New approach to mental health

-

 In the past, I've been the kind of teacher that thought about school constantly. I would work endlessly on the weekends to get things ready for the week. That didn't really work though as I struggled through most weeks and didn't have a good system for keeping things organized. Also, I think that constant working was no good for my brain because I really couldn't remember anything that went into it. 

One of my huge take-aways from last year was the need to disconnect completely from school. Working from home, I learned that I needed to step away from the school work and not spend mental time on it 24/7. That's a good thing to learn. But I think I've taken it a little too far recently. The last few weekends I've brought some work home and then completely ignored it all weekend. I'm lucky enough to have 3 day weekends every week (this was a 4-day weekend because of Veteran's Day) so there really is no reason that I can't do work one day. I'm glad I'm able to walk away and not think about it, but I need to focus sometimes on it. 

Today I need to grade some tests and quizzes and some scientific readings. That's a lot of work but if I knuckle down and get to it I'll get it done in no time. So that is the goal today. I just put everything in my planner so that I get it done. Today will be productive. 

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Going in too many directions????

-
Image
I'm having trouble organizing my lessons. There are a number of technology things that go with my lessons. I am trying to use Planbookplus to create my lesson plans: Which is great but has its limitations. So I thought I would keep all of my files in One Note so I could have access anywhere. That will be good but it is almost like creating lesson plans all over again. Then I have a class blog where things need to be uploaded and offered to the kids. As a result of trying all three of these things, I have completed nothing. All of them are half done and we have just completed the 2nd full week of school. I tried an external hard drive and thought that would be a good way to do it. It has proven to be more of a nightmare than a help. Ugggggggghhhhhhhhhhh!!!! What to do???? How do I organize all the electronic information I have???? How do I keep track of things and not make myself crazy??????? So that is my struggle this weekend. I am going to complete one or tw...
Read more

And so it begins.........

-
Image
We teachers returned to school on July 24th and the students returned on August 2nd. That means we had the kids 2 days last week, Wednesday and Thursday. And it went well. This year I had to revamp my classroom management system and I think I have something that will work for me. Let me explain; My first 7 years of teaching was at private schools. Even though these private schools were at the lower financial end of the spectrum and most of our students were on financial aid, they were nevertheless private school students. Classroom management was not a huge priority as these students did their work and listened and were respectful and all that stuff. So my classroom management was a little lax because it didn't need to be really strict and tough. Well, now I'm at a public school. And in spite of the fact that this is a charter school and parents have to go out of their way to send their students here, it is still a public school. Last year I handled my classroom management l...
Read more

A stroke of genius?????

-
Image
The ongoing theme of this blog has been organization. I've been teaching for 9 years, but I haven't found a way to organize my stuff that works really, really well for me. Every single year, I struggle finding things I know I have or recreating the wheel because I've forgotten I have something. So I've been working really, really hard to get organized once and for all with a system that works for me. I know that I need to have things written/printed and at my fingertips in order to make good use of them. If I have to go online and look it up it won't happen. I've played around with binders and didn't really use them after I set them up. The last 2 years I did find great success with planners. I would divide the day up into my classes - 4 each day - and jot notes on what was to happen that day. That worked great!! As long as I planned ahead. Too many days I would get to school and the planner was blank. That left me scrambling to figure out what I'm t...
Read more