I often think of my life as divided into four parts- personal, spiritual, professional, and public. If you know me well you know that my professional life as a kindergarten teacher usually gets the most of my time, effort, and planning, at least from August to May. My public life- community service, blogging, and genealogy gets the next chunk of attention. My spiritual life is more or less an underlying part of everything, but nevertheless I feel that it is somewhat neglected. I’d like to do more reading and study than I usually manage to do. My personal life- attending to my physical needs, hobbies, relationships, goals, personal improvement, etc. - is the orphan child.
Sometimes keeping a balance between the parts of my life doesn’t work. This week in particular I am feeling overwhelmed by a list of should, could, and must that is leaving me exhausted. So If I miss a few posts or seem distracted it is because I am frantically trying to complete projects from three areas of my life and like the best laid plans… well, let’s just say fall break will be “catch up” time for a few personal needs.
One of the projects I’m currently working on is the 800 photos I took at Heritage Day. It is important to me to share them, so I have been emailing, copying, and posting them. I have a set ready for the community bulletin board today. I will pick up race photos tomorrow and give them to the race director. I’ll leave some of the children’s photos with the school librarian. Then I’ll get back to photographing fall, flowers, and critters.
I have a huge project due at school by the end of the month. I don’t think many people realize that teachers have “homework” and often find themselves completing paperwork for the state or district. Parent-teacher conference reports and report cards will also be due soon. That means testing and understanding each child’s strengths and weaknesses.
I had a little reality check at school yesterday. I’ve been teaching my students to add and one of them just isn’t getting the concept. I use the dot method with my students. We combine sets with little foam counters and we have actually been “adding” for a few weeks. However, now we are putting the task to paper. We write our addition problems out horizontally, 3+2=. So I have my students write 3 and make three dots below the number to represent the quantity, then two dots under the 2. Next, we circle the dots and count them. Write the answer. Seems simple. Well, one boy keeps writing the wrong number. I called him to my desk, checked his process, which was correct, and then asked him to count the dots for me. Child can’t count to five!! Okay, we back that train up for a few weeks and work on counting some more while the rest of the students keep adding.
This month I’m also involved in a fascinating genealogy research project involving four Caddo families. I’m still working on my biography book and will probably complete it by the first of the year. It has turned out to be more complicated than I first imagined and I want to make sure that it is as good as I can make it. My goal is to write about the fifty people who were most influential during the first fifty years of Caddo’s history. I originally thought I could do that in one book. Well, guess again. It will easily be two books. At least I know that I will have a purpose for a couple of years. Lol
So, adding the parts of my life together equals a little overload, but the alternative- doing nothing- would be worse, so I really can’t complain. I do like to be busy. I just need to find a little more time and energy. Maybe this lovely fall weather will bring it on.
Have a great day!!
800 pictures! You're giving me a headache.
It saddens me to think that you're the last on your list. I thought maybe it gets better with time. I guess not.
I hope you find time for yourself this week. Here's wishing you whatever your bubble bath, a great bowl of ice cream and a good book would be.
Love you!
Posted by: Megan | October 06, 2010 at 09:50 PM