. I even got to work early and managed to get all of the computers (those that are working at least) in my classroom set up so they no longer go into sleep mode after twenty minutes.
Then the hecticness started to kick in. I was asked to attend a meeting at our district office at 9:30, so I got someone to cover the last part of my first class and others to cover my next two classes. The meeting went well, and I even had time to get a large Diet Coke from Mrs. Winner’s. (Although I would have preferred to drive a wee bit further to get one from Bojangles, but 2nd best is better than nothing).
I arrived back at school in time to get my classroom ready for the photographer from the Times Free Press to come in and get some “action shots” of me with my kids. Well, I say my room, but truthfully I was borrowing the room next to mine. All her computers work, and I didn’t want the photographer to get shots of a room full of computer-less monitors. That period even went pretty well. The kids were behaved and very photogenic.
Then came my planning period. I think that’s the time my energy levels started to drain. I began to feel like the walking dead. I turned on my favorite jazz station on Slacker.com and tried to find my happy place. But by the time 7th period rolled around I was just in one of those I-just-want-to-go-home moods.
I’ll tell you how I know. Sometime in the middle of 8th period it dawned on me that I had done the 7th grade starter with my 6th grade class. I’ve been doing short paper slide videos for starters in the 6th grade. But I had the PPT slide up on the screen from the last 7th grade class, and I just went with it.
No one said, “Mr. Childers, uh, I think that’s the wrong starter,” or “Mr. Childers, what happened to our video?” or “Hey, you! What are you doing to us?” Nope. Like little lemmings they lurked lovingly behind the Pied Piper and did what I had on the screen.
Wow. In 8 years of teaching I’ve never made that mistake before. Now, at 5 PM, I am languishing at Starbucks feeling guilty for letting the little ones down.
I won’t even talk about 8th period, except to say, that’s when someone discovered my last nerve.
What a day!