A Day in the Life of an Educator Day 1: Saturday

*Warning – this will be a long post and is not for the feint of heart.  But for those of you who are not teachers – read it at your own risk.  This is the true story about one week in the life of a teacher, just the teacher part…

**It got too long to be read by the non-teacher, so this week will be broken down by day and on Saturday, the entire thing will be up…please forgive any typos this was done on the fly…

***I teach PreAP Precalculus, Calculus, and coach women’s soccer. I am married to an awesome wife and we have three children ages 10, 7, and 5. AND I LOVE WHAT I DO!!

Saturday:
Up at 6:15 AM to get ready for a soccer scrimmage festival at Tulsa University. I am meeting one of the other coaches at 7:15 to get our suburbans for the drive. We are at school by 7:30 and rolling toward T-Town by 7:45. We have counted all of the heads for this trip (18 total) collected all of the gear (ball bag, water bottles, and med-kit). I passed off the “football” to Coach Bo. Our “football” has all of the medical release information, physicals, insurance forms, and contact numbers for each player. We arrive in Tulsa a little bit early and have a chance to get some coffee/snacks before our first match of the day.
9:45 AM starts our match pre-game routine. We discuss starters, strategy, things to focus on, goals for the team and answer any questions that come up.
10:45 AM we kick off our pre-season with a match against Bishop Kelly. Although we play really well we lose 1-2. The coaching staff felt like we did a pretty good job, girls were working hard, trying to do what we asked them to and gave great effort.
12:00 Noon was lunchtime, we have the best parents (so super blessed by them) a healthy lunch of fruit and turkey sandwiches with chocolate milk and gatorade. We scout one of our future opponents for a few minutes – at half-time we move to our second field for the next match.
1:45 PM we start our next pre-game routine. Not quite as long this time since we have already played one match. But emphasize to the girls to fight through the exhaustion from playing two matches in such a short time. To focus on working on fitness, to challenge for every ball.
2:15 PM We start our second match of the day against Jenks – man they have some great midfielders! Again we play really well, the girls have used all of their energy, but they continue to battle and work on everything that we have asked them to do. They have some great teamwork and chemistry. But we lose 0-1. Reflecting on the day we played really well and I am super excited about the season in front of us.
4:00 PM time to head back to Edmond!
5:30 PM back at school, put all of the gear back where it belongs, make sure that everything is locked up in the locker room and get ready to check in the suburbans. But before we can do that, one of the girls needs to have her car jumped. No problem – once again proving that we are jacks of all trades!
7:00 PM I have collected by children from the different places that had spent the day and am finally home…Ending my Saturday of work.