Year 10 has started

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I vividly remember my interview for my teacher education program. One of the questions they asked is "Where do you see yourself in 5 years?"  I responded, "in a classroom." At that time I had zero desire to be in admin and that has not changed. So here I am, starting my 10th year of teaching, and still in the classroom.

This is also the hardest year to start. I am usually very excited about the new school year. I look forward to the new batch of students and I just enjoy new starts. This year? Not so much. Not sure exactly why, but it seems to be pretty prevalent across the board. Most teachers I speak to are just not excited about the new school year. Hmmm....  Oh well.....it is what it is.

With that, my lesson planning is absolutely driving me crazy and I don't know what to do about it. I sat and made some detailed lesson plans for the beginning of the school year and they seem to change it day to day. Why? Why exactly do I do that? Why can I not stick to a plan after I make it? I try not to plan too far in advance because then I forget. But even if I only plan over the weekend, I forget. I forgot to get test stuff ready so that I could give every class a pretest yesterday and today. WTF???  I'm seriously over this crap. I have got to come up with a system that allows me to plan in advance and keeps me on track for the week or so. I wrote these elaborate plans in my online planbook only to completely ignore it and change everything up. UGH!!!!  I'm so tired of this. I really, really am. Every single day it's like I'm recreating the wheel. I want to stop it. But how do I do that?

Currently, I have an online planbook that I use to keep the daily lesson plans. That is great, I really like it, but what is the best way to utilize that so that I do what I plan? Should I keep the planbook open so that I see it all the time and can reference it during class?  So, this is actually something I have never thought of before. Why don't I keep it open and refer to it when I need to? I can lay out my plan for the day, then make changes as the plan progresses. I just need to get into the habit of checking it all the time. But I got into the habit of taking attendance so I think I can do it if I work at it. Okay, I will try strategy 4,287 and see if that works for me.

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