Today I finished my semester. Grading finals is always a manic marathon accompanied by an earworm devised by my frantic brain.
Grading, grading, grading,
gotta do my grading,
get those finals graded, rawhide! YA!
Have you ever noticed that manic activities are frequently backgrounded by some lyrically-varied version of “Rawhide”?
Maybe that’s just me…
Anyway, one of my colleagues sent this cartoon to me, and it cracked me up. I’ll refrain from saying “story of my life” because, frankly, most of my students are awesome kids I really enjoy teaching. But situations like this do come up on occasion. They are admittedly rare at the school where I teach, but I’m told I have a reputation for being a frightening teacher, so maybe I’m just lucky and don’t have to deal with it so much. (This sort of thing used to happen pretty often when I taught at a local college, back in the day.)
Check it out. Enjoy the end of the school year, all those of you affected by it. And have a good Memorial Day weekend!
Sappho's Torque 
I always couldn’t wait for summer as a student. Is it the same for teachers?
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You have no idea.
Most of us are doing this because we genuinely love it. (I sort of think that must be why teachers are paid so relatively little, so that only the really dedicated ones will do it. And yes, I know that’s naive and unfair, and I don’t agree with it even if it is true, which I’m guessing it’s not. But it’s an interesting fantasy.)
But summer break is great. Most of us do a lot of work during the summer, too, but it’s different, more relaxed, less stressful. The idea of a ten-week vacation is a myth.
And ten weeks is almost long enough to give us adequate time to decompress and psych ourselves up for the next year. 😉
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My mom was actually a substitute teacher at my school when I was in 5th grade. She was beat after each day, oh and she subbed for my class. Thinking that could be the worse, but it turned out really great. Thanks for breaking it down!
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Sure thing!
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I once had a student show up the day after the semester had ended asking what she could do to improve her grade… that was a low.
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Yeah, I don’t get that. Unless, I suppose, hope springs eternal and even wildly unsuccessful people are optimists sometimes. Hmm…kinda gives me hope, there…
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