WEEK 1 - Preparation

Week 1 of a teacher's school year is almost always spent without the students. My first day of work was Monday, August 20th, and the first day I am with students will be tomorrow, August 27th. Over the course of this week, roughly three and a half days were spent in meetings. The other day and a half we had to set up our classrooms and collaborate with other teachers in our department. For all of you who are teachers, you know that a day and a half is definitely not enough to finish everything to be ready for the school year. Thus, most teachers stayed late every day, and a good chunk of teachers (including me) went into the school on Saturday to get more work done.

I averaged about 10.5 hours per day this past week. I am still not finished with everything, since I have to tweak my syllabus and other documents that will be used this year. I will be teaching Spanish 1 (what I taught last year) and a mixed class of Spanish 5/6 (new to me). Even though I am teaching a new level, I am seeing a huge difference in myself between year 1 and year 2. At this time last year, I was a complete wreck with hardly a vision of where I wanted to go with my kids over the course of the school year. This year, I am more confident in my ability to get the kids where they need to be.

These were my hours. When there are two entries for the day, the first one is generally the time I spent at the school, and the second one is the time I spent at home. Total for the week is at the bottom.

Date	Start	End	Total Hours
8/20/2012	7:30 AM	4:00 PM	8.5
8/21/2012	8:00 AM	7:00 PM	11
	8:00 PM	9:30 PM	1.5
8/22/2012	8:00 AM	7:30 PM	11.5
8/23/2012	8:30 AM	7:30 PM	11
	8:45 PM	10:00 PM	1.25
8/24/2012	8:00 AM	6:30 PM	10.5
	9:00 PM	10:15 PM	1.25
8/25/2012	10:30 AM	2:30 PM	4
	8:00 PM	11:30 PM	3.5
Total:			64

WELCOME

Hello everyone and welcome to my year 2 blog. As an experiment, I've decided to tally the exact amount of time I spend working as a teacher. Although I only spend 5 hours per day in front of students actually teaching, I spent countless more hours preparing lessons, grading assessments, contacting parents, going to meetings, and collaborating with other teachers. In this blog, I will provide all of the hours that I worked each week, regardless of whether it was at the school or at home. For the sake of simplicity, I will be rounding everything to the nearest quarter hour, and I will not include vacation days (unless I actually do work those days). I will also provide short reflections on the teaching experience in general, as well as how that particular week went. I hope you enjoy!