School is now in full swing and I am getting acclimated to the bombardment of … well … everything. Meetings, questions, classes, students. And yet, I feel like I’m doing things half-assed. So far I’m still teaching to the book — almost exculsively — and I’m only able to get my lesson plans done the night before the lesson. It makes for a very nervous, day-by-day existence, like I’m precariously perched and the slightest breeze is going to knock me down. I guess with all those bombardments hurtling at me, I need to be extra careful.

I’m dog tired now, so here are some things I wanted to jot down:

0. I love teaching. I still have a lot to learn, a huge margin for improvement, but getting to pass on something you love is a pretty awesome thing. I feel that way especially about my calculus class — even if they were crazy talkative today. It’s harder to get excited about the material in the other classes, but at least for the middle school class, it’s easy to get excited about the students.

1. I still don’t know 80% of my students’ names. It’s really awful. And they’ve stopped putting up their name cards. It’s easier for me to remember the boys’s names and faces, because they tend to stay constant, while the girls tend to change their look hourly. The good news is I took their pictures so I could study them. The bad news is: I don’t have time to study the said pictures.

2. I was so busy at school today that I didn’t eat breakfast or lunch until 2:30pm.3. I had a really good weekend, not overly-filled with work, which makes me think contradictorily (a) “I can handle this whole teaching thing” and (b) “how is it that I can still go out and have a good time while all the other teachers I’ve talked to have told me that I am not going to be able to have a life my first year? I must be doing really poor work. And I know I can do better. But that would sacrifice sleep, which would sacrifice my ability to function well during classtime.”

More to come. Now I sleep.