Hello, today I thought I would share my schedule for teaching for prospective teachers and for those who are generally curious. Of course, I have a few caveats in my schedule because I work at a charter school and some days it feels like the Wild West while others feel far more blissful.
Anyway, join me as we take a look!
Morning routines
I get up at 5 a.m. and take care of my normal morning routines (shower, dress, and make a large cup of coffee). Typically I dry my dress shirt in the dryer to take out the wrinkles or on the rare occasion actually bring out the iron to fix the collar.
I then drive 45 minutes to work and drink my coffee while listening to a podcast or book on tape (right now it’s Stephen King’s Fairy Tale). When I get to school, I poorly park and take my bag inside. After turning on my classroom lights, I get the floor swept up in case it is still dirty from the previous day and check the desks for any anomalies.
Class time
Afterward, I have about 45 minutes worth of prep time, which is actually prep time for that day, because all of my lesson planning is done on the weekend for two subjects: ELA and Social Studies. Moreover, I meet my class in the gym and we head back to the room after a morning meeting.
The morning is focused on English Language Arts and writing, and I take the kids through a reading assignment and then some part of grammar (typically Daily Oral Language or C.U.P.S. [capitalization, usage, punctuation, and style]). Our curriculum also asks us to do a lot of wacky activities (some of them I discard, and others I focus on). Some of these activities, without being too specific, go over my students’ heads and take a lot of explaining and modeling, which I put off for days where we have less to do–which never seems to happen unfortunately.
In the afternoon, I teach the kids Social Studies, which includes either US history or geography. The last part of the day is for intervention or reflection; it’s also time for kids to get caught up on work or finish quizzes and tests.
Lastly, the kids depart and I either clean my room or hurriedly scramble out the door to escape the day and get home to my family. I try not to work in my evenings and I typically leave everything at the school until the weekends.
Conclusion
My first year as a teacher was plagued with misery and anxiety and I worked from 7 am until 10 pm because I couldn’t leave my work alone, and I fretted over every little thing that could go wrong. My work-life balance was way off. These days, I just make sure I prep all of my materials and use a solid sequence of instruction that does not change day to day.
I am a lot more flexible now, and my work-life balance is much better because I stick to the routines of my SOI (which the kids like better than doing something different each day). Nevertheless, no matter how much I prepare (and no matter how much you will prepare)…things will always take a turn for better or worse.
