Falling Behind

So despite my best intentions, I haven't been keeping the blog up. Which is really a shame, since my activity at the school is starting to pick up again. This post, however, won't really be about that. Instead I'm going to ponder in an open forum why, precisely, I am so exhausted lately.

Mentally and physically I feel just drained. I can no longer get up to work in the mornings and at the end of the day I just want to flop down on the couch and watch a movie then pass out. It is really disheartening -- I was getting tired by 6:00 yesterday evening. So I elected to go to bed at 9:00, on the couch, and wake up at midnight to correct a few papers and write a few reflective journal entries.

And Midnight came and midnight went and I diligently shut off my alarm and went back to bed until 5:00. Then 5:00 came and went and I slept until 5:30. Then I listened to the rain pattering against my window and roof until 6:00, when I finally dragged myself off the couch and took a shower and got moving.

It's odd, but in many ways this reminds me of finishing my undergraduate thesis. The hard part, the exciting part, was the oral defense. My old high school mentor was brought in and I had to defend the thesis I'd written to my faculty sponsors, my teachers and a large number of my peers. I did this early, knowing my teachers were going to be swamped at the end of the term.

And then I had a month to wait until graduating. I felt really detached and aimless and now that I've finished my intensive teaching, I find myself in a similar predicament. I feel like I'm adrift and I don't know quite what I'm supposed to be doing. It's a disquieting feeling and one I am not too fond of.

So hopefully I can focus in and find a way to work successfully when I'm at home. At the school I can hammer out a number of papers and corrections and things, but as soon as I leave I just lose all focus. So perhaps having written all of this down, it will help me, both as a teacher and a student, get a handle on what needs doing and how to do it:

Things to Do:

-Write Reflections on student teaching which encapsulate a few specific experiences. Primary occasions to consider are the personal narratives done with the freshmen, the students I have seen respond differently with me because of gender, the experience of doing projects and papers on Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison, chasing a student to the library for a paper, being the right teacher at the right time, reflection on the writing stations lesson with the freshmen.

-Write a case study on a student with an I.E.P. (Individualized Education Plan) and another case study on a student with a 504 Plan (a more generalized academic support plan).

-Correct essays on Invisible Man, and do a nice and readable write-up of the grades I've had for the students.

-Routinely update the blog and begin doing some back-dated entries reflecting on past lessons during the intensive period.

One other project that I'd really like to work on soon is a list of books I'd like to read. A semi-comprehensive list that I can then reference and add to and slowly work my way through. I always talk about how books are "on the list," but I've never actually made the list. I really should.