Relief

I have to admit, now that Biden has been announced the president-elect, I feel an incredible amount of relief. I still have a lot of processing to do about the fact that way more people voted for him this time around than the last time, and that those people were overwhelmingly white (57% of white voters chose Trump?! WTF?!), but I am so, so glad Trump will no longer be in the White House come January 2021.

I was wondering if I would feel different – less anxious and distracted – after the election and… that might be right. I’m less distracted than I was last week but it will probably take a while for that ambient anxiety that has been swirling in the back of my mind for most of the year to settle.

Meanwhile, I’m still totally burned out. I have absolutely no interest in doing anything related to work. I’m tired of planning. I’m tired of creating content. I’m tired of scoring and inputting scores. I’m tired of teaching. I don’t want to do any of it. It’s Sunday afternoon as I write this and I have a fair amount of work to do but I’m writing this post instead. The thought of creating the lesson I need for Monday and the practice I need for Tuesday makes me want to curl up and… I don’t know. Do anything else?

I know that it’s normal to be this burned out in early November. At this point we’ve only had two days off since we started the school year in mid-August. The fall is a looooong haul and there is always a feeling of exhaustion and overwhelm by November. It’s not odd that I’m counting the days until Thanksgiving break.

What is different is that I can’t schedule any cushion days. At school we’d spend a block period watching Coco after Day of the Dead in early November and I’d get caught up on my work. I can’t do that kind of thing now. I’m already covering so much less content than I should be so it’s hard to allow myself some days off. I guess the real issue is it’s much easier to just phone it in for a day or so when I’m in the classroom, but during distance learning I have to have something meaningful ready for every day.

I’m glad we have Wednesday off. I’m annoyed it’s in the middle of the week, but I’m going to enjoy it. I plan to take my son to his distance learning care (I really do not know what to call it – it’s not camp, it’s not after care) on Tuesday at lunch so he can meet the kids and staff and play around a little. I’ll have him stay until after my staff meeting at 4pm then I’ll pick him up. We’ll have Wednesday off entirely then he’ll go again on Thursday, for a longer part of the day. The week before Thanksgiving he’ll go for even longer.

If you’re wondering why someone who has sent her child to various after care programs and summer camps without any worries is taking such a cautious approach to this new program, it’s because my son will have fewer zooms and less work than the other students and I want him to have abbreviated days there to start so we can figure out how much we need to bring for him to pass the long hours. After the Thanksgiving break I have to be in my classroom full time which means he has to be at this program for two eight hour days, and he definitely won’t have eight hours worth of work to do each day. Since the other kids have different schedules the program can’t plan many activities that they all participate in. I’m really worried it’s going to be a disaster but I hope it works out.

I keep telling myself that I just need to get to the Thanksgiving break. I can do some work that week to get ahead of my planning for the three weeks in December, and then we get another two weeks off. After that I might have students in my classroom. Who knows?

I intended to write more but it’s almost midnight and I need to go to bed. I did end up getting the lesson for tomorrow ready and the practice for Tuesday posted. I’m trying to schedule all my morning emails and preparing for my 8:35am Advisory class before I go to bed which is killing me because it adds an extra 30 minutes to my work at night. I’m hoping that once I’m in my classroom all day I’ll have the time to do it before I go home. Right now it’s really hard, but I feel like I need to get into that habit before I’m attempting to make it to work before I start teaching.