Thursday, January 3, 2013

January teaching blues

It is cold. There isn't a other break coming up any time in the near future. My body is still craving day long grazing on Christmas sweets and slowly sipping on coffee as I lose track of exactly how many cups I've had (why count, it's Christmas?) The kids are adjusting from 11 days of not waking up and getting on the school bus.
Everything just seems foggy. We're in school, but only physically. Our songs are not as loud or as spirited, our read alouds not as engaging, our lessons not as perfectly paced.

It's the time of the year where I feel like I've been in school forever. This means I feel everyone should know what I've so carefully and thoroughly taught. We just went through all these months- the year is almost half over- and what do we have to show for it? They still don't have down all those concepts I've been teaching since September. Especially now, coming back from break, they seem to have forgotten everything- everything- I've ever taught them. Hand raising has gone out the window so you can forget about addition and subtraction. It feels like starting over, like we are going to have to repeat the months all over again.

We'll get back our grove, relearn and remember what was taught, and find that we are actually being successful. Eventually. Right now we're in a bit of a rut we've got to crawl our way out of it.

We can do hard things. I just wish we could do the from bed with books and hot chocolate.

3 comments:

molly said...

Thank you for writing this. I'm definitely feeling the "January teaching blues!" We are all droopy and uninspired. One child actually almost fell asleep during writing today. I understood exactly how he felt. And as I'm wondering what we really have to show for the last few months, I'm also realizing that state testing starts in just 2 short months. Sigh. It's good to know that you feel like this too though and it doesn't mean I should just give up.

organized chaos said...

Glad to know I'm not alone!

Suzanne G. said...

I'm a music teacher and I've always found January to be one of the best months of the year for teaching. Finally, no breaks, so we can actually get things done! Understand that I get to see the kids once a week. Any interruptions mess everything up, and the Fall semester is full of breaks.

Hope things begin to look up!