What a Week!

I tried to post this last night, but my internet hates me sometimes, so here it is today.
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It has been a really long week for me.

Monday: We started early on Monday with a staff meeting, as we usually do. The day flew by and then I had a meeting after school. That was followed by a volleyball practice with my highschool girls’ team for two hours. It was a very good practice and I saw some definite improvements. After about two more hours of planning I got home around 9 pm. This would have been fine except that I was still exhausted from the Friday night partying :S

Tuesday: I was away from work all day Tuesday. I had to go to a training sessions. We are often sent to training and it was valuable except that I done the same training about four years ago while I was still student teaching, so it was a bit of a repeat. In order to make it to the session on time, I had to leave home before 7 am. We finished around 3:30 and quickly drove another hour in order to meet my volleyball team for a game. The girls played fairly well, but the officiating was shit and they lost several points due to poor calls. We lost all of our sets and they were definitely frustrated. By the time I got home from the game, it was around 9 pm. When I got home and checked my email, I discovered that two of my best players had been caught smoking during school hours and had been given a two-week suspension from volleyball. The vice principal was kind enough to start the suspension the next day so that I didn’t all of a sudden show up and not have my players at the last minute.

Wednesday: Wednesday was really a blur! The day flew by and after school I spend some time with one of our new teachers walking her through some forms and planning. All of a sudden I realised that I had pushed the time to the last minute and I had to boot it to get to the city. Wednesday was the day of my monthly book club meeting. I met one of my closest friends for supper and then off to book club we went. Lucky us, the store that usually hosts us had dropped the club completely and didn’t tell the regulars about it! So we all got stubborn and decided that we would keep doing the club ourselves. Hopefully they will get the hint and pick it up again! Heaven forbid we would want to sit in a book store, buy their coffee, buy their books, and discuss literature! I got home around 10:30 and headed straight to bed – early morning the next day.

Thursday: This started out with a 7 am volleyball practice. I think that I may have complained about this before – we have three teams fighting to share the gym, so my team tends to get the last possible practice time and it ends up being before school. Most of my players showed up – and most of them were completely confused about why our main setter wasn’t there. Apparently she had chosen not to tell the team about her suspension! After filling in a very unimpressed team, we had a good practice and the girls renewed some of their confidence. I made them do a hokey “this is why you’re great” circle thing to try to renew some of their positivity and enjoyment of working with a team. The day got longer from this point on. The big boss stopped by for lunch with the staff and we had a working lunch where we discussed what we thought was good and bad about the school division. It was a good lunch and our grade 12s catered it. The school day ended and we stuck around for the 7 pm football game. It was the first time they had ever done a game under lights and it was a great, fun experience. Pretty much the whole town showed up! We got home around 10 pm.

Friday: Got to school fairly early to get caught up on some work. The day dragged a bit and I was inundated with grade 12s asking me to edit their history papers. The papers were due today and many of them were just finishing the work on them. Their teacher is willing to edit the papers, but not on the day that they are due, so they come to me. I’m cool with that, at least they are getting them edited and realising the importance of it. Usually it comes with a ton of begging and sucking up too which is fun to watch. Lol. One of my favourite students from last year came to school today to hang out. That made my day brighter. I really miss this kid. We had some conversations via facebook this summer which nearly crossed a line on his part and I think that he still feels a bit sheepish about it because he wasn’t nearly as relaxed around me as he had been. It was funny because even the new teachers commented on how he just gravitated toward me when I walked down the hall, and how they hoped they could form relationships with students like that. I managed to get through the day with very little issue. We had a bit of a problem with a couple of students this afternoon, but it was a he-said, she-said, situation and both kids were in the wrong. At one point this morning, the principal just walked into my room and sat down – he said he was just looking for some excitement – he does that from time to time… just checking in randomly for a few minutes. He actually got into the conversation with the class, and the kids were AMAZING! They got right into the discussion and contributed very well and stayed on topic (mostly) and when they weren’t I laughed it off and called them on it, quickly pulling them back to the topic. I couldn’t have asked for it to be better! We actually got home after school at 5 pm – a first for the past couple of weeks! I had such a horrible headache that I took a short nap. I think I will call it night soon as my internet is actually out right now and my husband is downstairs playing football on PS3.

This weekend it is Thanksgiving in Canada. We’re off to the city to his parents’ place for turkey day. It will be a quiet weekend with lots of food – and hopefully getting a chance to catch up some marking. Marking and sleep!