WEEK 9 - Spending MEA training in North Carolina

This week is MEA. For all of you who don't live in Minnesota, MEA stands for "Minnesota Education Association." The 3rd weekend in October students have a 4-day weekend (in Minneapolis it's a 5-day weekend because we do conferences on Wednesday) so that teachers can attend conferences for educators. For many teachers (and students), it's a nice break from normal day-to-day activities.

This MEA weekend, I don't really get a break. In fact, on Thursday morning I left my house at 9am to board an airplane to North Carolina for IB (International Baccalaureate) teacher training. IB is a bit complicated to explain, (you can look it up if you want) but basically I'm getting this training because I teach the highest levels of Spanish (levels 5 and 6) and the students in those classes will have to sit for some pretty extensive exams in the spring, and I have to know how to adequately prepare them to do this. 

I arrived at 5pm Thursday, but because Tuesday and Wednesday we had parent-teacher conferences, I was completely wiped out and ended up going to bed extremely early. Friday and Saturday we had our training from 8am until 4:15pm, and after the conference Friday, my colleague and I spent 2 hours taking what we learned and applying it to a project we're developing for our classes. Tomorrow (Sunday) we will have more training from 8am until noon, and then I fly back in to Minneapolis at 9pm. So as you can see, not only am I not getting an "MEA break," I'm not even getting a weekend. 

Many people might say, "oh you have MEA weekend, and since my kids get a long weekend off, teachers must also get that time off." Well, even though I only taught Monday and Tuesday, I worked a total of 56 hours this week. To calculate my time this weekend, I included the time spent at the conference, the time my colleague and I spent working on a project after the conference, and the time spent on the plane. 

While I won't always have to spend MEA out of state doing a training, it's important for people to know that there is a lot that goes on behind the scenes, and that we're not just at home chilling during MEA or other breaks, like their kids are doing. 

My hours for week 9:

Day	Date	Start	End	Total Hours
Sun	10/14/2012	5:30 PM	6:30 PM	1
		7:30 PM	10:30 PM	3
M	10/15/2012	7:30 AM	5:30 PM	10
T	10/16/2012	7:15 AM	8:30 PM	13.25
W	10/17/2012	7:45 AM	12:30 PM	4.75
Th	10/18/2012	11:00 AM	4:30 PM	5.5
F	10/19/2012	8:00 AM	4:15 PM	8.25
		5:00 PM	7:00 PM	2
Sat	10/20/2012	8:00 AM	4:15 PM	8.25
	Total			56