For the past few weeks I have been knee deep in preparations for my Grand European Adventure, the upcoming school year with a new prep (Social Studies, finally), my ambitious plans for a high school Model UN club, and getting my classwork for my two grad classes completed. While it drains me and consumes my time, I also thrive off of it.
On the weekend immediately prior to the start of the summer session for my graduate work, I spent hours on both Saturday and Sunday planning out my Europe trip step by step. I looked up directions at each step, turn by turn, directions to make sure I can make sure to arrive safely to my airbnb or on time to the tour departure point. I checked the locations of each airbnb to make sure they were located a reasonable distance from public transit and the main train stations since this trip involves frequent movement from city to city as well as organized tours with departure points located at or near the train station or city center. At one point that necessitated finding a new airbnb at a more central location. A lot of the work I put in to this planning stems from the desire to avoid excessive international data charges from the in-between times where no wifi is available. A also learned from the Utah trip that I need to know all my options.
Next comes planning for the upcoming school year. Since this post deals with the planning, I will save discussion about the mistaken belief that teachers have the summer off for a later post. Prior to leaving my former school, I used the remaining copies on my account to print out the social studies support documents and samples of the resources I plan to use next year although I ran out of copies before I finished with all the units or got to the ELA documents. Of course, I have access to all of these documents online and could have accessed them there. I chose to print them out because the physical copy can be written on and held by hand. It’s a psychological thing. I also have taken time to revisit some of the plans and class structures I put in place at the beginning of last school year to see what worked, what didn’t, and what I need to do to be successful with what I intend to implement in the upcoming school year. I also take the time to brainstorm cross-curricular work since my upcoming class load would ideally blend the work to best support each subject. I also needed to start the planning now while also planning for the trip and working on classwork for two graduate classes because I know I will not have time or mental capacity to work on this while traveling.
Although those two things consumed most of my planning time this month, I also had to balance that with making sure that I keep moving forward with the high school club planning so that I can provide this opportunity to them without overwhelming myself. I also need to fit everything I have already mentioned in with the coursework required for my graduate classes. If I did not plan for how and when I would get all the work done, I would end up planning to fail, to paraphrase the common cliché.
If left unchecked, planning could adopt kudzu-like characteristics. I have gone off the deep end before, planning my day down to the minute and expending way too much energy trying to make everything fit and stressing when something went wrong, something out of my control. I learned a difficult lesson through that time period and thus bear it in mind when I go through time periods like this, time periods where planning forms a crucial survival tactic. Thankfully, this period lasts only a little while longer. I will take what I have learned about how to balance all the planning needs without obsessing and apply it going forward.