Busy, Busy Day

Today was a "pupil-free" day for us, which meant that we had meetings and whatnot but didn't actually have to teach. The upside, of course, was that our principal let us out in time to run to our classrooms and watch the inauguration! Yes! So a bunch of us ran to my room, only to find that a) the cable TV was out school-wide (thank you, construction workers), and b) we couldn't watch it on any of the major news websites because of bandwidth issues (they were all jammed). Great.

Luckily, one of my coworkers lives just a few blocks from school, so we decided to hightail it over to her house, where she was recording it already (thank you, digital cable!). When we started out, it was just the three of us fifth grade teachers. By the time we got to her house, there were over 20 teachers trekking along behind us!! It was great, though. We rewound to the beginning, and all watched it together. It was such a powerful experience, and it was even better to share it with a bunch of people who I genuinely like. I'd have to say it was pretty memorable!

Anyway, after we listened to Elizabeth Alexander recite her poem, we figured we should probably head back to work. And work we did! My brain hurts from today. As a team, we met to discuss all the end-of-year activities that I normally run. I had to delegate a whole bunch of things and explain a lot (I ended up typing a ton of notes for them, too). And then I got started on putting together a binder for my substitute when I'm out on maternity leave. It won't be as hard as last time, but boy is there a lot to cover! I am revising the Word document I created last time so that it fits with how I do things this year, and already there are so many changes. And so many things that need to be added, because of all the aforementioned end-of-year activities. It's insane! I'm glad I started early, because it made me realize just how much there is to do. And with Nikos around now, I don't have nearly as much time to stay after school and work on things as I once did!

But yes, it was a busy day indeed. We went for a quick lunch at Taco Bell (where else?), but I never stopped working when I was in my classroom. And I didn't accomplish even half of what I had planned to do today. Yikes!!