Institution

I can think of 1,000,000 other things I could be doing right now.  Institute is crazy.  I'm finally beginning to understand why my teachers said there was not enough time in a day.  Even though institute is absolutely insane and I'm always grading papers, writing lesson plans, printing copies, attending classes myself, and lucky if I get 5 hours of sleep at night, I am loving this.  The average day at institue looks something like this:

4:45 wake up
5:45 - 6:30 ride the bus to go to Westview High School
6:30 - 7:00 handing back papers and student trackers and getting ready for class
7:00 - 7:15 monitoring the hall
7:15 - 8:00 working on lesson plans
8:00 - 11:00 attending curriculum and literacy sessions/lesson planning
11:00 - 12:30 teach math
12:30 - 1:30 lunch
1:30 - 3:30 more curriculum and literacy sessions
4:00 - 4:45 ride the bus back to ASU

Then my night continues with planning lessons, printing homework, grading quizzes, writing/grading quizzes, attending evening sessions, and hopefully going to sleep by midnight.  There was an hour and a half of sleep in there one night last week.  It is hard, but I wouldn't want to be anywhere else.  I'm learning so much about being a teacher.  The best part of my day is definitely when I'm teaching class.  My students are great.  They have a hard time with simple mathematic operations, like adding and subtracting, which can be extremely frustrating, but I'm really enjoying getting to know them and watching them learn the material.

I've heard life after institute is easier, but I'm wondering how that can possibly be true.  How can it get easier when I have 6 classes of 30 + students rather than 1 class of 20?  And taking masters classes at ASU on Thursday nights.  I can't even think about that right now.

I've finished my first week of teaching and two more weeks to go, then final assessments.  As much as I love this, I am really looking forward to July 6 when institute ends!

We're attempting to stay sane in our classroom....it's not working very well