First Week Down, 27 days to go!

This has been my life this week: getting back into teaching how to write memoirs, writing scripts and planning book-it performances for our Greek Myth on Ulysses and Cyclops, and connecting controversial issues to the Constitutional ideals, principles and amendments. All good stuff! LOL

I made it through my first week back to work with very few problems. I shed quite a few tears on Monday and each day, but it is much easier to leave my baby with my sister rather than leaving him at daycare or w/ a sitter, in my opinion. My students were very happy to see me on Monday, which made this week very pleasant. They are all working hard and very appreciative of all the help I have been giving them.

Here are some of my favorite comments of the week:
1. "Mrs. Fitz, your face looks so skinny now!"
2. "Mrs. Fitz, you don't even look like you had a baby!"
3. "Mrs. Fitz, I work so much better now that you're back in class!"
4. "Mrs. Fitz, I respect you so much. I am so glad you are back!"

Man are these kids trying to get some brownie points or what?!!!

I guess I shouldn't say "week" because I really only taught 4 days, M-Th. Today we had student-led conferences. They were from 8-10 a.m. and then 5-7 tonight. I stayed all day b/c I did not see the point in driving back home for a couple hours to drive right back, esp. when gas is so darn expensive, and REALLY because I needed to sort through all the shit my sub left behind. I recycled a TON of papers that were unnecessary for me to have around.

I picked one of the busiest and personally, one of the most stressful weeks known to man at our school to return. First of all, everything needed to be turned in for my Culminating Seminar class last night. I have been working on it since before Bay was born in early March. I spent a lot of my maternity leave writing the papers and organizing my evidence. I spent the last two weeks working on my Power Point preso and scanning all of my evidence. I had 91 items to scan. yeah, it took me 3 days to get all of my evidence saved. But, I did finish it all and it's all submitted. I have some paperwork I need to fill out for the state in order to get my continuing certificate, but it's DONE. My teacher asked if he could use some of my papers to share as samples of great work for next year's candidates...that proved that all of my hard work has paid off. Second, Dj was gone to Portland a couple of days early on M-W. That was tough too b/c my morning routine was thrown off. Third, student-led conferences were this Friday and my kids were a little behind b/c the sub didn't really understand what to do. And finally, I found out grades for mid-term are due May 14 and I didn't find ANY grades written down anywhere or any papers to actually grade. Oh well..I'll figure something out.

I think the worst thing about going back physically was that my breasts are trying to adjust to not feeding a baby every couple of hours. I count the minutes sometimes until lunch so I can pump and stop that annoying burning sensation! Sometimes I feel like they are going to explode, but luckily, I've been able to make it until lunchtime. I also forgot that sometimes milk supply is affected by stress, so because this week was REALLY freaking busy, yesterday I noticed my milk supply was a little less than normal when pumping. Oh, and of course, I am so tired! Baylen has been sleeping better this week at night, sleeping 4-5 hour stretches b/f wanting to nurse. The bad part? he thinks he needs to "Store up" and will want to eat for an hour. I am really dragging by about 9 p.m. these days.

I hope next week goes well and fast like this one did. I am definitely looking forward to summer. I forget that even though my kids have been particularly good and unusually good for this time of year, there are some who are still pretty squirrelly...8th graders get that way at the end of the year.