Three Things Thursday: The Tired Teacher Edition

^Case in point as to how tired I am--the first time I typed that, I wrote, "The Tired Teacher Addition."  I swear I'm qualified for this job...

ONE
This week at school has been a whirlwind!  Unfortunately I have been super frustrated for a good chunk of it--we have had a reading intervention block in place in my district for the past few years, and this year we are adding a math intervention block to our day too.  Making groups across the entire grade level is always a nightmare for intervention groups (every kid needs to be in a group based on their level, mixing between the classes), and it's especially tricky in multi-grade classrooms.  We need every kiddo in an appropriate group, but it gets tricky when we're mixing 3rd graders and 4th graders--even if the kids are reading at the same level, they need to be pushed at different speeds to go through the levels.  Anyways, it's been a nightmare to make these groups.  For some reason they are taking more time and effort to get right this year.  We have spent upwards of three hours on them ALREADY this week--buh bye any plan time we might have had to actually, you know, PLAN.  And the worst of it is that it is always so frustrating trying to move kids around, assign teachers to groups, etc., that I always leave the meetings frustrated and with little patience left to actually TEACH!  My poor kids.  I've said it before and I'll say it again--the actually TEACHING part of this job is awesome.  The other stuff?  Not my fave...

This is the place I actually like to be during the school day!  

(Also I had no picture to go along with that one...and I really like my polka dot rug...)

TWO
We also had curriculum night this week.  I have a love/hate relationship with things like curriculum night and conferences.  Part of me absolutely loves getting to talk to the parents, get on the same page, and share the joy of their child's successes with them.  The other part of me dreads the long days.  Tuesday I was at school by 7 and didn't leave until 9!  Yikes!  My turnout wasn't the best, but I had a chance to touch base with all of the parents who did come, and they were all so supportive and excited about the year.  Love that!  I asked the parents to fill out a short information card that included a question about expectations and goals for their child this year.  This was one parent's response:

I love this so much.  I hope when I am a parent that this will be my biggest wish for my child.  Because really, what's more important?

THREE
Wednesday night I had 8 miles on the schedule.  Even though my legs are still feeling kind of jacked up, I'd skipped Tuesday's short run and last Wednesday's 8-miler, so I knew I had to drag myself to the trails and put in the work.  No one ever said training for a marathon was easy, yo!  Chicago has been experiencing a beautiful little heatwave this past week with temperatures rising up to 96 Tuesday and high 80s Wednesday.  My God.  I'm just praying things cool off before the marathon!  I decided that it was worth a short drive to be able to run at a forest preserve about 25 minutes away that has an almost completely shaded trail.  It's amazing, albeit hilly (by Illinois standards at least).

The run kind of sucked, but I just kept putting one foot in front of the other.  Some interesting (or uninteresting) stats from the run...
Number of times I had to pee in the woods: 1
Number of times I was almost hit by a mountain biker who did NOT say "on your left": 1
Number of times I took a wrong turn: 1
Number of times, after getting back on the correct trail, that I was convinced I was lost and would be stuck wandering the woods after dark: 1
Number of tiems I missed my turn on the (easy) drive home: 1

Trail running = dirty shoes.

(Actually, now that I look at this, my shoes don't look that dirty...I swear they are usually an even brighter shade of pink.)

I swear this whole back to school thing is depleting my brain cells.  On the drive home I literally had my signal on to turn, drove past the street, wondered a few minutes later why my signal was on, kept driving, realized later that it had been on because I was supposed to turn...Face. Palm.  To be fair, I didn't really fuel up for this run (unless stress eating animal crackers at my staff meeting after school counts?), forgot that because I was running through dinner time I would probably need some fuel on the run, and was just overall a tired mess.

One more day before a three day weekend--THANK GOODNESS!