A day in the life of an educator: Friday

*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 its done on the fly…

***I teach PreAP Precalculus, Calculus, and coach women’s soccer. My contract school day is 7:15AM – 2:45PM (not including the coaching aspect). I am married to an awesome wife and we have three children ages 10, 7, and 5. AND I LOVE WHAT I DO!!

Friday:
3:30 AM Woke up early thinking about what I could do better for my kids….lots of ideas and no more sleep…
6:00-6:20 AM Printing a quiz for my calculus classes to take today. Went through email and set up to record more lessons. My partner in crime was not in today, so I made sure that her sub had everything that is needed for the day.
6:20-7:20 AM Finished recording and editing my notes for calculus and will upload them during 1st period.
7:40-8:35 AM 1st period Calculus. Quiz day! The kids work in groups in my class, so they take quizzes in groups. I will have them talk about the problems and work together. When each group is done, they staple all the quizzes together and turn them in. When I grade them, I grade one problem per quiz, per kid. So all of the students must talk about their work for the benefit of the group. They will all get the same grade.
8:40-9:35 AM While the kids are working on quizzes I organize tonight’s notes into a playlist and set it up on my YouTube homepage. Also getting the feeling this may be a really difficult quiz…
9:35-10:00 AM helped a colleague get the sound working in his room. Finalized YouTube channel.
10:05-10:55 AM More grumbling about the quiz…I didn’t think it was too bad…hmmmmmm…..
10:55-12:35 PM Worked the key and made sure the quiz was doable…it is! Started grading the quizzes from this morning, but didn’t get very far. One of my calc kids heard a rumor about the quiz and spent her lunch with me working integration problems. Our parent organization sponsored lunch today – THANK YOU!!!! But I am eating and grading today…
12:35-1:30 PM Test coming up on Tuesday, so we are working on the review today. It’s interesting to me that when students are given a review, some of them work really hard on it, and some don’t…
1:35-2:20 PM That darn calc quiz….Lots of grumbles today. We may have re-asses the situation over the weekend. I do know that integration by parts can be very difficult.
2:25-4:40 PM Soccer practice/weightlifting! #winning!