A week and a half or so ago, I wrote this day in the life. It should illustrate for you the demands on a teacher’s time as well as my own attempt to balance my own mental and physical health.
5:45-6:05
My alarm first goes off at 5:45. I feel tired still so I get out of bed to snooze the alarm on my kindle which I leave in my living room. I do this two times total before finally getting out of bed.
6:05-6:20
I relax on the couch and start. my day with a few pages of reading. Each day I read four pages in a young adult book in Spanish to continue working on my fluency. Right now I’m reading The Girl in the Blue Coat. I also read four pages of Stamped from the Beginning. Since the racial justice protests following the murder of George Floyd, I have dedicated time each day to working on my own bias so that I put words into action.
6:20-7:20
In this time I work through various items on my list beginning with daily Scripture reading and breakfast preparations. Throughout this hour, I complete my daily body weight exercises which this month include a focus on arm work. I also complete a handful of other small to do list items.
7:20-7:30
As quickly as I can, I dress for work, grab my running gear and then my lunch before heading to the car.
7:30-7:40
Thankfully, I have a short drive to work.
7:40-7:45
After dropping off my lunch in the workroom fridge, I stop by the front office for the required temperature check. I have only a minute or two in my classroom before students arrive after being dismissed from the cafeteria holding area. We used to have this time free from student supervision but due to social distancing guidelines, our previous spaces no longer have enough room to hold our student population.
7:45-8:30
Students enter my room as they arrive at school. I supervise them from my desk, attempting to multitask and work on preparing curriculum materials for an upcoming unit while students catch up on missing work or relax until school starts.
8:30-8:53
School official starts with “flight,” a homeroom of sorts. I continue to work from my desk, now grading and updating my gradebook while students complete missing work or read. First semester ends in four days so I’m trying to clean up the gradebook in advance of preparing grade verifications.
8:53-8:56
Morning announcements
8:57-10:00
1st period – actively teaching
10:00-11:40
2nd period – actively teaching
This time also includes taking the students out to the track and walking two laps with them as well as supervising them while they eat lunch in the classroom. (If I need a bathroom break before the end of the class period, I have to use the handful of minutes I have while the students get their lunch in the cafeteria since they have admin supervision at that time.
11:40-1:12
After distributing wipes for the students to disinfect their area, I head over to the workroom to warm up my lunch. On the way, a colleague got my attention. She’s the ESOL teacher and needed some help translating for a student. We spent a few minutes trying to figure out the student’s story of why he had not completed his math work before we got it resolved and I continued on to retrieve my lunch.
Once back in my room, I rented a car through Costco for Dad. (His van is in the shop after someone decided to drive at night without their headlights on.)
That done, I navigated to YouTube to watch some Good Mythical More while I ate and updated this entry.
For the final portion of planning, I continued to work on updating grades. and trying to figure out how to study for the admin Praxis that I’m taking in a little over two weeks but have yet to start specifically studying for.
1:12-1:15
I take my computer and personal items upstairs to my other classroom.
1:15-2:22
5th period – actively teaching
2:22-3:21
My brain needed a break so I spent the first few minutes of this planning period looking at social media before returning to Google Classroom to work on grading the Writer’s Journals my 8th graders just finished at the beginning of the class period before. For some reason, I found it hard to concentrate and kept wanting to procrastinate but I got the Writer’s Journals graded.
3:21-3:50
I walk downstairs to drop off my computer before heading out to the the back carline. During this time, I act as traffic control until the final car departs with their student. After talking for a couple minutes with my fellow back car line colleagues, I walk to my car to grab my running clothes before taking them inside to change and head back out to the track.
3:50-4:50
I finally get myself to the track to run the 2 mile time trial I had planned so that I can figure out the paces for my upcoming half marathon training. I successfully complete the workout and a short cool down walk before getting back to my car.
4:50-6:30
Since the car rental place requires a major credit card or a return plane ticket (I chose GSP as the pick up location), neither of which Dad has, I pick him up to take him over there and use my card for the rental. (Insurance will provide reimbursement.) This process never goes quickly, so, combined with the drive time over to the airport and then back home afterwards, I lose more time than I thought I would.
6:30-6:56
I had been hungry since after my run so as soon as I got home, I dumped my things in the recliner and grabbed some leftover pizza and some cheez-its. I also charged my Garmin since it had died during the run. (I used the Strava app to capture the ac
6:56-7:57
I change and hop on my spin bike to finish my miles for the day. While on the bike, I update my Garmin activity and make my daily Instagram post.
7:57-8:30
I stretch, shower, and make some coffee before sitting down to finish a few last things.
8:30-9:15
Before finally relaxing for the night, I update my running log, both electronic and paper and write a quick journal entry.
9:15-10:00
Finally able to relax, I settle in with my cross stitch and watch some Warehouse 13.
10:00-10:30
After brushing my teeth, I turn out all the lights and read a little on my kindle with night mode on before crawling into bed and calling it a day.