Thursday night

I came home and plunged into work. I’ve spent hours completing my lesson plans for my four different classes, due tomorrow, and completing a questionnaire related to an assessment I am going to be obliged to give next week, and then again at the end of the grading period. The questionnaire also comes due tomorrow. I’m about to retire for the night so I can stumble out of bed tomorrow as early as possible to drive to school to finish these tasks.

What I did not do was any preparation for actual instruction. I had no time.

Eduhonesty: Of course I need a lesson plan. But the part where I find the college readiness standards, the Illinois standards and the Common Core standards and then record those standards in order to document that I am meeting standards sucks time away from my students. To meet all administrative requirements, I am required to produce a five-page document where a one- to two-page document would do. The questionnaire was related to the need to demonstrate scoring improvement by students over the year. If this night of writing had been an extremely rare occurrence, I’d have let it go, but such evenings are becoming standard for many teachers.

When I have to produce these papers, I can’t be writing a PowerPoint or cutting out shapes for a new activity. I can’t be looking online for  a great lesson idea. I can’t be grading student papers. School has barely started, I have been running full-tilt, almost nonstop, and I am already behind on my grading.

I’m sure I have many counterparts in other schools, too.